England, Cheshire, School Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

This collection consists of school records from the county of Cheshire for the years 1796-1950.

What Is in This Collection?
This collection contains an index to school admission records. These records contain about 1.9 million names from 120 schools. For a list of the schools included in this collection, see Cheshire School Records List.

Schools for the working class were organized by churches in England, primarily by the Church of England in the early nineteenth century. In 1870, the British government took responsibility for education, and by 1880 school was required for children between 5 and 10 years old. The age of mandatory attendance was raised to 12 in 1899, to 14 in 1918, and to 15 in 1948. Between World War I and World War II, working class children attended elementary schools, middle class children attended grammar schools, and upper class children attended public schools.

The school registers for Cheshire were used to keep track of children who were admitted. They tracked age, name, and address of the parent; name of the previous school the child attended; the child’s academic progress; and the date and reason for the child’s withdrawal from the school. The school admission and discharge registers were highly reliable sources about a student’s admission and discharge, and, where recorded, his or her academic progress. The child's name, parent’s names, and place of residence should also be highly reliable. During the indexing process some indexers used the information in the age column for a birth date. Therefore, some information that was entered in the birth field may be incorrectly listed in the index.

What Can This Collection Tell Me?
School Records may contain:
 * Admission number
 * Date of admission or re-admission
 * Date of birth
 * Surname
 * Given name of child and parent
 * Address
 * Name of last school attended
 * Academic progress
 * Date of withdrawal
 * Cause of withdrawal

How Do I Search This Collection?
Before searching, it is best to know the following information: As you search, compare your results with this information to find a match.
 * Name of the person
 * General date of the record

I Found the Person I Was Looking for, What Now?

 * Copy down all the information in the index entry.
 * Cite the record; see below for help citing records in this collection.
 * Use the information which has been discovered to find more. For instance, use the estimated age given in a marriage or burial record to calculate an approximate year of birth, if that is yet undetermined.
 * If in the appropriate period, use the information which has been discovered to find the individual in civil records. Particularly useful for research in nineteenth-century England are the England Census and Civil Registration records.
 * Continue to search the index to identify children, siblings, parents, and other relatives. Note that family members often appear on an individual's vital records, such as in the role of witnesses to a marriage.

I Can’t Find the Person I’m Looking for, What Now?

 * When looking for an individual with a common name, look at all the search results before deciding which is the correct person. Use other information, such as place of birth, age, occupation, or names of parents, to help with this decision. If listed, a personal title may be a clue to property ownership or occupation, either of which might be noted in other records.
 * Try variations of given names and surnames. An individual might appear under a different name in a record for a variety of reasons:
 * - An individual might have been listed under a middle name, nickname, or abbreviation of their given name.
 * - Spelling was not standardized for much of the period of this collection, so names were often spelled as scribes heard them. Pay attention to how the name should have been pronounced and try spelling variations that could have that pronunciation.
 * - Some women returned to their maiden names after the death of their husbands.


 * Vary the search terms. For example, search by either the given name or surname to return broader list of results which can then be examined for matches. Try expanding the date range as well; this is especially useful in searching baptismal records, as it was not unusual for a child to be baptized weeks or even months after birth.
 * Search the records of nearby locations. While a person in this period rarely lived more than 20 miles from their place of birth, moves within this range were common. For this collection, nearby locations could include parishes in the bordering counties of Lancashire to the north, Derbyshire to the east, Staffordshire or Shropshire to the south, or in the Welsh counties of Denbighshire and Flintshire to the west.

For additional help searching online collections see FamilySearch Search Tips and Tricks.

Citing This Collection
Citations help you keep track of places you have searched and sources you have found. Identifying your sources helps others find the records you used.

Collection Citation

Record (or Index) Citation

Top of Page