Discover
School attendance records
Ruth A Symes explains the evolution of compulsory education, and how to find out more about your ancestor’s school days
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the protracted absence of students and staff in schools up and down the country, and with them, lots of anxieties: worries about staffing, concerns about students’ achievement in forthcoming exams, questions about the role of parents, and concerns about the physical and mental health of the pupils themselves. Even in better times, school attendance has often been in the news with parents facing being sent to parenting classes, fined or even receiving jail sentence if they don’t ensure that their children are educated.
Children 10–13 could be excused from school for half of every day
For our ancestors similarly, the issue of school attendance was a hot topic in Parliament and the press. The 1870 Elementary Education Act, set the framework to provide education for all children aged 5–13 in England and Wales. In Scotland, a similar act was passed in 1872 but it made school attendance compulsory. The 1876 Elementary Education Act made it the responsibility of every parent to see that their children received sufficient elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic.
From this point, school attendance committees were set up in every area of the country. Moreover, pupils could not leave school at age 10 unless they reached a certain standard (thereby gaining a School Leaving Certificate AKA Labour Certificate), and had also met certain attendance requirements.
Additionally, in 1878, via the Factory and Workshop Act, the Government introduced the ‘halftime system’ whereby children aged 10–13 could be excused from school for half of every day, or for alternate days of the week if their family needed them to work. Further Acts towards the end of the 19th century reinforced government responsibility for children’s school attendance.
Key to this new ethos was the belief that the improvement of children depended upon regular attendance at school. This meant that over the following decades, increasingly stringent measures were taken by the Government and schools themselves to monitor attendance and describe absence.
These included the use of registers and logbooks, school inspections by external officers, and parental penalties for non-attendance.
In 1879 a widow from Lindal-in-Cartmel in Lancashire named Margaret Woodburne was hauled in front of the local school attendance officer because she had failed to send her 9/10-year-old daughter to school for the past three months, and had also failed to fill in the requisite ‘excuse papers’ for the local school board. Woodburne argued that she needed her daughter to stay at home and look after her new baby, while she herself worked.
She also stated that she could not afford to lose her wages even for the one day that she was required to appear before the attendance committee, and that she did not understand the papers that she had been sent.
NEWSPAPER CRUSADE
The local newspaper, Soulby’s Ulverston Advertiser and General Intelligencer, argued that although education had recently been “deemed essential to the well-being of the offspring of even the poorest in the land”, it would do no good if families were thereby “unable to put breads in the mouths of their children”.
To underline its condemnation of the case against her, the paper pointed out a shocking fact. Three out of every 100 people in England and Wales (from a population of approximately 25 million) were currently in receipt of workhouse relief, and this number might confidently be expected to increase to four or even five in every 100 “by too great severity and harshness on the part of the School Board Committee(s)”. In other words, forcing all children to go to school could overwhelm the relief system and cause terrible suffering.
22m
The number of children of elementary school age who were receiving no schooling according to the 1861 census
82
The percentage of children regularly attending elementary school in the early 1890s
300,000
The number of children working in employment outside school hours in 1901
328
The number of local education authorities established by the 1902 Balfour Act
673,000
The number of children evacuated from British cities in the first three days of September 1939
Furthermore, the paper continued, if older children were compelled to go to school, and parents still had to go out to work, then terrible accidents might befall the babies and toddlers left at home. In such cases, would not the school board committee or attendance officer be responsible for the fatalities? For our ancestors it seems, school attendance was a matter closely intertwined with both the economic stability and the moral wellbeing of the country.
Of course, many of our ancestors were able to keep up a regular attendance. Schools rewarded compliance with the rules with incentives such as books with inscribed bookplates, certificates and medals (see the box on page 30). You may already have come across such items among family memorabilia.
FINDING A FOREBEAR’S SCHOOL
Bookplates can provide very direct information about which school your ancestor attended, but sometimes locating the exact establishment can be more of a challenge. Most ordinary children in the late Victorian period would have attended the church or board school nearest to their home, and a local librarian should be able to name the school(s) that your ancestor potentially attended. Trade directories should also list local schools; you can find them at local libraries, family history websites and the University of Leicester’s site Special Collections Online (specialcollections.le.ac.uk).
Some school records, including registers and logbooks concerned with pupils’ attendance, are also on the commercial genealogical websites. Records of many more schools might be found in county and local record offices. You can search for the location of these using The National Archives’ online catalogue Discovery (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/find-an-archive) or check the National Records of Scotland guide at tinyurl.com/nrs-educ.
The records for ancestors who attended still-existing grammar and public schools might be found at the schools themselves, so visit their websites for contact details.
EXCUSES AND PENALTIES
Many parents objected to the directive that children should attend school every weekday. Indignant farmers complained that local children should not be forced into schools in the harvesting times of July and September when fruit and hops needed to be gathered; and representatives of poor urban localities argued the need for older children to bring in a wage or, like Margaret Woodburne’s daughter, help with childminding duties while parents worked. A vast range of other reasons was recorded by teachers and inspectors for non-attendance, such as sickness, bereavement, “recovering from vaccination” and inclement weather.
In the early days of universal education, rules for attendance were not strictly enforced. Moreover, penalties for nonattendance depended upon local bylaws put together by the newly created local school attendance committees. There were many loopholes in the system with some exemptions allowed because of long-term illness, juvenile employment and the long distances in some places between some homes and schools. In short, in the late 19th century there were plenty of reasons why your ancestor might not have attended every day.
Parents who were penalised because their children missed school might have found their way into local newspapers. You can find accounts of such cases in the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), and they make fascinating reading.
Despite the actions of school inspectors and attendance boards, the system of school attendance remained far from watertight for decades. One inspector, Seymour Tremenheere, wrote in 1884, of the situation in the district of Kendal, that 1,000 eligible local students were entirely missing from the school registers and another 1,600 were not regular attenders. He advocated more accountability on the part of school inspectors, and harsher penalties. The local practice of giving parents a month’s warning before fining them, for example, meant they had to face nothing worse than six warnings a year.
THE IMPACT OF WAR
Sometimes school attendance was beyond the control of individual families. In the First World War farmers and parents could apply for Certificates of Exemption to allow children to miss school and pick fruit and vegetables, and many schools closed during the influenza pandemic that began in 1918, although there was no national imperative to do so.
In the Second World War, schooling was first interrupted by mass evacuation in September 1939. This meant that, by the end of that year, one million children had had no schooling for four months. Later many classes were brought to a premature end by air raids. In other cases, school buildings were requisitioned for the war e ort. In comparison, the interruptions to schooling caused by Covid-19 – mitigated in part by online teaching – perhaps appear less dramatic.
School attendance milestones
How did these affect your relations?
1870
The Elementary Education Act sets the framework to offer schooling for all children between the ages of 5 and 13. A similar act in Scotland in 1872 enforces compulsory attendance.
1876
Lord Sandon’s Education Act makes parents responsible for ensuring that their children attend elementary school. All school boards are now required to set up school attendance committees.
1878
The Factory and Workshop Act forbids children under 10 from factory work. Workers aged 10–13 must attend school half-time.
1880
The Elementary Education Act (Mundella’s Act) makes schooling compulsory for those aged 5–10 in England and Wales. School attendance officers are forced to take action if children do not attend.
1891
Another Elementary Education Act abolishes fees for elementary schools and makes them free for the first time.
1893
The Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act increases the school leaving age to 11. Six years later another Act increases it again to 12.
1911
Children walk out of a school in Llanelli in a protest over corporal punishment. This leads to pupils briefly going on strike across the UK, including in Shoreditch (pictured).
1918
An Education Act drawn up by the president of the Board of Education Herbert Fisher makes the school leaving age 14.
1944
Richard Butler’s Education Act creates a Ministry of Education. The leaving age becomes 15, and the system of elementary, secondary and further education is formalised. A similar Act for Scotland follows in 1945.
Researching school attendance
A range of sources can shed light on your forebear’s time at school
AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
The site Writing Lives (writinglives.org) features memoirs from the Burnett Archive of Working Class Autobiographies at Brunel University Library.
FAMILY MEMORABILIA
Look out for bookplates in books given as prizes, school reports, certificates of attendance, medals, newspaper clippings, exam certificates and the like.
LOCAL ARCHIVES’ MATERIAL
You can find records relating to individual schools via Discovery (discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk). Relevant documents include school absence inquiry sheets, absence reports and medical certificates. Public schools may have old attendance records in their own archives. For Scottish records see tinyurl.com/nrs-educ.
NEWSPAPERS
Search the British Newspaper Archive (britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) for accounts of cases where penalties for school absences were issued to named parents.
ORAL HISTORIES
At the British Library Sounds archive (sounds.bl.uk) you can search by keyword and hear interviews with people speaking about their time at school over 100 years ago.
PARLIAMENTARY PAPERS
Search the debates on school attendance at tinyurl.com/parl-hansard. Summaries of school inspection reports (1840–1899) can be seen at parlipapers.proquest.com/parlipapers via institutions that subscribe to ProQuest.
REGISTERS AND LOGBOOKS
Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has a national collection of registers and logbooks from church, board, elementary and secondary schools. Ancestry (ancestry.co.uk) has many London schools and TheGenealogist (thegenealogist.co.uk) has some published registers.
Attendance records
Did an ancestor win a school attendance medal?
School boards across the country often rewarded good attendance with tangible tokens, such as books, medals and paper certificates during periods when metal was harder to come by, such as the second half of the First World War. During 1887–1920, the London School Board used a system of awards known consecutively as the Queen Victoria Medal, the King Edward VII Medal and then the King’s Medal according to the monarch who was reigning at the time.
A research guide on the London Metropolitan Archives’ website at tinyurl.com/lma-school-medals explains how different-coloured ribbons were used at different times. The rules of attendance were strict, allowing only for a couple of absences that had been clearly flagged up by parents in advance. As well as punctuality at the twice-daily registrations (9am and 2pm), the children had to have exhibited “cleanliness, tidiness and good conduct”.
Other schools, especially independent ones, struck their own distinctive medals. You can see what they looked like by searching online, since they frequently come up for sale.
Finally, exceptional examples of medal acquisition might feature in local or even national newspapers.
Resources
Take your research further
BOOKS
Absent Through Want of Boots: Diary of a Victorian School in Leicestershire
Robert Elverstone The History Press, 2014
This history is based on the headmasters’ first-hand accounts in the logbooks of Albert Road Board School, which opened in 1878.
The Children of London: Attendance and Welfare at School 1870–1990
A Susan Williams, Patrick Ivin and Caroline Morse Institute of Education, 2001
This title charts the development of the school attendance service and care committees in the capital.
MUSEUMS AND SOCIETIES
BRITISH SCHOOLS MUSEUM
a 41/42 Queen Street, Hitchin, Hertfordshire SG4 9TS
t 01462 420144
Based in a former 19th-century school, the museum tells the story of early education and childhood.
HISTORY OF EDUCATION SOCIETY
a School of Education, Oxford Brookes University, Harcourt Hill Campus, Oxford OX2 9AT
The society promotes both the study and teaching of the history of education in the UK.
LONDON METROPOLITAN ARCHIVES
a 40 Northampton Road, London ECIR 0HB t 0207 332 3820
You can make an appointment to view medals for school attendance that have been deposited at the London Metropolitan Archives.
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF EDUCATION
This is an ongoing project to set up a National Museum of Education for the UK based in Portsmouth.
Ruth A Symes is a historian. Her books include Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings (2016)