05 August 2024
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When tracing family history, be sure to track down information your ancestors' school years as it will give you a much better standing of their childhood and teen years. Here are useful tips to help you do so.
How to find school records
There are several places in which you may need to look in order to find surviving school records.
Step 1: check the subscription website(s)
Firstly check the subscription websites of which you are a member as some do have digitised collections of school records for some areas, so you may be in luck. For instance:
Ancestry - carefully study the Ancestry card catalogue for a list of all the school record collections they have digitised. These are by no means comprehensive and coverage varies enormously, in geographical areas covered/not covered, and in types of school covered - from poor schools to Eton. The largest collection on Ancestry is the London, England, School Admission and Discharges 1840-1911 comprising more than 3 million entries.
Findmypast- within the Education and Work section at Findmypast, go to 'Schools and Education'. Similarly to Ancestry, coverage varies significantly by area. Notable is the record set National Register Admission Registers and Log-Books 1870-1914, with more than 9.5 million entries. The date period is significant, dating from the establishment of the School Boards in 1870 and the introduction of widespread elementary education for 5 to 13 year olds.
MyHeritage - Among the many international collections, thank your lucky stars if you are seeking school records for Cheshire, as MyHeritage provides 722,000 records for the county, spanning 1796-1909.
TheGenealogist - go to the Education Records on TheGenealogist and browse or search the digitised books by county.
FamilySearch - log in at FamilySearch, scroll down to 'Find a collection', 'Browse all collections' and search on the word 'school' to find a listing of all the school record collections FamilySearch has available online.
Step 2: contact the archives
As you can see, having explored the links above, digitisation of school records has a long way to go. So you may find you need to contact the relevant archives and find out what records they hold for your place and time period of interest. Many archive websites have online catalogues and useful information on their websites about the records they hold, so investigate this first.
You may encounter a closure period, and it may not be possible or may be more difficult to access records within the past 100 years.
Step 3: contact the schools
Sometimes the records you seek may still be held by the school in the schools' archive. In such an event you would need to contact the relevant school.
Which school records are most useful for family history?
The most useful school records for family history are going to be the school admission registers, providing information about when your child started school, with brief parental details and address. School log books are also useful for helping you to understand more about the place and times in which your ancestor was educated. For instance learn about epidemics, outbreaks of illness, spates of particularly bad weather, spikes in school absences, pupils who died, education tests and examination sessions, school trips and more.
What age did your ancestor leave school?
It's really important to find out the school-leaving age for the period in which you are searching, so that you have a clearer idea of when your ancestor would have left school. Remember too that the compulsory school leaving ages have varied among England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland (Northern and Republic of).