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School
Records Useful School Records Admission registers : Schools have had to keep a list of their pupils in an admission register since the late nineteenth century. These are the most useful education source for family historians. The information for each child generally includes date of admission, date of birth, address, name of parent/guardian, name of previous school, date of leaving and reason for leaving.
Part of page from SS Peter and Paul RC School admission register 1895. They are arranged by date but usually have a name index. You will need to have an approximate age for the person and to bear in mind that the age they would have entered the school will vary according to whether it is an infant, primary or secondary school.
Headteachers' Log Books : Log Books were introduced into schools in 1862, although only a few schools will have any that old. They are a record of events in the life of a school. The information was recorded by the headteacher, usually on a daily basis. They rarely mention individual pupils unless something noteworthy happened to them such as winning a prize or having an accident and are therefore less useful to family historians.
Click on the image to enlarge However, they do generally contain information about staff, including the dates when they started and left the school.
Photographs : Our extensive local history photograph collection includes a number of photographs of school groups that can be found by searching our photograph index under the name of the school. Only a small number include names of pupils and then it is rarely the whole group. Teachers are more likely to be identified.
Bushbury Old Council School, 1928.
School magazines : These often include lists of names particularly relating to examinations passed.
St Chad's College school magazine, 'Blue and Gold' 1940
What school records are available at Wolverhampton Archives & Local Studies? If you wish to locate school records it is best to start by searching under the name of the school and contacting us to see if the records are held at the archives.
Stonefield Girls School Mayday celebrations 1933. If you are not sure which school the person attended but know what area of the town they lived in you can view the map that shows the locations of Wolverhampton's schools in 1895. Schools in Bilston, Wednesfield, Tettenhall and some other areas such as Lanesfield and Bushbury will not be on the map as the borough was smaller at that time. You will need to bear in mind that not everyone went to the nearest school, particularly if they were Roman Catholic.
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