Board of Education and predecessor: School Board Office and Pupil Teacher Centre...

Residue of series of files relating to School Board Offices and Pupil Teacher Centres.

The Pupil Teacher Centre files that form the greater part of this series, represent those centres which were conducted independently of any particular school. The papers contained on these files include proposals to establish centres, acquisition of sites and premises, alterations and enlargements to existing Centres, requests for loans to meet the cost incurred in connection with their establishment or enlargement and the sale of their sites and premises. Some of the files also contain important policy minutes by Sir George Kekewich, first Secretary to the Board of Education, and other senior officers.

The School Board Office series of files contained material of a similar character to that found on the Pupil Teacher Centre files. The series has, however, been destroyed with the exception of a few files which relate also to the establishment, on the same premises, of Pupil Teacher Centres. This latter group of combined school board office and pupil teacher centre files are included in the present series.

The surviving files relate only to those centres which were conducted independently of a particular school and to school board offices which shared their premises with such a centre. The files contain papers relating to the establishment of such offices and centres, acquisition of sites and premises, alterations to premises, loans for such purposes, and the sale of sites and premises.

The Pupil Teacher Centre files and the combined School Board Office and Pupil Teacher Centre files are listed together alphabetically, first by counties and then by county boroughs.

A detailed Memorandum on the Pupil Teacher system, prepared in 1902 by R L Morant, who succeeded Sir George Kekewich as Secretary of the Board of Education, is to be found on ED 24/76

See also Records of the Elementary Branch in

This series has suffered from considerable destruction, particularly the School Board Office files.

• Board of Education, 1899-1944
• Education Department, 1856-1899

Topics

Education

The Pupil Teacher system flourished during the last two decades of the 19th century. Its main aim was to provide, in a period when there was no comprehensive system of secondary education, a continuous stream of suitably qualified public elementary school teachers.

Under the code of Regulations for Day Schools, School Boards were limited to giving instruction to pupil teachers only at the public elementary schools in which they were pupils. In practice, however, it was not uncommon for Pupil Teacher Centres to be established that were completely independent of any particular school and at which the pupil teachers were frequently in full-time attendance and carried out no teaching duties whatsoever.

The end of the Pupil Teacher system was foreshadowed in the Education Act of 1902 which provided, for the first time, for the establishment of a national system of secondary school education.

School Board Offices were set up, with the consent of the Education Department under Section 42 of the Elementary Education Act, 1876, in areas of large population for the purpose of conducting the administrative work of the boards.

When Section 42 was repealed by the Education Act of 1902, it became no longer necessary to obtain the consent of the Education Department (or the Board of Education as it had then become) for the provision of educational offices. Henceforth, the provision of such offices fell under the powers conferred upon local councils by the Local Government Acts.