Catalogue description Education Department and successor: Elementary Education, School Attendance Committee Files

Alphabetical order in groups by counties.

Under section 7 of the Elementary Education Act, 1876, School Attendance Committees were required to be appointed for every school district not within the jurisdiction of a School Board, with power to enforce the provisions of the same Act as to employment and education of children; and with power (section 21) to make byelaws respecting the attendance of children at school made compulsory under section 74 of the Elementary Education Act, 1870.

Except in the case of Boroughs, such committees were appointed by the Guardians of the Poor Law Unions; and the files in this present series contain papers relating to the formation and business of the Union School Attendance Committees, together with printed copies of byelaws for the parishes comprised in the Unions. With the byelaws are copies of Orders in Council giving them Royal Sanction; or, after 1900, formal approval of the Board of Education.

School attendance committees were abolished under section 5 of the Education Act 1902.