Catalogue description Board of Education: Elementary Education, Local Education Authority Miscellaneous Files

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Details of ED 111
Reference: ED 111
Title: Board of Education: Elementary Education, Local Education Authority Miscellaneous Files
Description:

Files of correspondence with Local Education Authorities, including the Channel Islands, dealing with various aspects of the administration of elementary education.

This series of files was opened to contain papers concerned with the wider aspects of the administration of elementary education which were not common to the 'subject' files.

Papers relating to the considerations of the endowment, statements of income and expenditure, and classified lists of the endowments are included among the earlier papers.

Weeded papers from a discontinued series of early twentieth century Local Education Authority 'Act' and 'Finance' files, were added to the miscellaneous files in 1933, and this material forms the larger part of the records in the series. These papers dealt with problems in matters of finance and administration which confronted the newly formed Local Education Authorities on assuming their responsibilities under the Education Act, 1902. The papers reflect the opposition of certain authorities, particularly from some Welsh authorities, to this added responsibility.

Particular aspects dealt with in the papers include religious instruction; the board's observations on surcharges by district auditors; school libraries and prizes; the payment, appointment and dismissal of teachers; the delegation of powers by local authorities to education committees; appointment of managers; proposals to abolish school attendance officers and the degree of responsibility of Local Education Authorities to maintain voluntary and non provided schools. Whilst these subjects were common to a number of authorities there were also other matters raised by individual authorities on which the decisions were regarded as precedents.

Included in the small amount of post 1920 material are papers of particular interest relating to the Cambridgeshire Village College Scheme; The Jersey Education Bill, 1920; the installation of wireless receiving apparatus in schools and the examination of the cost per child figures for 1922/23.

Date: 1903-1944
Arrangement:

The files for the period 1903-1935 are arranged in counties (including Part III Authorities) and county borough order for England and Wales and followed by the Channel Islands.

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: E file series
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Board of Education, 1899-1944

Physical description: 281 file(s)
Selection and destruction information: By its nature much of the post 1920 material was of little importance and has not been preserved. Apart from 3 complete representative specimen files at Ed.111/279, 280 and 281 no papers have been preserved in this series which ended with the 1944 Education Act, the subsequent renumbered series deals with both primary and secondary schools.
Unpublished finding aids:

An index of subject papers of national interest is available. Please speak to staff at the enquiry desk for the precise location.

Administrative / biographical background:

Section 13 of the Education Act, 1902, provided that when the income from an endowment must be applied in whole or in part for those purposes of a public elementary school for which provision was to be made by the Local Education Authority, the income should be paid to the Local Education Authority in relief of the rates. The provision of this section (re-enacted in s 41 of the Education Act, 1921) continued in force until they were repealed by s 65 of the Education Act, 1944.

The 1944 Act provided that endowment income to be applied towards the maintenance of a school which a Local Education Authority were required to maintain as a voluntary school, should not be payable to the Local Education Authority but should be applied by the managers or governors of the school towards the discharge of their obligations, if any, with respect to the maintenance of the school, or in such other manner, if any, as might be determined by a scheme for the administration of the endowment.

The examination of the cost per child figures for 1922/23 took place after the issue by the Board of Education in 1923 of the tables 'Cost per Child Elementary Education' and took into account information obtained from a representative sample of 26 English areas and a few Welsh ones.

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