Catalogue description Department of Education and Science and predecessors: Establishment Files

Establishment files of the Department of Education and Science and predecessors illustrating the way in which the education departments applied Treasury regulations and Civil Service Commission rules to the execution of their responsibilities.

There is a complete record from 1851 to 1921 of correspondence between the Education Department (later the Board of Education) and the Treasury on all matters for which the authority of the latter department was required.

The responsibilities of the education departments covered in the papers include appointment, pay, promotion, grading, general conditions of service, and superannuation of staff; in the conduct of its financial responsibilities; in the organisation of its internal structure and performance of its duties; in the handling of related matters such as teachers' salaries; in the recruitment of HM Inspectors and their functions relating to the education of children of British service and civilian families overseas. The series includes minutes of Departmental Whitley Councils for both the Darlington and London offices of the department.

The series includes some nineteenth century material relating to establishment matters of the Education Department and the Science and the Art Department of the Privy Council. The series also includes material which would otherwise be found elsewhere in ED amongst the Records of the Committee of the Privy Council on Education.

In addition there are papers relating to the administration of the Royal College of Arts, including staffing and accommodation matters and reports of committees on reorganisation and the establishment of the research councils; and to various committees and commissions set up by the department before the Second World War.

Although the files in this series were not formally registered, incoming papers and the replies, where applicable, were given a reference. Papers on the same subject, regardless of the Y reference number, were then filed together and each file was allocated to a subject 'volume'.

Little material of the nineteenth century relating to the establishment of the Education Department and the Science and Art Department has survived.

Files from the Y series were re-registered in ED 274

Board of Education, 1899-1944

Committee of the Privy Council on Education, 1839-1899

Department of Education and Science, 1964-1992

Education Department, 1856-1899

Ministry of Education, 1944-1964