Originally published in 1967, this book was intended to be of value to students of Education in two ways. Firstly, all such students were expected to know in broad outline the story of the development of our national education system in the previous 150 years. This book shows how these national events affected a number of schools in a particular locality. Their history was preserved in their physical structure, all too solid and long-lasting in many cases to be easily adapted to changing needs of the time; it was preserved also in minutes and log-books and other records that happen to survive. The second value of this book was that quite often students were asked to use these local records to re-create the story of a history of a school or group of schools. It was felt that we needed many more of these local investigations as a basis for a fuller and more vivid representation of this national development, and students’ accounts, if done with proper care, could make a useful contribution. Mr Seaborne’s book is a model and example of how this may have been done.

Originally published 1974. Thousands of elementary schools for the children of the poor were founded during the nineteenth century, yet there is scarcely a published history of a single one of them. This volume is precisely such a history and the authors trace its story against the background of local and national change in education and society. On the basis of a unique collection of records the authors have pieced together a picture of the social composition of the school, its curriculum and teaching methods, and its administration and finance. They relate the history of the school to that of London and the church, to that of educational authorities and educational policy.

Includes a section called Program and plans which describes the Center's activities for the current fiscal year and the projected activities for the succeeding fiscal year.