Back to school

Published on Saturday 2 September 2006 00:18

Q I have found that an ancestor of mine attended a particular school at the beginning of the 20th century. Is it possible to find out about his time at school? M Dixon (by e-mail)

A Scotland's first Education Act was passed in 1496 by James IV, who ordered that the eldest sons of barons and free-holders should study Latin, arts and law. Two centuries later a further act ordered that a school be established in every parish.

From 1873 onwards head teachers kept admission registers with information about each child's school career. These were fairly standard throughout Scotland, but their information value depends upon the thoroughness of individual head teachers. The following can usually be found for each pupil: name, date of birth, date of admission to the school, date of leaving, reason for leaving (and name of other school, if transferred elsewhere), name of last school attended, and name and address of parent or guardian.

However, it was left to the head teacher to fill in whatever information he or she thought fit. Typically, admission registers contain good details of the child joining the school, but other information is incomplete. Often it is not clear whether a pupil completed a full education (the head teacher was supposed to record the date and the reason for leaving, including the child attaining the statutory school leaving age, but in a large number of cases this was not done).

From 1872 the head teacher of each school run by one of Scotland's school boards was obliged to keep a daily log book of occurrences, particularly noting factors affecting pupil attendance and staff absences. Other information which might be entered includes attendance statistics, lists of teaching staff and subjects taught, dates and results of visits by HM Inspectors, evacuation (during the Second World War), and end-of-term or end-of-year prize-giving.

In most areas of Scotland records are still in the hands of the schools. In many cases records disappear when schools close and some have simply destroyed historical records over the years, at the whim of head teachers.

In the 1980s and 1990s some local authority archives attempted to preserve school records for their areas by systematically approaching schools to ask for the transfer of school records to archives, so your first port of call should be the local archive. Results of the Leaving, Senior Leaving and Scottish Leaving Certificate Examination Registers, 1908-1965 and Senior Leaving Certificate Examination Results during the war years, 1940-1945, are held by the National Archives of Scotland.

• If you have a question for the Genealogy Clinic e-mail the team at [e-mail] We will endeavour to deal with all enquiries as quickly as possible, but we regret that we cannot enter into personal correspondence.

• ScotlandsPeople is a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.