Searching School Records
Searching UK School Records
This page gives an example of how I used the school registers to track a Sheffield family in the 1910s and 1920.
The site home page is here.
For details of which records are available now to be searched online, see this page.
As an example of how the school admission registers can be used to build up details of a family, I was looking into the Green family of Sheffield and in particular for details after the 1911 census (this research was carried out before the 1921 census became available). On top of that, Green is a common surname which always makes searching even more difficult.
From the 1911 census on Findmypast I had ...
GREEN, Sarah, Wife, Married 9 years, age 29, 6 children, 3 still alive
GREEN, Arthur L, Son, age 7
GREEN, Thomas, Son, age 5
GREEN, Frederick, Son, age 3
.... all born in Sheffield and living at 23 Edwin Road, Heeley, Sheffield.
I then went to the free school admission records provided on the Sheffield Indexers Site and did a search for their eldest son Arthur.
There were four hits for Arthur Green including this one:
Parent or guardian name(s): Arthur (~), of 23 Edwin Rd.
Admitted to Heeley Bank Boys School, Heeley, as of 22 Aug 1910, until 27 Feb 1916
Clearly the right one, same address and father's name matches.
This site also has a feature to "Find Similar at Same Address if Available". Clicking on this comes up with three more Greens at that address ...
Parent or guardian name(s): Arthur L (~), of 23 Edwin Rd.
Admitted to Heeley Bank Boys School, Heeley, as of 24 Aug 1914, until 31 Mar 1920.
Parent or guardian name(s): Arthur (Cutler), of 23 Edwin Rd.
Admitted to Heeley Bank Infants School, Heeley, as of 07 Jul 1919, until 31 Mar 1922.
Parent or guardian name(s): Arthur L (~), of 23 Edwin Rd.
Admitted to Heeley Bank Infants School, Heeley, as of 19 Nov 1923, until 22 Jul 1926.
What this gave me were two more children of the same family born after the 1911 census. Note the record for William includes his fathers occupation, Cutler, matching that given in the 1911 census.
Thomas who was 5 at the time of the 1911 census did not show at that address. I couldn't see a matching death record on the FreeBMD site so I went back to the Sheffield Indexers Site and did a further search just for Thomas Green. His details showed up here - either there was an error in the address on the register or for a short time the family did live at number 35 before returning to number 23.
Parent or guardian name(s): Green, Arthur (~), of 35 Edwin Rd.
Admitted to Heeley Bank Boys School, Heeley, as of 26 Aug 1912, until 08 Feb 1918
Taking the information from the UK School Records further
With the names of two more children and an accurate date of birth, we can use that to find out more. The BMD birth records post 1911 include the mother's maiden name and so with the two new childrens' names I had found in the school admission registers, I was fairly quickly able to find:
GREEN, William,
Registration district: Ecclesall Bierlow, Yorkshire,
Mother's maiden name: Spencer.
GREEN, Leslie,
Registration district: Ecclesall Bierlow, Yorkshire,
Mother's maiden name: Spencer.
Finally now armed with mother's maiden name, I was able to find on the FreeBMD site,
Arthur Lionel GREEN and Sarah SPENCER
Eccleshall B district
... and further
Knowing the exact date of birth from the school entry records also opens up searching the recent death indexes (this only works for deaths from Apr-June quarter 1969 where the date of birth was recorded in the index and does rely on the person registering the death knowing when the deceased was born). For example I found the following on Findmypast for William with an exact match on date of birth
GREEN, William
Registration district: Sheffield, Yorkshire
Date of Birth:6 July 1914
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