These pages help to show what it
was like to be at school in the later years of Queen Victoria's reign.
They include original entries from the official diaries or
Log Books of local schools, which can 
often
tell us quite a lot about life in the whole community and not just the
school itself.
Most children did not go to
school at all at the start of Queen Victoria's reign. Wealthy
landowners would have their children taught at home, and their older boys
would be sent away to public school.
Tradesmen in the area would send their
children to a local private school if they could afford it.
The children of the poor had to go
to work as soon as they were old enough because the family needed the
extra money.
By the
end of the Victorian period free schools
were provided and it became compulsory for all children to go to school.
