Elementary School Attendance in Bradford 1863-1903: A Study Using School Log Books.

Abstract

This thesis examines the issue of elementary school attendance in later nineteenth century Bradford. It seeks to do this by means of a little used source: the school log book. The focus of the study is on the experiences of head teachers who faced a constant struggle to achieve and maintain an acceptable level of attendance in Bradford where child employment in the flourishing textile industry had long been an inherent feature of working class life. It investigates broader issues affecting attendance in the context of prevailing social, cultural, religious, and economic factors. While the significant and influential pressures on attendance in Bradford were to be found elsewhere (for example, parental apathy; hostility to compulsory attendance; child labour; health and welfare), this investigation discovers that the town’s problems were compounded and made difficult by its phenomenal growth and rapid emergence by the middle of the nineteenth century as the undisputed capital of the world’s worsted manufacturing trade. It concludes that in the study of Victorian elementary school attendance Bradford deserves greater recognition in consideration of the tension between the demands of the most prolific half-time system of employment in the country, and prevailing attitudes to the introduction of universal elementary education in England and Wales.