BACK TO SCHOOL

Christmas is over and, with the New Year, we are starting to think about the start of the new school year.

When children start school, their details begin to be recorded and these are a wonderful source of information for family historians.

The most readily available school record is the school admission register; although some corporal punishment books have survived, and these can be fun to peruse and find out what upright citizens did in their youth. What school admission registers can tell us

• Date of admission and leaving school and perhaps returning after a spell elsewhere (look for admission to another school during the missing period)

• Age (in early records) or date of birth

• Name of parent or guardian (be careful of this one. Do not assume that the person named is the father or is even alive)

• Occupation of parent or guardian

• Address

• Religion

• Sometimes, if you are lucky, their scholarship or junior results (or the secondary school or apprenticeship they went on to) is recorded.

• If you are very lucky, there

may be a comment as well. Here in Queensland, the Department of Education required state schools to deposit their Admission Registers with the State Archives and the Toowoomba and Darling Downs Family History Society has acquired copies of these from many parts of Queensland.

We have all Toowoomba state schools and some independent schools, many Darling Downs schools including some that are now closed and more across the state.

Unfortunately, most surviving records date from the 1880s, although many local schools including Warwick, Jondaryan and Toowoomba South opened many years before. In other states, the records are not so extensive - and overseas are more difficult to find.

I traced my grandmother and her family around South East Queensland as she had attended eight different schools by the time she was 10.

The records also gave me the changes in occupations of her father.

Just recently, I acquired photos of my father in his secondary school athletics and football teams from magazines in our possession.