NRS-16915 | Visiting Clergy Book [Lewinsbrook Public School]

Full description

The Public Instruction Act, 1866 authorised special religious instruction by visiting clergymen and their delegates (Public Schools Act, 1866, s. 19), and regulations under the Act authorised members of the public to visit schools during ‘the hours of secular instruction’ to observe teaching methods, teaching material and equipment (Regulations adopted by the Council of Education on 27 February 1867, s. 84-85). The regulations also required every teacher to keep a visitors’ book ‘in which visitors may enter their names and if they think proper any remarks. Such remarks the Teachers are by no means to erase or alter.’ (Regulations … s. 86). Most schools recorded visits by clergy in their Visitors’ Books, but some eventually came to keep Visiting Clergy Books as a separate record, and volumes printed for this purpose were available by the early 1960s.

These volumes were organised in four columns, which recorded the following information: the date of the visit, the name of the visitor, their denomination, and the number of lessons given on each occasion. The fourth column was further divided into three sub-columns, and the school was instructed to insert headings in these as required, to allow for classification of the lessons given by class or age.

Prior to June 1962 clergy or their delegates visiting the school in order to provide religious instruction to the pupils appear in the school’s Visitors’ Book.

Only two denominations are represented in this volume: the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.