These School records (1881-c.2000) originate from individual schools. They include admission registers, punishment books, examination books, stock books, visitors books, staff meeting records and observation books. Of these records, the admission registers are probably of most relevance to people tracing their origins. They record: name and age of child; religion; date of leaving last school; name, residence and occupation of parent or guardian; date of admission to each division; and date of leaving school.
Most school records are restricted for 30 years, with the exception of visitors books, staff meeting records, punishment books, and observation books, which are restricted for 50 years. For premission to access closed records please contact the NSW Department of Education.
Records older than 30 or 50 years are open access, and are available for viewing at the Western Sydney Records Centre. Contact Museums of History NSW (State Archives) for access to these records.
These records may be a source of information about children who were residents of children's homes, or cared for under a substitute care program, particularly where no other records of that home or program survive. For example, the records of Carlingford Public School may contain information about children from Dalmar at Carlingford.
Museums of History NSW have published list of records in this series that relate to Aboriginal Schools, arranged alphabetically by school. This list, titled Aboriginal school records, 1876-1979 is available on the Museums of History NSW website.
No new records have been added to this series since the year 2000, and records relating to particular schools have been removed from this series and grouped together to form their own series. These can be found by searching the school name in the State Archives catalogue. For additional assistance in identifying relevant school records, please contact State Archives.
A number of records relating to schools in the Hunter and Riverina regions are on loan to the University of Newcastle Archives and the Charles Sturt University Archives, Wagga Wagga respectively. A full listing of these records is available from State Records.
If State Records does not hold the records of a particular school, it is possible that the school itself still holds them. In these cases, enquiries should be directed to the Principal of the school.
Sources used to compile this entry: Thinee, Kristy and Bradford, Tracy, Connecting Kin: Guide to Records, A guide to help people separated from their families search for their records [completed in 1998], New South Wales Department of Community Services, Sydney, New South Wales, 1998, https://clan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/connectkin_guide.pdf.
Prepared by: Melissa Downing & Naomi Parry
Created: 10 August 2011, Last modified: 12 July 2023
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE00809b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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