Former Stanford School September 2007

Stanford National Infants' School, which lay in Old School Lane, at the south western angle of the Green, was opened in 1899. It catered for children between the ages of 4 and 7 and was affiliated to the National Society, an organisation devoted to teaching the children of the poor the principles of the Church of England as well as the more secular subjects such as reading, writing and arithmetic.

A land mark Education Act was passed in 1902, coming into effect in 1903. It gave day to day running of education to newly formed Local Education Authorities, usually the county council, as in Bedfordshire. The old National, British and other non-Board schools became known as Public Elementary Schools. As a former National School, Stanford became a Public Elementary School.

Bedfordshire & Luton Archives & Records Service has a scrapbook of cuttings of visits made to most Bedfordshire Schools by School Inspectors for a period from just before the First World War through the inter-war years [E/IN1/1]. Stanford has only one entry, that for 1912, when average attendance was 16, which reads: "There was some falling off in the efficiency of this little School at the beginning of the year but the lost ground has been fully recovered, and the present state of the School is very creditable to the Mistress while order and tone are excellent". Due to falling numbers the school was closed in 1921, the children going the Broom School.