Saint Mary's church in 1805 [X254/88/170]

In 1535 a will granted a conditional bequest for building "a house to keep therein a grammar school, and the house to be near the church" [ABP/R4.f.91]. There is no evidence that the bequest was ever made. There were a number of early charities which gave money towards educating children in Luton. In a will dated 1673 Cornelius Bigland gave £6 per year towards the ‘clothing, maintaining, schooling and educating’ of six poor children from Luton. In a will dated 1695 Roger Gillingham, esquire, gave £10 per year from his manor of Shillington, to a schoolmaster so that he could teach poor children for free in Luton. The children were to be nominated by Sir John Napier, Lord of the Manor of Luton, and the owners of the manor house and park at Luton Hoo.

Volume 81 published by the Bedfordshire Historical Records Society (2002) is devoted to returns made during episcopal visitations to the county by the Bishop of Lincoln in the early 18th century, edited by former County Archivist Patricia Bell. It throws some interesting light on education in Bedfordshire at this early date. The returns for Luton are as follows:

• 1706: "There is a free-scole within the parish, the endowment of which is about £15 a year". It looks as if this school was maintained by an amalgamation of Bigland's and Gillingham's charities
• 1709: "The free-schole endowed … John Swonell Master. About 50 boys";
• 1712: "About 60 Children taught in the Free Schole. They are instructed in the Church Catechism, and duly brought to Church as the canon directs";
• 1717: "One publick school endowed with 15 li. per Annum. Anout 70 children well taught in it, and well instructed in the principles of the Christian Religion, and duly attend the Service of the Church of England";
• 1720: "One publock Endowed School within our parish of 15 li. Per Annum about 30 Boys taught therein.  They are well instructed in Religion according to the Doctrine of the Church of England".

A third bequest came from a will dated 1736 where Thomas Long gave £1,000, to be laid out in South Sea annuity stock, for the use of the master and boys of the free school in Luton. Parish records [P85/18/1] noted in 1749 that the master of the parish workhouse was to teach the poor in reading and the children were to be taught the catechism of the Church on England. In 1750 £10, a year's salary, was paid to the schoolmaster from land held from the Manor of Shillington [X439/16], a similar amount being paid from the same source in 1760 [H/WS814]. In 1781 the "upper school room" in the church was repaired [WY908].

In 1818 a Select Committee was established to enquire into educational provision for the poor. This was no doubt prompted, in part, by the recent foundation of two societies promoting education and specifically the building of schools. The Society for Promoting the Lancasterian System for the Education of the Poor was established in 1808 promoting schools run along the lines pioneered by Joseph Lancaster, who had himself copied those of Dr.Andrew Bell, in which older children taught their younger fellows. The Society was renamed the British and Foreign School Society in 1814,. It was supported by a number of prominent nonconformists, Lancaster himself was a Quaker, and sought to teach a non-sectarian curriculum. In answer to this perceived nonconformist takeover of local education the National Society was formed in 1811 to encourage the teaching of poor children along Anglican lines, including the catechism. The Select Committee sent a questionnaire to all parishes in the country asking for: particulars relating to endowments for the education of children; other educational institutions; observations of parish needs etc. In those days a Sunday School was just that, a school which met on a Sunday, usually in the church or nonconformist chapel or other similar building, teaching more than the religious topics with which they are associated today. The return for Luton stated: "One school on a charitable foundation, instituted in 1809, in which at present 135 boys are educated, and the same number of girls; the former during the day, and the latter in the evening. The master receives annually £52 10s. for instructing 60 boys, and for every one above that number 10s. in addition; and his wife's salary for superintending the girls' school is £31 10s. The fixed funds belonging to Luton school amount to £40 arising from different bequests for that purpose, all of which are faithfully applied towards its support; the remaining expenditure is defrayed by voluntary subscriptions. Six day schools, three for boys, and three for girls, containing altogether 255 children; and a number of schools where the children are sent for the exclusive purpose of learning straw-platting. The poor are abundantly provided with the means of education, and very generally embrace them with much apparent thankfulness".

In the country generally the number of schools built continued to grow over the next fifteen years so that by 1833 the government agreed to supplement the work of the two societies, and local benefactors, by making £20,000 per annum available in grants to help build schools. It also prompted another questionnaire to be sent to each parish in England asking for details of local educational provision. The answer for Luton was: "Seven daily Schools, two contain 11 males and 14 females; two others, 39 males and 44 females (commenced 1820); another 17 males and four females (commenced 1826); another, 33 males (commenced 1831); and another, 45 males and 15 females (commenced 1832), all educated at the expense of the parents. Two Day and Sunday Lancasterian Schools, one of which consists of 87 males as Daily, and 105 as Sunday scholars, endowed with £36 per annum, and further supported by voluntary contributions, from which the master receives a salary of £80 per annum; the other contains 78 females as Daily, and 154 as Sunday scholars, wholly supported by voluntary contributions; mistress's salary £10 per annum; both Schools are of the Established Church. Six Sunday Schools; three containing 223 males and 311 females, belonging to Baptists with Libraries attached; another, 109 males and 99 females; another 36 males and 34 females (commenced 1825); and the other, 20 males and 15 females (commenced 1831); the last three belong to Wesleyan Methodists; all these Schools are supported by voluntary contributions".

The site of the Church Street National School shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1880

In 1834-5 a grant of £145 made for a new National School with room for 290 children to be built in Luton. The school opened in Church Street in 1835. In response a British Free School was opened in Langley Street the following year. In 1846/7 the Church of England made an enquiry as to all its church schools. This was against the background of a new Whig government which championed secular education and the increasing importance of nonconformists, particularly Wesleyan Methodist, and Roman Catholics in providing schools. The return for Luton noted both the Church Street schools (boys and infants) and Sunday Schools. The NationalSchool had 130 boys daily and 85 extra on Sunday. The National infants' school, sharing the Church Street site, had 60 boys and 59 girls. There was also a Sunday school for 220 girls but no daily school for girls older than infants: "A Girls' school has been tried, but has not answered, from the nature of the business of this place - viz: - straw bonnet-making". The return noted that the building of the infants' school had left a debt of £175. In addition the return noted that Biscot had a Sunday school for 39 boys and 24 girls and Stopsley a Sunday school for 6 boys and 12 girls.

Langley Street Schools shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1880

The first Education Act was passed in 1870 (more correctly it was known as the Elementary Education Act). It was a milestone in the provision of education in Britain demonstrating central government's unequivocal support for education of all classes across the country. It also sought to secularise education by allowing the creation of School Boards. By the time the act was passed the town of Luton still had just the National and BritishSchools. By 1856 the Church Street premises was too small and so a new National School opened in 1857 in Queen Square to replace it. Queen Square lay between Cumberland Street and Chobham Street and the site, today, lies under the Park Street Viaduct.

Queen Square Schools shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1880

The old National School premises in Church Street was run as a private school by a Charles Newman for a time before the Society of Friends (Quakers) opened day and Sunday schools at the building which were still running when William Austin wrote his History of Luton in 1928. A NationalSchool opened in the hamlet of Stopsley in 1858.