SCH SF

Reference code

SCH SF

Title

School Fund

Level

Series

Administrative / Biographical history

The Public Schools Commission had recommended the establishment of a School Fund to receive, via the house master, all payments for tuition. The New Governing Body in June 1870 issued a "statement of the revenue and expenditure for the year 1869 of the various sums included under the head School Charges". However, in May 1871 a committee of masters appointed by the Head Master issued a report on the condition of the School Fund that suggests that this Fund actually predates 1869. It makes sad reading. No proper lists of boys were kept, so it was impossible to know how many entrance fees and termly payments were due. The accounts were not audited, and the collector and clerk, Mr Gibbons, succumbed to the temptation to retain some of the money. As a result, a Finance Committee was set up to manage the Fund, which included various individual funds such as the Bathing Fund. The reports of this committee, especially in the early years, are of great interest and value, and provide a confirmation of the ways in which the whole teaching and organisation of the school altered after the Public Schools Act. The accounts continued to be prefaced by a report from the Finance Committee until 1939. However, at a date it is not possible to determine, a School Fund Committee was started. Its first minutes date from 1932 but there are references to it as early as 1929. It may be simply an undocumented change of name, but in that case it is strange that it continued to report on the accounts as the Finance Committee. Its reponsibilities seem even then to have been the various sub-funds, masters' salaries and pensions, and educational expenditure. In 1951 it became responsible to a newly set up Finance Committee. Although this reported to the Provost and Fellows, both it and the School Fund Committee were always appointed by the Head Master.