The following terms are used in our individual school history pages:
| British School | A non-denominational school affiliated to the British and Foreign Schools Society, run on the Lancastrian system |
| Catechism | A summary of the beliefs of a particular faith |
| Chancery | An English court with jurisdiction over equitable cases (until dissolved in 1875), such as those involving charities and trusts. Cases were notoriously slow (and expensive) |
| Dame’s school | A ‘school’ for younger children, which might teach little more than reading |
| Dr Bell’s system | see ‘Madras system’ |
| Endowed/endowment | Money invested to provide an income which was used for charitable purposes (e.g. running a school, including payment of teachers’ salaries) |
| Glebe land | Land owned by the Anglican Church, providing an income to its clergy |
| Grammar school | Traditionally a school which taught Latin and Greek, and given fresh stimulus by the Endowed Schools Act of 1869, enabling an academic curriculum (flexibly defined) to be provided to older children |
| Guinea | £1 1s. (£1.05) |
| Lancastrian system | Method of teaching using monitors, devised by Joseph Lancaster and used in the larger non-denominational and nonconformist schools |
| Legally secured | Term used by the Anglican church to describe its school buildings which stood on land owned by the trustees of the school |
| Madras system | Method of teaching using monitors, devised by Dr Andrew Bell after a system he saw in Madras, India (now Chennai), used widely in Anglican (National) schools |
| National School | A school affiliated to the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church (i.e. Anglican) |
| National Society | National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church (founded in 1811 to provide Anglican schools for poorer children) |
| Not secured | Term used by the Anglican church to describe its own school buildings that stood on privately owned land |
| Public Elementary School | Defined within the 1870 Education Act as a school that was subject to government inspection, where admittance was not dependent on any religious belief and where a child did not have to attend any religious lessons, whether in school or elsewhere |
| Subscription | Donations collected to finance the day-to-day costs of a school |
| Unsecured | see ‘Not secured’ |
| Virtually secured | Term used by the Anglican church to describe school buildings that had been built in the churchyard, or on glebe land, or on some other site that was considered unlikely to be disturbed |
| Endowed Schools Commissioners | Appointed following the Endowed Schools Act, 1869, to draw up new schemes for endowed schools, that would allow more children to benefit from educational endowments |
| Council School | School established after 1902 by a Local Education Authority |
| Voluntary-aided | A school that is partly funded by the state, and partly by a voluntary body, which can appoint a majority of the school managers. |
| Voluntary-controlled | A school that is funded by the state, but where another body, such as a Church, can appoint a minority of the school’s managers |