WOODLANDS MIDDLE SCHOOL RECORDS

Comprising: admission registers 1965-2002; miscellaneous records [1912]-1970s

Early in 1909 the proposal submitted by the Education Department of the West Riding County Council for the construction of this school and a neighbouring infants' school came before the sanitary committee of Doncaster Rural District Council. The schools were intended to replace the nearby Woodlands Temporary School, built in 1908 [Doncaster Archives ref. UDADW/6/28], and serve the model village of Woodlands, which had been laid out on a part of the Brodsworth estate to provide dwellings for miners and their families adjacent to the newly-opened Brodsworth colliery. The plans were approved by the committee on 30 January 1909 [ref. UDADW/6/49] and the school opened in 1911. Known officially as Woodlands Junior Mixed School and more familiarly as Woodlands Mixed Council School, the school stood on the Crescent and shared a site with the contemporaneous Woodlands Infants School [ref. SR164].

By November 1926 Bentley Education District Sub-Committee, which managed the West Riding's schools in Woodlands in the period 1904-1938, had evidently decided to recreate Woodlands Junior as a middle school [ref. SD5/4, p. 177]. This plan was put into effect at the start of the school year 1927-1928, when the school became Woodlands Middle School and took on responsibility for three hundred eleven-year-olds. Later, in 1931, following alterations to the building, the school became known as Woodlands Senior School and started to receive all children over 11 from Adwick and Woodlands. The reorganization of education that followed the Education Act of 1944 saw the school reclassified as Woodlands Secondary Modern School - a status that it retained until 1965 when the secondary pupils were transferred to Adwick High School and Woodlands was re-established as a Junior School.

Another change of name and function came at the start of the school year 1969-1970, as the school became Woodlands Middle School - reverting to its pre-1931 style - with responsibility just for the age range 8-12. At the same time its neighbour, the infants' school, became Woodlands First School. The school ceased to exist as a separate middle school after the end of the school year 2002-2003; in September of that year it was superseded by a new school, Woodlands Primary School, created on the same site by a merger of the Middle and First schools

The collection consists of two series as follows:

SR163/2: Admission Registers

SR163/5: Miscellaneous

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