| Description | It is unclear from these volumes which department originally kept them. It is likely that they were kept by Birmingham City Council, and so they would probably have originated with the Education Committee from 1931 to 1948 and the Children's Committee from 1948 to 1970. The volumes record brief details of children who were sent to approved schools, usually after committing offences, although sometimes for being 'beyond control'. Some of the entries make reference to index cards, which seem to have contained more details about cases, but these do not appear to have survived.
The 'Result' section of each entry usually gives details of where the child was sent, although occasional entries state only 'reformatory' or 'industrial school'. Some boys were committed to Norton, Shawbury or Tennal industrial schools in Birmingham, while others were sent elsewhere in the country, including Coventry, Stafford, Liverpool, and Manchester. By the 1950s many children were being sent to classifying schools, such as Kingswood in Bristol, Red Bank in Newton-le-Willows, or, for girls, the Magdalen Hospital Classifying School in Streatham. |