Seeing is Believing!

Hi, my name is Mara Bosboom and I work for the Toy Museum in Deventer, the Netherlands. I have just completed a one month internship at the V&A Museum of Childhood. As I have done a lot of work on optical toys in my own museum, my job was to sort out the shelves of optical toys in the Museum of Childhood’s Store Six.

Magic Lantern

Never Absent, Never Late

School Attendance Medals in the Museum of Childhood

The British state first became seriously involved in the schooling of its citizens in 1870. A series of inquiries and investigations over the previous decade had revealed an education system of great complexity, supported by structures of inequality and incompetence. To resolve this, the Elementary Education Act of 1870 took the responsibility away from families and gave it to local councils. It was now down to these elected officials to ensure every child had access to a school place (and not just those children from professional or artisan families). In order to provide these places, local authorities were required to establish School Boards, which in turn could build and staff new schools.[1]