DONCASTER COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY RECORDS

Comprising: admission registers 1903-1975 [not complete]; registers of certificates 1923-1964; subject advisory board minutes 1931-1969; boards of studies etc minutes 1973-1976; college principal, copy minutes 1964-1973 and annual returns to central government 1938-1958; photographs of committee chairmen, staff, football team early 20th century; other records 1904-1976

Doncaster Borough Council became an education authority in 1903 as a result of the Education Act, 1902. Under the terms of the Act, it was obliged to provide elementary education in the borough but the West Riding County Council was the authority for 'higher', that is any form of post-elementary education. However, the borough council also had the discretionary authority (under section 3 of the 1902 Act) to spend the product of not more than an old penny-rate to finance education 'other than elementary' concurrently with the county council. Doncaster chose to do this, and from 1903 made grants towards technical education and towards the teaching of art. Such teaching on a very small scale was already established in the town and can be traced back to at least 1870.

The council built a technical college on Church View in 1914-1915 at a cost of £14,500, [see item 7/2] but the restriction on its finances imposed by the penny-rate limit of the 1902 Act decided it to transfer responsibility for the college to the county council from 1 April 1920. The granting of county borough status to Doncaster in 1927 meant that it became enabled to provide higher education and consequently control of the technical college reverted to the council.

New premises for the college were built in four stages from the late 1950s to the mid 1960s [see items 7/7 to 7/10] in Waterdale.

The college became part of the Doncaster Metropolitan Institute of High Education in 1976 which, renamed Doncaster College, became independent of local authority control

in 1993.

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