Find your ancestors in Teachers Registration Council Registers

The amount of information listed varies, but Teachers' Registration Council Registers usually include the following information about your ancestor:

  • Teacher's name (and for married women teachers often their maiden name as well)
  • Date of registration
  • Register number
  • (Professional) address
  • Attainments
  • Training in teaching
  • Experience

    When registration started, many people, of course, had been teaching for some time. So the date of registration, particularly for teachers who registered in the early years (i.e., from 1914) was often much later than the date when they started teaching. The records include teachers who had begun their careers from the 1870s onwards.

    • Discover more about the Teachers' Registration records

    The Teachers' Registrations give details of every teacher, nearly 100,000 people, who taught in England and Wales between 1870 and 1948. More than half of those are women.

    From 1914, many teachers in England and Wales (and elsewhere) registered with the Teachers Registration Council. The original registration records for the period up to 1948 (after which registration was abandoned) were deposited with the Society of Genealogists. Registration only started in 1914; however, since people who were already teaching registered, the records cover teachers who started their careers from the 1870s onwards.

    An important aspect to these records is the proportion of women included: well over 50%. The earliest registrations were during World War I, so it is not surprising that the proportion of women teachers then was particularly high. Many records for men who were teaching before and after World War I contain a note referring to their absence on war service.