Our earliest records about education come from reports of charitable foundations: bequests to provide teaching for poor children. Look at the report of the Charity Commissioners in 1907 which gives details of Hele’s Gift which in 1658 provided a schoolmaster for 10 pupils held in the Church House, the National School set up in 1840 in Pound Street, and its successor which became the Boys School. It also mentions Southmead’s Gift, which in his Will of 1648 gave 26/8d annually towards buying Bibles for poor children in the parish. The same document gives details of the building of the Smethurst Schoolroom on Greenhill and of the Bowring Library in Fore Street.

The schoolmaster provided for by Hele’s Gift had to be approved by the church authorities, who were concerned towards the end of the 17th century to ensure that they did not get a dissenter as master, and the source for this period is the Diocesan records (now in the Devon Record Office). However by 1800 the nonconformists were able to run their own schools, and the autobiography of Sir John Bowring gives us a picture of the school run by Mr Bransby, the Unitarian minister, at this time.

In the 19th century all the chapels ran Sunday schools (see the Census of Chapels in 1851), and there were a considerable number of private schools, evidence for which can be found by looking in Treleaven’s diary (for the early years of the century), in the Census and directories. In addition the Census sometimes shows the children living as boarders near the schools. The Directories sometimes mention the more important schools in their preambles.