The earliest surviving record of any system of education for the children of the village is contained in the answers to questions raised by the Visitation of Archbishop Herring in 1746 when the Rector Henry Jackson reported that there was a Charity School where he taught four poor village children for which he was paid £4 per annum by the Lord of the Manor. No records have survived to tell when the school started or how long it lasted but there is the possibility that the Byland monks could have provided some form of religious education during their four hundred year control of the village.
There was a village school in 1835 when William Fenwick was the schoolmaster, a new school building was erected in 1843, George Wombwell the Lord of the Manor gave £10 per annum towards its upkeep and the parish paid £2 to enable eight village children to be taught free of charge at what was described as a Public Elementary School with places for 35 pupils and an average attendance of 17 which compares with the 18 children described as scholars in the 1851 population census. Although there are no records it is assumed that the Lord of the Manor continued to make an annual contribution towards the schoolmaster’s salary, the parish were paying their £2 to Thomas Hutchinson in 1841 and the same payment continued to be made to Thomas Mason between 1843 and 1866. Mason was succeeded as schoolmaster by William Hunter Metcalfe who is thought to have been the son of James Metcalfe the Scawton schoolmaster.
Joseph Best was at the school from 1872 until 1879, the responsibility for the running of the school passed to the County Council in the latter year and in 1881 there were two teachers in the shape of man and wife Charles and Hamilton Foster who were in charge of a school with 14 children. Benjamin Houldsworth was the master in 1891 and William Fenwick was at the school in 1900 when his daughter Annie married William Dunning.
No 19th century Old Byland school reports have survived but as it was a farming community there is no reason to suppose that attitudes towards education would have been any different to those in the neighbouring village of Rievaulx where reports showed high levels of absenteeism when events such as farm sales were regarded as holidays and children were kept at home to help at harvest times, at spring cleaning times and at Martinmas when farm servants were on holiday. Attendance did not begin to improve until 1902 when schools came under the control of the North Riding Education Committee and Truant Officers were appointed.
No records have survived to name the teachers who succeeded William Fenwick and as the number of village children steadily diminished Old Byland school closed in 1932 and the children then attended school in Cold Kirby and after its closure they travelled to Rievaulx where they were taught by Sisters of the Order of the Holy Paraclete in the school that Lord Feversham had built in 1843. After it closed in 1961 the children of Old Byland had to be taken by bus to schools in Helmsley and Nawton Beadlam and in the year 2004 there are no children of school age living in Old Byland.
