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This is a typical school bell, and is in the collection of the Barbados Museum & Historical Society as one of the visual indicators of the history of education on the island.
The foundations of education in Barbados were laid by the philanthropic efforts of private individuals and by the humanitarian interest of the Churches. Most of the existing older public secondary schools were founded by endowments originally intended for the education of white children, during colonization and the period of enslavement. The elementary schools grew out of the modest attempts by the Anglican, Moravian and Methodist Churches to give a Christian education to the enslaved in the period preceding emancipation. These efforts were intensified in the postemancipation period, that is, after 1834, and the setting up of small schools near the church became a common feature of the work of the church in those days.