The British and Foreign School Society School

While Campbell and his allies were launching the Nelson School Society and establishing its schools a somewhat different section of the Nelson community headed by its official leaders had founded another school. In early May 1842, a request supported by the parents of some eighty children was addressed to Mr William Moore calling on him to open a school and promising financial support to a "respectable committee" which would superintend the institution. Moore had been a village dominie in Forfarshire, Scotland before leaving for New Zealand and had published a popular poem "The Burning of Kildrummy Castle." When he first applied to the New Zealand Company for a free passage to New Zealand, he had been turned down on the grounds that his "occupation was not of the class contemplated by the directors." Nevertheless Moore eventually obtained a free passage under the guise of an agricultural labourer. Once re-established in his profession in New Zealand Moore remained a schoolmaster for most of the rest of his life, ending up as headmaster of the Renwicktown School.

Two public meetings were held to promote the scheme for setting up the school which was to be conducted by Moore. A small committee was formed to undertake the building of the school. It consisted of Frederick Tuckett, Chief Surveyor, Dr McShane, medical officer, Captain England, a substantial land purchaser and justice of the peace, and George McRae. a Highlander who had come out in the capacity of an agricultural labourer but who quickly became a farm manager and proprietor. Tuckett was a Quaker and an ardent advocate of non-sectarian education. The supporters of the scheme decided to establish "an elementary school, which shall be open to all children without regard to the religious opinions of their parents, in which no sectarian views whatever shall be taught". Captain Wakefield, on behalf of the Company, allocated a site in Bridge Street at a nominal rent and undertook to secure a grant of a subsidy equal to the amount of money, up to £100, subscribed by supporters. William Moore was duly appointed schoolmaster and a large committee heavily dominated by the official leaders of the settlement and land purchasers was formed. The school was opened on 12th September – page 16seven weeks before the United Christians opened their day school. The school was known as the British and Foreign School Society and its supporters described themselves, at least for a time, as a branch of that Society. There is no evidence in the extant records of the British and Foreign Society in England that the parent Society owned its obscure New Zealand offspring, although it was aware of some of the activities of its followers in Nelson.

In its first weeks the school had an enrolment of 34. Fees were 6 pence a week for instruction in reading and spelling only; and additional 3 pence a week was charged for instruction in writing, arithmetic and grammar; and a further 3 pence for "higher branches of education." The charge for all instruction given at the school of the Nelson School Society was only 3 pence per pupil per week. Tuition at the Bishop's School at this time was free, presumably because the Bishop had been assigned a grant-in-aid from trust funds by the Company for the pastoral and educational work of the church. By the end of 1843 Moore had resigned and the school closed down. Apart from the depressed economic condition of the settlement in 1843–44, a major reason for the failure of the school was the shock inflicted upon the local community and the school committee by the loss of so many of their leaders in the Wairau affray of June 1843. Captain Wakefield, Captain England and Mr Richardson, editor of the local newspaper, lost their lives in that sorry affair. For a short time in 1844 the school building was used by T. J. Ferrers, a Roman Catholic, for conducting a small school. Then in May 1845 the building was presented to the Nelson School Society by Tuckett on behalf of the British and Foreign School Society, on the understanding that the new owners would organise religious instruction along non-sectarian lines in accordance with the principles of the British and Foreign School Society. The building was then transported to Spring Grove in Waimea South, some 14 miles from Nelson, where a school was being opened by the Nelson School Society.