Julia Lloyd

Julia Lloyd (13 April 1867 – 7 April 1955) was a British philanthropist and educationalist. She was interested in the newly developed methods for teaching young children in kindergartens. She opened Birmingham's first nursery school based on Froebelian principles.

Life Lloyd was born in Wednesbury in 1867. She was the daughter of the ironmaster Samuel and Jane Eliza (née Janson) Lloyd and she went to school locally at the only school for girls, Edgbaston High School for Girls, in 1881. In 1888 she studied under Caroline Bishop who had developed her own adapted ideas which she taught at the Froebel College in nearby Edgbaston. After this she worked in two different establishments. Lloyd studied in Germany under Annette Hamminck-Schepel at the Pestalozzi-Fröbel-Haus in Berlin from 1895 to 1896 and she then returned to work with Caroline Bishop.

Birmingham's first nursery school The free Kindergarten in Greet, Birmingham was in a room supplied by Geraldine Cadbury and it opened in 1904 using staff from Bishop's college in Edgbaston. This was the first nursery school in Birmingham. It was the initiative of Lloyd. She had been interested in getting Birmingham's School Board interested in Kindergartens, but she saw that they saw these ideas as a way to spice up conventional classes, whereas Lloyd wanted to see them as a basis for children's education.

The following year a third location was started. With three locations the Birmingham People's Kindergarten Association was created with Lloyd as the honorary secretary. This was to become the Birmingham Nursery Schools' Association in 1917. The following year the 1918 Education Act appeared to place nursery education as a statutory right. A recently opened fourth nursery was closed with the optimism the Local Education Authorities would now supply nursery education. The LEA's did supply money to Lloyd's free kindergartens

By 1923 it was realised that they had failed to take the lead and Lloyd was there when the Nursery Schools Association was formed in Manchester. Bishop died in Exmouth.

Legacy The current Selly Oak Nursery School dates from the nursery school opened by Lloyd, Cadbury and Bishop in 1904. When Lloyd died the Selly Oak Committee commented on their "pride in their links with her pioneering work for the children of the City". Lloyd herself made a number of charitable bequests but the major part went to fund a readership at the University of Birmingham in Social Philosophy.