The School Board for London was elected in November 1870 under the terms of the so-called Forster Education Act of that year.  It set up a Works Committee (to which the architect was later to report) on 25 January 1871.  The committee's task was to fulfil that part of the Act which required the Board "to proceed at once to supply their district with sufficient public school accommodation."  After considerable massaging of the figures to make them manageable, the Board decided that over 100,000 school places were to be provided (a more reliable figure would have been 250,000 in 1870).  Even working to the lower figure, the Board decided to build before the figures were finalised.  On 3 May 1871 the Board resolved to erect twenty new schools in the neediest areas.  To this end they advertised for an 'architect and surveyor' at a salary of £500 per annum to report on existing buildings which might be taken over, and to deal with "questions of sites, plans, drainage, ventilation, alterations and the like."  Edward Robert Robson got the job on the fourth ballot, beating a number of well known architects, on 5 July 1871 (two months before the beginning of his partnership with the architect J J Stevenson).

A meeting of the full School Board for London in about 1895 (c) LMA

It is clear from the minutes of the Works Committee that there was no consensus on the design of the new schools.  There were proposals from members of the Board who were either amateur or professional architects.  The majority eventually came down in favour of a limited architectural competition.   Six architects were invited to submit plans for each school, based on specifications drawn up by the 'surveyor'.  Many well-known architects of the time, including E M Barry, Charles Barry, Basil Champneys, George Gilbert Scott the younger, T Roger Smith, R W Edis, G F Bodley and the partnership of Slater and Carpenter (responsible for the first group of Woodard schools) were invited to design schools.  Not all bothered to submit plans, perhaps partly because the Board's fee of 5% of the build price was not very attractive.

The School Board for London head office building on the Embankment (c) LMA

School design in London was potentially at its most fluid between 3 May 1871 and 31 July 1872.  It would appear that 27 schools were designed and begun during this period.  Further research is needed to identify them.  Robson designed and built none of these schools (presumably because he was involved in running the competitions).  Two schools (both now demolished) have attracted ongoing critical discussion.  Eel Brook Common School, Harwood Road, Fulham, designed by Basil Champneys in June and July 1872 and opened in October 1873 has been seen as the first example of the Queen Anne style for the board schools.  Johnson Street School, Stepney designed by T Roger Smith in late 1871, although conventionally Gothic in style has been seen as the first school to do away with schoolrooms and introduce classrooms throughout.

After a relatively short period it was decided by the SBL that the competition model was too costly and slow.  On 31 July 1872 Robson's job was split.  A separate Surveyor was appointed and Robson was given a salary of £1,000 per annum, the title of Architect and the responsibility for designing and building schools in return for "giving his time to the Board".  He retained, and used, the right to pursue private practice.

The SBL did not use architectural competitions again for some time.  Further research is needed, but no competitions appear to have been run until a period of cost cutting in the 1890s saw them run a competition to compare T J Bailey's design costs with those of outside architects (Bailey won on both design and cost).  There may have been some use of outside architects by the London County Council between Bailey's death in 1910 and 1914.

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