The article deals with the influence of charity in the Simbirsk province on the establishment and development of the educational system in the province in the XIX century. New archival materials are introduced; they allowed widening the contents of the historical and pedagogical science. The archival materials and extracts from the manuscripts of the state archives of the Ulianovsk region allowed regarding the issue through the prism of the state, private and social participation in the development of the system of education of the Simbirsk province.

There is given the system of work of educational and labour asylums (children’s asylums of diligence) as one of the perspective forms of education and upbringing (by the example of Simbirsk province in the second half of the XIX – beginning of the XX centuries).