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Education in England:
Chapter 1 600-1800
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Education in England: a brief history
Derek Gillard first published June 1998
© copyright Derek Gillard 2007
Citations
References
Pictures
Chapter 2 1800-1900 Towards a state system of education 1800-1860 Industrialisation: the need for mass education In 1751 the population of the British mainland stood at seven million. By 1821 - after seventy years of industrial revolution - it had reached fourteen million, and by 1871 it would reach twenty-six million. The rapid expansion in the overall population was matched by increases in the proportion of people who lived in towns and cities, and in the proportion of the population who were children. England's industrial revolution began in the second half of the 18th century. At first, new agricultural techniques freed workers from the land and made it possible to feed a large non-agricultural population. Now, in the 19th century, relative world peace, the availability of money, coal and iron ore, and the invention of the steam engine, all combined to facilitate the construction of factories for the mass production of goods. The factory system increased the division and specialisation of labour and resulted in large numbers of people moving to the new industrial cities, especially in the midlands and the north. It also resulted in low wages, slum housing and the use of child labour. In addition to all this, the slow process of democratisation began with the 1832 Reform Act which gave one million people the right to vote. This dramatic social, political and economic transformation served to reveal the utter inadequacy of England's educational provision. A number of reports highlighted the deficiencies and called for more and better schools. One such report looked at 12,000 parishes in 1816, and found that 3,500 had no school, 3,000 had endowed schools of varying quality, and 5,500 had unendowed schools of even more variable quality. New types of school began to be established:
Hostility to mass education Campaigners for reform found themselves up against vicious hostility to the very idea of universal education. One Justice of the Peace, for example, opined in 1807 that: 'It is doubtless desirable that the poor should be generally instructed in reading, if it were only for the best of purposes - that they may read the Scriptures. As to writing and arithmetic, it may be apprehended that such a degree of knowledge would produce in them a disrelish for the laborious occupations of life.' (quoted in Williams 1961:135)And when the Parochial Schools Bill of 1807 was debated in the Commons, Tory MP Davies Giddy warned the House that: 'Giving education to the labouring classes of the poor ... would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture and other laborious employments to which their rank in society has destined them; instead of teaching them the virtue of subordination, it would render them factious and refactory ... it would enable them to read seditious pamphlets, vicious books and publications against Christianity.' (Hansard, House of Commons, Vol 9, 13 July 1807, quoted in Chitty 2004:5)In some respects things were even worse than in previous centuries. Although the poor had never been educated en masse, there had been parishes where exceptional provision was made, and a few able boys from poor homes had even been offered university places. But by the start of the 19th century, education was organised, like English society as a whole, on a more rigid class basis. The result was 'a new kind of class-determined education. Higher education became a virtual monopoly, excluding the new working class, and the idea of universal education, except within the narrow limits of "moral rescue", was widely opposed as a matter of principle' (Williams 1961:136). Despite this hostility to universal education, school attendance rose significantly during the 19th century. In 1816, 875,000 of the country's 1.5m children 'attended a school of some kind for some period'. By 1835 the figure was 1.45m out of 1.75m. If this sounds fairly impressive, it should be noted that by 1835 the average duration of school attendance was just one year. Some financial assistance to schools from the local rates had been permitted in a few places in the 18th century. Now, from around 1830, national funds began to be made available for school building. By 1851 the average length of school attendance had risen to two years, and in 1861 an estimated 2.5m children out of 2.75m received some form of schooling, 'though still of very mixed quality and with the majority leaving before they were eleven' (Williams 1961:137).  By the middle of the century the curriculum was becoming broader. Writing and arithmetic were now usually taught and some schools added other general subjects.
The involvement of the churches The Church of England regarded education for all children as desirable. This was not a unanimously held view, however - influential taxpayers and those who benefited from employing children were less enthusiastic. But despite the doubters, the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church (which, for obvious reasons, became generally known as the National Society) was founded in 1811. Its aim was to provide a school in every parish. Local clergy 'often took on this initiative wholeheartedly' (Gates 2005:16), with or without the benefit of special donations. 'The inclusion of the fourth "R" of religion, alongside the other three (reading, writing and arithmetic), was simply assumed as right. It took the form of the Bible, catechism and prayer book services' (Gates 2005:16). Other Christians, along with liberal Anglicans and some Roman Catholics and Jews, preferred a less denominational approach and in 1814 founded the British and Foreign School Society for the Education of the Labouring and Manufacturing Classes of Society of Every Religious Persuasion (the British and Foreign School Society). Its schools drew on the pioneering work of the Quaker Joseph Lancaster. They taught Scripture and general Christian principles in a non-denominational form. A third group, who wanted religion kept out of schools altogether, formed a third organisation, the Central Society of Education, in 1836. Unfortunately, they represented a tiny minority, and 'it was the tussling between the other two [the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society] that delayed the introduction of a fully comprehensive school system funded by public taxation' (Gates 2005:16). Unwilling to intervene or take the lead for fear of appearing to promote one group over the other, in 1833 the government began giving annual grants towards school provision to both the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. From 1846 similar grants were given to Baptists and Congregationalists (subject to an agreement about the reading of Scripture), from 1847 to Wesleyan Methodists and the Catholic Poor School Committee, and in 1853 to the Manchester Jewish community (subject to an agreement about the reading of at least part of the Bible). The Church of England resisted the introduction of a 'conscience clause' which would have allowed children of Dissenters to attend its schools without fear of religious offence, and a ruling that only the Authorised Version of the Bible was acceptable delayed the granting of aid to RC schools. The 1861 Newcastle Report (of which more later) noted the problems these rulings caused in areas where there was only one school.
Grammar schools and endowed schools In the 1840s England had around 700 grammar schools and more than 2,000 non-classical endowed schools. The old grammar schools still largely served the upper classes and obtained their pupils from the preparatory schools. But even here changes began to take place, led by headmasters like Butler at Shrewsbury from 1798 and Arnold at Rugby from 1824. Arnold's main aim was 'the re-establishment of social purpose, the education of Christian gentlemen' (Williams 1961:137). Butler's emphasis, however, was on the importance of passing examinations, and by the 1830s the exam system for university entrance was firmly established. While this had the effect of raising academic standards within the institutions, it also further restricted university entrance to those from a narrow social class. There were further changes to the classics-based grammar school curriculum in the mid 1800s when the Civil Service Commission and the Board of Military Education were established, forcing the schools to give greater priority to mathematics and modern languages. Passing exams now became even more important. From the 1850s, a system of University Local Examinations, first called 'Middle Class Examinations', provided a recognised national standard of education.
Higher education The institution of public examinations, in Cambridge from the 18th century and in Oxford from the early 19th, forced the two universities to improve the quality of their teaching and as a result, they began to recover their prestige. They were prompted to review their religious exclusiveness and restricted curriculum by the foundation of universities in London (1828-36) and Durham (1832) which had significantly broader curricula. From the 1850s Oxford and Cambridge began to offer a broader range of subjects and to cater for a wider intake. Further changes in the 1870s and 80s led to the achievement of modern university status. Meanwhile, university colleges were being established in Manchester, Nottingham, Reading, Southampton, Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Birmingham, and Wales.
1860-1900 A class-based system Unlike the United States, which by the 1830s was establishing a public school system based on a common education for all its citizens, England allowed a divided school system to develop in line with its class structure. Thus three national education commissions produced reports, each relating to provision for a particular social class:
1864 Clarendon Report and 1868 Public Schools Act The 1868 Public Schools Act, based on the report of the Royal Commission on the Public Schools (the Clarendon Report), began the reorganisation of secondary education, albeit still on a narrow class basis. It did away with many of the old foundation statutes and instituted new governing bodies. It established a separate class of 'public schools' and promoted a curriculum consisting of classics, mathematics, a modern language, two natural sciences, history, geography, drawing, and music.
1868 Taunton Report and 1869 Endowed Schools Act The Schools Inquiry Commission, which produced the Taunton Report, found that provision of secondary education was poor and unevenly distributed. Two thirds of English towns had no secondary schools of any kind and in the remaining third 'there were marked differences of quality' (Williams 1961:138). There were only thirteen secondary schools for girls in the country. The Commissioners recommended the establishment of a national system of secondary education based on existing endowed schools. The resulting Endowed Schools Act 1869 created the Endowed Schools Commission to draw up new schemes of government for these schools. The Taunton Report clearly illustrates the accepted class (and gender) divisions in English society at the time. It envisaged three grades of secondary school:
1861 Newcastle Report The Royal Commission on the state of popular education in England (the Newcastle Commission) was appointed in 1858 and published its six volume report in 1861. It sought 'to extend and improve the elementary education of the poor' and recommended that the state should provide 'sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people'. (The following extracts are from The Royal Commission on the state of popular education in England, Parliamentary Papers, 1861, XXI. p. 293-328; as reprinted in Young and Hancock 1956 p. 891-97.) The Commission noted that 'The whole population of England and Wales, as estimated by the Registrar-General in the summer of 1858, amounted to 19,523,103. The number of children whose names ought, at the same date, to have been on the school books, in order that all might receive some education, was 2,655,767. The number we found to be actually on the books was 2,535,462, thus leaving 120,305 children without any school instruction whatever. The proportion, therefore, of scholars in week-day schools of all kinds to the entire population was 1 in 7.7 or 12.99 per cent. Of these 321,768 are estimated to have been above the condition of such as are commonly comprehended in the expression "poorer classes," and hence are beyond the range of our present inquiry. Deducting these from the whole number of children on the books of some school, we find that 2,213,694 children belonging to the poorer classes were, when our statistics were collected and compiled, receiving elementary instruction in day schools. Looking, therefore, at mere numbers as indicating the state of popular education in England and Wales, the proportion of children receiving instruction to the whole population is, in our opinion, nearly as high as can be reasonably expected. In Prussia, where it is compulsory, 1 in 6.27; in England and Wales it is, as we have seen, 1 in 7.7; in Holland it is 1 in 8.11; in France it is 1 in 9.0.' (Young and Hancock 1956:892)But it went on to warn: 'We are bound to observe, however, that a very delusive estimate of the state of education must result from confining attention to the mere amount of numbers under day school instruction. We have seen that less than three years ago there were in elementary day schools 2,213,694 children of the poorer classes. But of this number, 573,536 were attending private schools, which, as our evidence uniformly shows, are, for the most part, inferior as schools for the poor, and ill-calculated to give to the children an education which shall be serviceable to them in after-life. Of the 1,549,312 children whose names are on the books of public elementary day schools belonging to the religious denominations, only 19.3 per cent were in their 12th year or upwards, and only that proportion, therefore, can be regarded as educated up to the standard suited to their stations. As many as 786,202 attend for less than 100 days in the year and can therefore hardly receive a serviceable amount of education, while our evidence goes to prove that a large proportion, even of those whose attendance is more regular, fail in obtaining it on account of inefficient teaching. Much, therefore, still remains to be done to bring up the state of elementary education in England and Wales to the degree of usefulness which we all regard as attainable and desirable.' (Young and Hancock 1956:892-3)The Report was also critical of the quality of education provided: 'We have seen overwhelming evidence from Her Majesty's Inspectors, to the effect that not more than one fourth of the children receive a good education. So great a failure in the teaching demanded the closest investigation; and as the result of it we have been obliged to come to the conclusion that the instruction given is commonly both too ambitious and too superficial in its character, that (except in the very best schools) it has been too exclusively adapted to the elder scholars to the neglect of the younger ones, and that it often omits to secure a thorough grounding in the simplest but most essential parts of instruction. We have shown that the present system has never completely met this serious difficulty in elementary teaching; that inspection looks chiefly to the upper classes and to the general condition of the school, and cannot profess to examine carefully individual scholars; and that a main object of the schools is defeated in respect of every child who, having attended for a considerable time, leaves without the power of reading, writing, and cyphering in an intelligent manner.' (Young and Hancock 1956:893)There was considerable disagreement between the Commissioners over the funding of education, with some believing that 'the interference of Government with education is objectionable on political and religious grounds' (Young and Hancock 1956:894). However, they noted that 'all the principal nations of Europe, and the United States of America, as well as British North America, have felt it necessary to provide for the education of the people by public taxation' (Young and Hancock 1956:894-5), and they proceeded to: 'propose means by which, in the first place, the present system may be made applicable to the poorer no less than the richer districts throughout the whole country; secondly, by which the present expenditure may be controlled and regulated; thirdly, by which the complication of business in the office may be checked; fourthly, by which greater local activity and interest in education may be encouraged; fifthly, by which the general attainment of a greater degree of elementary knowledge may be secured than is acquired at present ...' (Young and Hancock 1956:897) 1870 Elementary Education Act The outcome of the Newcastle Commission's report was the 1870 Elementary Education Act (The Forster Act), which introduced compulsory universal education for all children aged 5-13 and established school boards to oversee and complete the network of schools and to bring them all under some form of supervision. Such a strategy, it said, would have to be affordable and acceptable to the many sectional religious interests. Thus 1870 can, with some justification, be described as the year in which the government finally began to take the education of the nation's children seriously. Having said that, it must be acknowledged that elementary education was, in many ways, limited and inferior. Blyth (1965:21) argues that elementary schools were 'a whole educational process in themselves and one which is by definition limited and by implication inferior; a low plateau, rather than the foothills of a complete education'. The elementary schools
The church problem What the 1870 Act did not do was resolve the problem of the involvement of the churches in state educational provision. It could have begun to separate church and state, as was happening in other countries. 'That this did not happen was based on a combination of economic realism, institutional convenience and a political predisposition to enjoy religious company in spite of its irks' (Gates 2005:18). The churches had not been able to make universal provision, so the state would now fund schools managed by locally elected and interdenominationally representative school boards. Church schools would continue to receive a maintenance grant of up to 50 per cent, but once the system was in place they would get no money for new buildings. The Cowper-Temple clause banned the teaching in the new board schools of 'denominationally specific catechetical formulae' (Gates 2005:18). Furthermore, in every school receiving public funds, parents had the right to withdraw their children from religious instruction and teachers had the right not to teach it. School inspections would no longer be denominationally controlled. Some people assumed that the 1870 Act would result in a gradual decline in the number of church schools and their replacement by board schools. The churches were determined that this should not happen, so they took full advantage of the generous offer of government funds for new buildings. In the six months allowed, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church 'moved with great alacrity to plan as many as they could' (Gates 2005:19). 2,000 requests for building grants were made by the National Society, 500 by the Catholics and Free Churches. Within 15 years, the number of Church of England schools rose from 6,382 to 11,864, and Catholic schools from 350 to 892. In the same period, the number of children attending church schools doubled to two million. The costs of sustaining this expanded provision were huge. 'Knowingly or not the churches had overreached themselves' (Gates 2005:19). So in 1884 a newly formed interdenominational Voluntary Schools Association began lobbying against the what it regarded as the unfair financial advantages enjoyed by the board schools, which had local rates and central government taxes to draw on. In 1888, the Cross Commission reviewed the working of the 1870 Act and recommended public funding for the secular curriculum in church schools, but this was not implemented until the Balfour Act of 1902. Infant schools The earliest example of an infant department (catering for children up to 7) was Robert Owen's infant school in New Lanark, which had been set up in the 1820s. By the 1860s the main objective in separating the infants was to ensure that 'the teaching of the older children should not be unduly disturbed by what Matthew Arnold referred to as "the babies"' (Galton, Simon and Croll 1980:31). The Code of Regulations of 1871 created an infant stage below Standard 1 for the 5-7 age range, so seven became the age of transfer from the infant school or department to the elementary school. Even as late as 1930 only half of 5-7 year olds were in infant schools.
Preparatory schools The upper classes did not, of course, send their sons to elementary schools, but to private preparatory schools, where they were prepared for education at the great English public schools. 'The term "preparatory" was never legally established but has been invested by tradition with a very precise and important meaning which is still current and influential. In one sense indeed it is nearer to the developmental than to the elementary tradition, for it does at least take some account of sequence rather than of social status as a principle of differentiation. But at the same time it implies in name what "junior elementary" often implied in fact, that the education of younger children is mainly to be conceived in terms of preparation for the later stages of education rather than as a stage in its own right.' (Blyth 1965:30)The preparatory tradition became embedded in the upper and middle classes of English society. Its aim was (and still is) the education of younger children for what follows. 'For prep-school boys indeed, the next phase in the life cycle was often regarded as its zenith, with regrettable results' (Blyth 1965:34). 1895 Bryce Commission The Royal Commission on Secondary Education (the Bryce Commission 1895) reviewed the progress that had been made since the report of the Taunton Commission. Its report resulted in the establishment of the Board of Education and, after the Cockerton Judgement (which made it illegal for school boards to offer financial support to higher grade schools), it led to the 1902 Act which abolished school boards and set up Local Education Authorities to 'supply or aid the supply of education other than elementary'. The Bryce Commission recommended that for every 1,000 of the population secondary education should be made available to just ten children, of whom eight would be in the third grade. This meant that, out of 4,000,000 children, 64,000 would be educated in the first and second grade schools, and 256,000 in the third grade. 'It is obvious', the Commission commented, 'that these distinctions correspond roughly, but by no means exactly, to the gradations of society' (quoted in Williams 1961:139).  The exterior remains essentially the same today. The building is now part of Wolverhampton College. Picture and information from Wolverhampton's Locally Listed Buildings Other developments in the period 1864-1900 The 1880 Education Act (The Mundella Act) tightened up school attendance laws and so effectively established in practice what the Forster Act had declared in principle. Campaigns for secondary education for girls began to have an impact in the latter half of the 19th century. In Wales, the 1889 Intermediate Education Act established an organised secondary system which linked the board and voluntary elementary schools with the universities, and provided for both boys and girls. The 1891 Education Act decreed that elementary education was to be provided free. The Board of Education was set up in 1899. The school leaving age was raised to 11 in 1893 and to 12 in 1899. 'Thus by the end of the century a national system of elementary schooling, still largely confined to the provision of a minimum standard, had been set going.' (Williams 1961:137) The purposes of education In response to the growth of both industry and democracy, the 19th century saw a major reorganisation of elementary, secondary and university education, with changes in the types of institution and the styles of education they offered. There was also 'a fundamental argument about the purposes of education' (Williams 1961:140). Williams identifies two strands of this argument: 'the idea of education for all, and the definition of a liberal education' (Williams 1961:140). Education for all was, as we have seen, hotly contested, but it was essential, given the rise of an organised working class which demanded education and the needs of an expanding and changing economy. Williams (1961:141) argues that the victory of the reformers rested on three elements:
However, this utilitarian concept of education was challenged on two sides: 'On the one hand it was argued, by men with widely differing attitudes to the rise of democracy and of working-class organisation, that men had a natural human right to be educated, and that any good society depended on governments accepting this principle as their duty. On the other hand, often by men deeply opposed to democracy, it was argued that man's spiritual health depended on a kind of education which was more than a training for some specialised work, a kind variously described as "liberal", "humane", or "cultural".' (Williams 1961:141)It was a complicated debate in which, Williams argues, three groups participated: the 'public educators', the 'industrial trainers' (the powerful group which promoted education in terms of training and disciplining the poor as workers and citizens) and the 'old humanists'. The old humanists argued against the public educators, fearing that a liberal education would be 'vulgarised by extension to the "masses"' (Williams 1961:142), and against the industrial trainers because liberal education would be 'destroyed by being turned into a system of specialised and technical training' (Williams 1961:142). Meanwhile, the public educators drew on the arguments of the old humanists in the hope of preventing universal education becoming a narrow system of pre-industrial instruction. Williams argues that the influence of these three groups - the public educators, the industrial trainers, and the old humanists - continued to be felt well into the 20th century. The curriculum which evolved during the 19th century was 'a compromise between all three groups, but with the industrial trainers predominant' (Williams 1961:142). This was 'damaging both to general education and to the new kinds of vocational training' (Williams 1961:143). Equally damaging was the class thinking which cast its shadow over educational developments in the 19th century. 'The continued relegation of trade and industry to lower social classes, and the desire of successful industrialists that their sons should move into the now largely irrelevant class of gentry, were alike extremely damaging to English education and English life' (Williams 1961:143). As at the Reformation, the reconstruction of institutions proceeded largely without reference to the best learning of the age, and without a successful redefinition of the purposes of education and of the content of a contemporary liberal culture: 'The beginnings of technical instruction in the Mechanics' Institutes might have developed into a successful redefinition, but again it was the training of a specific class, whereas in fact the new sciences were radical elements in the society as a whole: a society which had changed its economy, which under pressure was changing its institutions, but which, at the centres of power, was refusing to change its ways of thinking.' (Williams 1961:143)The new working class was offered science and technical instruction but no opportunity to discuss the interaction between these techniques and their lives: 'It was only very slowly, and then only in the sphere of adult education, that the working class, drawing indeed on very old intellectual traditions and on important dissenting elements in the English educational tradition, made its contribution to the modern educational debate. This contribution - the students' choice of subject, the relation of disciplines to actual contemporary living, and the parity of general discussion with expert instruction - remains important, but made little headway in the general educational organisation. Like the individual public educators, their time was not yet.' (Williams 1961:144) A common education for all It was only at the very end of the 19th century, as radical political movements were being formed, that a common education for all was seriously debated in Britain - 250 years after it had been advocated by Comenius.
It is not surprising that Hardie wanted a better deal for the working class. He had been born in Lanarkshire, the illegitimate son of a servant, and had received no education at all. At the age of eight he had become the family's sole wage earner when he was sent to work as a baker's delivery boy. Three years later he was a coal miner. But by the time he was 17 he had taught himself to read and write and in 1893 he was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party. By 1906 he was leader of the newly-formed Labour Party in the House of Commons. Not all socialists agreed with Hardie about a common education for all, however. Some members of the Fabian Society favoured specialised and differentiated schooling. Sydney Webb, for example, approved of the 1902 Education Act (the Balfour Act) which introduced new fee-paying grammar schools offering a few free scholarship places.
References Benn C and Chitty C (1996) Thirty years on: is comprehensive education alive and well or struggling to survive? London: David Fulton Publishers Blyth WAL (1965) English primary education: a sociological description Vol. II: Background London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Chitty C (2004) Education policy in Britain Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan Galton M, Simon B and Croll P (1980) Inside the primary classroom (The ORACLE Report) London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Gates B (2005) 'Faith schools and colleges of education since 1800' in R Gardner, J Cairns and D Lawton (eds) (2005) Faith schools: consensus or conflict? Abingdon: RoutledgeFalmer 14-35 Williams R (1961) The long revolution London: Chatto and Windus Young GM and Hancock WD (eds) (1956) English historical documents XII (1), 1833-1874 London: Eyre and Spottiswoode 
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At an international conference of socialists in 1896 delegates from Europe and the US argued that all working people should receive a full education. Britain's Keir Hardie (pictured) argued that this meant an education that was 'free at all stages, open to everyone without any tests of prior attainment at any age - in effect, a comprehensive "broad highway" that all could travel' (reported in the Westminster Gazette 1 August 1896, quoted in Benn and Chitty 1996:3).