Education in the Nineteenth Century

Authors Avatar
History Coursework-

Chalford Hill Primary School and

Education in the Nineteenth Century.

In the 1800's an increasing number of people felt that the poor should be educated. Most of these people were only interested in their own money any felt that the 'quality' of the average worker should be increased; this meant providing them with a basic education. Others of the Christian religion felt it was their duty as upholding Christians to improve the lives of others that were less fortunate than themselves, they didn't do this by improving accommodation or working conditions and pay , but by providing a simple basis of education for the children.

Due to this desire to educate the poor, two men set up schools in London, during 1798. The first was Andrew Bell; he was a member of the Church of England and had formerly worked as an army Chaplin. In his school he used the Monitorial system and claimed to have invented it. His rival was Joseph Lancaster. He was a Quaker, a different branch of Christianity and also claimed to have invented the Monitorial system. He had many followers that believed in him and this lead to the creation of the British and Foreign Schools Society. The schools set up, including Chalford Hill Primary, created a non-conformist school for children.

The Monitorial system was very simple. It was an attempt to save money and reduce the shortage of teachers. It comprised of the school master selecting some of the older and more intelligent students; he would teach them for an hour before school and then assign them groups of other children, who they would then teach their newly acquired knowledge under his supervision. Initially it was found to be a very economic way to overcome the shortage of teachers and money. But despite it's success after it's introduction, the Monitorial system was not all it was made out to be. We can see this from the Chalford Hill log books, ' using the children as monitors is of very little use.' (24.2.1865) This was partly because of the way the children were taught, using rote learning, or parrot fashion in colloquial language. This was not the only problem; the monitors could not control large groups of children, even with smaller groups they often could not sustain their attention for long periods of time, 'The monitors are weak and unable to engage the attention of more than 8 or 9 children altogether.'( 26.9.1867)

The masters of the schools tried to solve the problems with the monitors by paying them a small wage for their help, ' I have been given permission to engage a monitor at a wage of one shilling per week.' (29.3.1867)

Despite these futile attempts to resolve the problems with the monitors, their efforts came to no avail, 'The boy Smart who has been engaged as a monitor was sent home today for unsatisfactory behaviour until a decision was made by the school management.' (12.3.1874) The problem with behaviour may have been that, even though the monitors were paid ,they were selected and their services were not voluntary, this meant they probably did not want to be teaching and were pressurised by the masters to comply.
Join now!


In 1833 the government began to take an interest in education and parliament awarded a grant of £20,000 to the two Church run societies that completely controlled education. In 1839 this grant was slightly increased and the Education Committee was established. James Kay- Shuttleworth was the secretary of the committee. He was not impressed by the Monitorial system and it's ineffectiveness to increase standards of education. In 1840 he founded a Teachers Training College in Battersea, London and also invented the Pupil Teacher System. The system meant that students over the age of 13 could be engaged as ...

This is a preview of the whole essay