In 1833, recognising its responsibility in helping to educate the poor, the government made a grant of £20,000 a year, to be divided between the two Societies to help them build more schools. Coincidentally, in the same year, Althorp’s Factory Act generated prospective pupils as it saw the end of children under nine working in textile mills. As the population began to rise, the need for more schools was felt and the grant was increased to £30,000 in 1839.
In 1839, a Committee of the Privy Council was set up ‘for the consideration of all matters affecting the education of the people [and] to superintend the application of any sums voted by Parliament for the purpose of promoting public education’ (Stiles, 1995, p.57). The first secretary for this special committee was James Kay-Shuttleworth, who introduced important reforms and was one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century education.
Due to the increasing population and the growing educational demands, it was evident that the voluntary bodies could not cope on their own. In 1858, a parliamentary commission of inquiry was appointed, with the Duke of Newcastle as chairman. This was known as ‘the Newcastle Commission’. This was to inquire ‘into the present state of popular education in England, and to consider and report what measures, if any, are required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people’ (Woodward, 1992, p.481).
The Newcastle Commission reported in 1861 and found grounds for concern. It noted that one in eight poor children attended school and due to the demands of child labour, most left by the age of ten. Teachers were neglecting children with learning difficulty and concentrating on their older and gifted pupils. The Commissioners recommended that a state grant should be available to all children who are both in regular attendance and able to persuade a government inspector of their abilities in reading, writing and arithmetic.
In 1862, the Committee of the Privy Council became the Department of Education and Robert Lowe was the minister responsible for education who introduced a new set of regulations called the ‘Revised Code’. This included a system of ‘Payment by Results’ where the government would only pay grants if pupils regularly attended school and passed annual exams. This was a system of control relating to economic aspects not educational. Lowe wanted to ensure that the government received value for money spent on education, especially after the huge expenditure of £78 million involved in the Crimean War (1854-6).
The Second Reform Act of 1867 made it possible for the working-class to vote. Unfortunately, this did not include men under the age of twenty-one, the whole female population and men from the rural areas of Britain. With reference to the new voters’ need for literacy in order to vote correctly, Lowe declared, ‘We will have to educate our masters’. There are facts which suggests that this Act did very little to alter the political balance of power in Britain which was still dominated by the upper and middle classes.
In 1868, Gladstone was elected Britain’s Prime Minister. His government decided that every child in the country should be allowed to attend school. It was agreed that the churches had been successful regarding their role in educating the poor but based on the Newcastle Report, the state would need to become more involved to achieve greater success.
In 1869, there was increased pressure placed on the state to become directly involved in elementary education by the Manchester Education Society, Birmingham Education League, led by Joseph Chamberlain and other related Leagues and Societies. Manchester and Birmingham were industrialised centres and were concerned that foreign countries were proving to be industrial rivals as their workforce were better educated.
William Edward Forster, a radical politician and MP for Bradford, replaced Lowe as vice-president of the Committee of the Privy Council for education (1868-74). Forster’s Elementary Education Act of 1870 is usually considered groundbreaking in education history. In his speech introducing the Education Bill, Forster stated that ‘Our object is to complete the present voluntary system, to fill up gaps, sparing the public money where it can be done without … Upon the speedy provision of elementary education depends our industrial prosperity ….’ (Tonge, 1982, p.66).
The government recognised that in order to become committed to the country’s education, they would have to tread softly with regards to the existing religious societies. A ‘dual system’ was set-up, which meant that state schools could run side by side with church schools. An MP called Cowper-Temple suggested that ‘no religious catechism…which is distinctive of any particular denomination, shall be taught in the school’ - this is known as the Cowper-Temple clause which was included within the Education Act. Parents were free to remove their children from religious lessons (Taylor, 1988, p.288).
Religion played a major part in education for many years prior to the 1870 Act. Founders of the voluntary schools valued church schools mainly as a ‘means of strengthening religious belief and morality’ (Stephens, 1998, p.14). There were views that the principal objective of these schools was to indoctrinate children but the success of this theory would be dependent upon a student’s age, hours spent at school each day and parental viewpoint. There were parents who were prepared to send their children to church schools so long as
the secular teaching was of a high standard (ibid, p.16). A father who sent his son to a ‘first-rate’ Anglican school in the 1860s summed it up when he declared, ‘Do you think if they put anything into the child’s head during the day about religion which I did not approve, that I could not shove it out at night?’ (ibid, p.16, 17).
Under the section of ‘Religion and Education’ in The Newcastle Report 1861, it is clear that the government was concerned that the Church of England had too much influence in the running of schools. They were troubled that people of other denominations who were contributing, as taxpayers, towards these schools, were not sufficiently benefiting from them (Tonge, 1982, p.71, 72).
Additional Acts further enhanced the national system of education. Elementary education was made compulsory up to the age of 10 under the Sandon’s Act (1876) and Mundella’s Act (1880). Some working-class parents opposed compulsory education as this meant the loss of child wages. A few uneducated and well-paid industrial workers had the view that schooling was not essential (Stephens, 1998, p.6). In 1891, an Act was passed which gave parents the right to demand free schooling for their children. An Act of 1893 set the school-leaving age at 11; this was raised to 12 in 1899. The Elementary Education (Defective and Epileptic Children) Act of 1899 empowered local authorities to set up special schools and classes for these children.
In 1902, the Conservative government led by A. J. Balfour, decided to pass an Education Act, which abolished the School Boards and created 140 Local Education Authorities (LEAs). LEAs were responsible for elementary education in the old board schools and secular education in the denominational schools.
When it was discovered in 1899 that more than one in three young British men were unfit to be sent to war against the Boers (1899-1901), measures were put in place to address the
social welfare of a child. These measures ranged from the provision of cheap school meals (Education Act 1906) to medical inspection in schools (Education Act 1907). The 1908
Children’s Charter Act protected children from cruelty and also gave local authorities new powers to keep poor children out of the workhouse. By 1914, it could be said that the state was responsible for the nourishment of both a child’s body and mind.
From this essay, we can see that there were many changes during the eighty-one years (1833-1914) of development in Britain’s elementary education. The government became progressively concerned regarding the education of the working-class due to various issues that could not be ignored. From an overall grant of £20,000 per year for the purchase and improvement of all elementary schools for the poor in 1833, we now enjoy £39,300 per year for each primary school during 2002/2003. In his Budget speech of 2002, the Chancellor pledged to ‘increase significantly the share of national income devoted to education over the course of this Parliament’ (news.bbc.co.uk). Britain has indeed come a long way!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Stiles, A. (1995) Access to History – Religion, Society and Reform 1800-1914, London: Hodder & Stoughton
Stephens, W.B. (1998) Education in Britain 1750-1914, UK: The Macmillan Press Ltd
Taylor, D (1988) Mastering Economic and Social History, UK: The Macmillan Press Ltd
Tonge, N. & Quincey, M. (1982) British Social & Economic History 1800-1900 Documents and Debates, The Macmillan Press Ltd
Woodward, L. (1992) The Age of Reform – England 1815-1870, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Schools promised spending increase – The Chancellor’s Budget 2002
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2002/budget_2002/
