Elementary beginnings
In 1833 the Government gave its first grant (£20,000) to subsidise Elementary Schools (though by no means covering all costs) in what would, four decades later, come to be a national system of schools available for all children. Already there were Elementary Schools, with religious foundations, run by the National Society for the Promotion of the Education of the Poor according to the Principles of the Established Church, and by the British and Foreign School Society of the Dissenters, which depended partly on small fees from working class and often impoverished families. But such schools were not everywhere and were often not in the very poor and deprived areas. Furthermore, the majority of attendants were boys, the girls being required for help with domestic responsibilities. It was not until the Forster Act of 1870 that there were established local School Boards with powers to raise rates to ensure Elementary Education for all, whether in Church Schools, already existing, or in the new Board Schools. A further Elementary Act of 1880 made such Elementary Education a legal requirement on all children aged 5–13, including girls, though often ignored in practice.
The provision of money by Government to support schools had its adversaries, namely, to some extent, religious bodies, who could be suspicious of State interference in what were religious provisions. As shall be seen in subsequent chapters, the relative authority of the Churches in protecting the role of religious understanding in the idea of the educated person would remain a permanent feature of the developing educational system.
There was, however, also political suspicion of State interference in public education. When a Member of Parliament enquired into an adequate system of national education, it was rejected because, amongst other things ‘some Members were uneasy about this kind of state interference’ in public education (as detailed by Lawton and Gordon, 1987, p.7).
None the less, it was finally agreed in 1839 that a Committee of the Privy Council be established to oversee the distribution of the grant, subject to supervision by a small inspectorate, which was the beginning of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate, destined to play an important role in the development of the education system for 150 years. A key member of the Inspectorate from its early years was Matthew Arnold who held this position for thirty-five years (1851–1886) and whose thoughts about Elementary and Secondary Education had much influence on their formation (as described in Chapter 2 and subsequently Chapter 10).
By 1900, there were over 2,500 School Board Elementary Schools as well as 14,000 denominational Elementary Schools, mainly Church of England, but also Non-conformist, and now also Catholic as a result of their promotion after 1850 by Cardinal Wiseman, following the influx of immigrants due to the famine in Ireland.
However, arguments, arising from wider social concerns and pressures, had been leading Government, long before1870, to provide a more comprehensive amount of grant to support the voluntary system of schools run by the National Schools Society and British and Foreign Schools Society. In 1839, for example, Kay-Shuttleworth, secretary of the Committee of Council, who (1832) had produced a book entitled The Moral and Physical Conditions of the Working Class in Manchester, became a strong advocate of educational provision for all working-class children.
If they (the working classes) are to have knowledge, surely it is part of a wise and virtuous government to do all in its power to secure them useful knowledge and to guard them against pernicious opinions.
Indeed, the conditions in which so many of the working class lived were extremely poor and sorely needed to be addressed. As Matthew Arnold reported,
He saw their filthy and ragged children daily in the schools, children eaten up with disease, half-sized, half-fed, half-clothed, neglected by their parents, without health, without home, without hope.
(Arnold, M., 1869, Editorial, p. xxxv)
One argument increasingly influential was that improved working-class conditions, which should include education, would be necessary to avert social revolution. But organised working-class bodies, such as the London Working Men’s Association (founded in 1836 and seeking political support for its ‘People’s Charter’) and the Miners Association of Great Britain and Ireland, sought for schools to be financed from public funds, freed from religious teaching and administered by democratically elected local committees. By 1849, the original £20,000 annual grant, given to the National Society’s and the British and Foreign Schools Society’s Elementary Schools, had been raised to £125,000.
However, an undated pamphlet of the 1850s argued that
In the midst of England’s ‘unparalleled wealth, luxury and power’, those in authority have defrauded the labourers and reduced them to an animal existence. It is, then, the government’s responsibility to set a tax on the property of the country to raise funds for a national system of secular education for the people.
(paraphrased by Simon, 1960, p. 343)
Certainly, an ever-increasing number of organisations representing working-class men (for example, Mechanics Institute founded in 1824, Amalgamated Society of Engineers, London Working Men’s Association for Promoting National Secular Education, and Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland) were calling for a National System of Education, which would apply to the working class. William Newton, who became the first independent Labour candidate for Parliament in 1852, expressed concern that keeping the people in a state of ignorance is made the ground of their exclusion from political power. No doubt the significance of those growing concerns led to the Franchise Act of...
