This left the remaining six-sevenths, and the Commission was divided over whether the government should assist these at all; a minority maintained that the grants had already likely harmed “the character of the nation, and the relations between class and class” and the Commission as a whole supported the view that the labor of young children was sometimes necessary:Independence is of more importance than education; and if the wages of the child’s labour are necessary . 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 organization.
The Act established a minimal system of national primary education in the control of county school boards which were Moreover, the 1870 Act permitted public taxes to be used to support religious schools. . That such ideals could be enunciated within the broad coalition of workers’ groups which he represented reflected one of the more durable effects of the Acts: the increased ability of working-class and reformist-minded Britons to comprehend the social factors that structured their lives and organize toward the goal of greater economic and cultural representation.Florence S. Boos is the general editor of the William Morris Archive and author/editor of several books on William Morris, most recently the forthcoming Boos, Florence S. “The Education Act of 1870: Before and After.” Boos, Florence S. “Education and Work: Women and the Education Acts.” “Standards of Education.” “Revised Code of Regulations.” “Elementary Education Act of 1870.”
in Boos 153)When at last allowed to attend school with her sister: “[M]y luck did not last.
inspection ('payment by results').Two provisions of the Act became, for religious reasons, matters of contention within the governing Liberal Party. Their interest was not in books, but in life, and especially the life that lay immediately about them.
(Hurt 36)Nonetheless, the majority believed that something should be done for what they estimated as the 120,305 children lacking in any school instruction whatsoever (later historians have noted that this figure is improbably low, in part because the commission failed to examine several of the more unschooled districts, and also accepted uncritically the exaggerated claims of school officials [Hurt 4-16, 25-30]). It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. it is far better that it should go to work at the earliest age at which it can bear the physical exertion rather than it should remain at school. The British Journal of Educational Studies is probably the best single journal-based source on the 1870 Elementary Education Act (EEA 1870), with a large number of key papers published in the Journal before and after the centenary of the Act in 1970.
As suggested by the passage just quoted, girls’ curricula were heavily weighted toward needlework,and even that was often neglected.