The Victorian Era

What Was Victorian Education Like?

Article · History & Overview · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Victorian education was transformed during the period from a privilege of the few to a near-universal provision for all. At the beginning of the Victorian era, the great majority of British children received little or no formal education, and the schools that existed were a mixture of dame schools, adventure schools, charity schools, and grammar schools. By the end of the era, elementary education was effectively universal, and a complex system of secondary schools, technical schools, and universities had been built up to serve the needs of a modern industrial society. The transformation was one of the most important social changes of the period, and it is examined in detail in Victorian Daily Life and Society and in Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life. The broader historical context is set out in The Victorian Era: A Complete Historical Overview.

Education Before the Education Acts

Before the Education Act of 1870, the schools of England and Wales were a mixture of voluntary schools, dame schools, and a small number of elementary schools established by the National Society and the British and Foreign School Society. The voluntary schools, most of which were Church of England schools, were established in the early nineteenth century to provide elementary education for the children of the poor. The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, founded in 1811, established a network of Church of England schools across the country. The British and Foreign School Society, founded in 1814 by Joseph Lancaster and Andrew Bell, established a parallel network of non-denominational schools. The dame schools, run by elderly women in their own homes, were the most numerous type of school, but they were often little more than child-minding operations. The ragged school movement, begun by the Portsmouth shoemaker John Pounds in 1819, brought some basic education to the very poor; by 1864, London alone had about 200 ragged schools teaching about 30,000 children, and the movement was supported by Lord Shaftesbury and the future Lord Raglan, among others.

The education provided in these schools was elementary. The three Rs, reading, writing, and arithmetic, formed the core of the curriculum, supplemented by Bible study, catechism, and a small amount of geography and history. The school day was long, the discipline was strict, the equipment was primitive, and the teachers were often poorly trained. The school leaving age was effectively at ten or eleven, and the children of the working class were often sent out to work at this age. The history of child labour in the period is examined in the page on the Victorian child.

The Education Act of 1870

The Education Act of 1870, the work of William Forster, the Liberal vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, was the first of the great Victorian education statutes. The act established a system of school boards in those areas where the existing provision was inadequate, and the school boards were given the power to build and to maintain elementary schools. The act did not, however, abolish the existing system of voluntary schools, and the dual system of board schools and voluntary schools continued until the Education Act of 1944.

The act had an immediate effect. By 1880, the school boards had established over 4,000 new board schools, and the total number of elementary school places in England and Wales had risen from about 1.4 million to over 3 million. The act, however, did not compel attendance, and many children, especially in the rural areas and in the industrial towns, did not attend school regularly. The Mundella Act of 1880, introduced by Anthony Mundella, the Liberal politician, made school attendance compulsory for children between the ages of five and ten, and the Elementary Education Acts of 1893 and 1899 raised the leaving age to twelve. The political history of the education acts is examined in Victorian Political History.

The Education Act of 1891

The Free Education Act of 1891, the work of the Conservative Secretary of the Education Department Sir Henry Craik, made elementary education free. The act abolished the school fees that had been charged by the board schools, and it provided a grant to the voluntary schools to enable them to abolish their fees as well. The act had a dramatic effect on school attendance, and the number of children on the school rolls rose from about 4.5 million in 1891 to about 5.5 million in 1900. The act effectively completed the work of the 1870 act, and the system of elementary education that emerged in 1900 was the basis of the modern system of state education in England and Wales. The Balfour Act of 1902, the work of Arthur Balfour, transferred the administration of elementary and secondary education from the school boards to the county and borough councils, and it established the system of local authority secondary schools that would dominate the twentieth century.

The Curriculum

The curriculum of the Victorian elementary school was dominated by the three Rs, but the curriculum gradually expanded in the late Victorian period. The Revised Code of 1862, the work of Robert Lowe, the Liberal politician who served as vice-president of the Committee of Council on Education, had introduced a system of payment by results, in which the schools were paid according to the number of children who passed tests in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The system was widely criticised, and the New Code of 1895 abolished it, in favour of a broader curriculum that included history, geography, science, drawing, and singing. The curriculum of the elementary school was, however, still dominated by the basic skills, and the secondary school curriculum was dominated by the classics.

The Secondary School

The Victorian secondary school was a very different institution from the elementary school. The public schools, the grammar schools, and the new girls’ secondary schools served a very small proportion of the school-age population, and they were the preserve of the upper and middle classes. The great public schools of the period, including Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester, Westminster, Charterhouse, and Shrewsbury, were the training grounds of the British ruling class, and the curriculum was dominated by Latin, Greek, and divinity, supplemented by mathematics, history, and modern languages. The history of the public school is examined in Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life.

The new girls’ secondary schools, established in the second half of the century, were products of the campaign for women’s education. The North London Collegiate School, founded by Frances Mary Buss in 1850, the Cheltenham Ladies’ College, founded by Dorothea Beale in 1854, the Girls’ Public Day School Company, founded in 1872, and the Royal Holloway College, founded by Thomas Holloway in 1886, all provided secondary education for middle-class girls. The new schools emphasised the accomplishments, including music, drawing, and French, and they prepared the girls for the new women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. The history of women’s education is examined in the page on the Victorian family.

The University

The Victorian university was transformed in the period. The University of London, which had been established in 1826, was reformed in 1858 and again in 1900, and it became a federation of colleges that included University College London, King’s College London, the London School of Economics, and other institutions. The Victoria University, established in 1880 as a federation of the colleges at Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds, was the prototype of the civic university. The new red-brick universities of the late Victorian period, including the universities of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, and Bristol, were products of the industrial cities in which they were located, and they were supported by the local industrialists. The University of Wales, the University of Durham (chartered 1837), and the University of Nottingham were also products of the late Victorian period. The 1871 Universities Tests Act opened the old universities of Oxford and Cambridge to non-Anglicans, ending more than three centuries of religious discrimination.

The women’s colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, including Lady Margaret Hall (founded in 1878), Somerville College (founded in 1879), Newnham College (founded in 1871), and Girton College (founded in 1869), were products of the late Victorian campaign for women’s education. The women were not granted full degrees at Oxford until 1920 and at Cambridge until 1948, but they were able to study for honours examinations from the 1880s.

The Scottish System

The Scottish education system was very different from the English system. The parish school, established by the Education Act of 1496 and reinforced by the Education Act of 1696, had been universal in Scotland for centuries, and the Scottish system of elementary and secondary education was the model for the English reforms of the late Victorian period. The Scottish universities, including the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, the University of St Andrews, and the University of Aberdeen, were ancient foundations, and they were open to a much wider social class than the English universities. The Scottish system produced a generation of teachers, doctors, scientists, and engineers who were disproportionate to the population of Scotland, and it was one of the foundations of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Scottish history of the period is examined in Victorian Society, Class, and Daily Life.