After the Schools Enquiry Commission (Taunton Commission) had published its 20-volume report and recommendations for the secondary education of the middle classes in 1868, attention was duly turned to the elementary education of the working classes.

The issue was initially raised through The Trades Union Bill, introduced into the House of Commons by Thomas Hughes (MP for Frome, Somerset) and Anthony John Mundella (MP for Sheffield) in early summer 1869, which not only proposed legislation around the various trade unions but also discussed the question of free education.

In an address to trade unionists in Nottingham in May 1869, Mundella had highlighted the plight of children in England, where only 50,000 were under the operation of the Factory Act (which required children under 13 to receive elementary schooling for two hours each day). He had spoken of girls aged around 12, working in Nottingham’s lace-dressing rooms from 5am till 9pm for 2-3 shillings a week when instead they should have been at school ‘acquiring virtue, intelligence, and education, in order that they might become good citizens, good wives, and good mothers’. He compared this with children in continental countries who attended school for several years.

As the Bill’s various resolutions were discussed in Parliament and at union meetings around the country, support from the trade unions for compulsory education for the working classes grew. In August 1869, men at the second annual Trades Union Congress in Birmingham listened attentively to a paper presented by Charles Hibbs regarding the National Education League (NEL), which had started in Birmingham only six months earlier. Now numbering over 1,300 members, including many of the highest names in learning, literature, and science, its objective was stated in a succinct terms: ‘The establishment of a system which should ensure the education of every child in England and Wales.’ The principles included the stipulation that ‘To all schools aided by local rates admission shall be free’.

Congress delegates unanimously passed a motion declaring that ‘this Congress believes that nothing short of a system of national, unsectarian, and compulsory education will satisfy the requirements of the people of the United Kingdom’.

Growth of the NEL
Thus supported, the NEL gathered momentum and by mid-September 1869, a provisional committee had been formed, with George Dixon, MP for Birmingham, as chairman. Local branches with committees had been started in London and Birmingham and it was expected that Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, and other large towns would follow suit. Forty MPs had signified their adhesion to the League’s principles and a first general meeting of members was planned to take place on 13 and 14 October 1869 in Birmingham’s Exchange Rooms.

As anticipated, the most distinguished members of the League attended. Among the notables present were Professor Henry Fawcett, MP for Brighton (the country’s first blind MP and husband of leading suffragist, Millicent Garrett Fawcett); Professor James Edwin Thorold Rogers, economist; George Dawson, a nonconformist preacher who campaigned vigorously for political and social reform; George Jacob Holyoake, radical journalist and secularist; and the Archdeacon of Coventry, John Sandford.

George Dixon opened the meeting by clarifying that in stating education should be unsectarian, the League meant teaching of catechisms, creeds or theological tenets of particular sects should be absolutely prohibited in schools. However, that was the extent of its prohibition: everything else was the decision of school managers, who, as the ratepayers’ representatives, would follow the wishes of their constituents. For example, this would give school managers the authority to permit or prohibit the reading of the Bible during school hours, but if permitted, it had to be read without sectarian comment or note of any kind. In addition to this (and with similar caveats), the managers would have power to grant or refuse the use of the classrooms out of school hours for the purposes of religious instruction.

This was contrary to the elementary schooling already available to the working classes, the majority of which was provided in the National Schools by the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church in England and Wales. Its mantra was that religion was the foundation of education.

A provisional report was presented, illustrating the ‘ignorant condition of the youthful population’. An enquiry by the Manchester Society had revealed that of the 100,000 children aged between three and 12 in Manchester and Salford, only 55,000 were on the school books, and average attendance was only 38,000. A similar situation existed in Birmingham where just 15,490 of the 35,018 children aged 3-12 were at school. What education had been received was also deemed unsatisfactory, as around 45 per cent of people aged between 12 and 20 still could not read or write and 75 per cent failed tests in arithmetic and general knowledge.

Stating they were ‘standing in the presence of an overwhelming necessity and a great national danger’ where tens of thousands of children (for whom they were responsible), were being left in ignorance and without any moral influence at all, Archdeacon Sandford went on to say that he had long been in favour of a compulsory education system and that they must have a rate to pay for it. Although he preferred the term ‘undenominational’ to secular or unsectarian, he acknowledged that progress had been so rapid towards agreement between good men of all parties and all religious creeds, that they could now unite in a common cause for country and humanity. This was a real change from only ten years earlier, when the archdeacon thought of nonconformist Dawson as a firebrand.

Dawson’s views on education went a little further. He believed in the doctrine of the family life of a nation, and since every ragged, filthy, untaught, cursing, blaspheming child should be looked on as a child of the nation’s household, it brought shame and disgrace upon them. The only remedy for this was education: compulsory, maintained out of the rates, and secular. Education was the business of the nation, not the clergy.

Clearly something needed to be done. Furthering the necessity of secular instruction, George Holyoake set out to further dispel the notion that the Church could educate the working classes, by claiming (somewhat disparagingly) that:

‘Anyone who had experience of the working class knew that what they suffered most from was confusion of mind. They never saw one thing at time. They mixed up other considerations with the case in hand. They judged the question before them in the light of something else. This was the source of the weakness and prejudice which often made them so impracticable.’

He opined that ‘mixed education made muddle-minded scholars’ and keeping distinct things separate was the shortest path to efficiency. The nation was busy, people had neither time nor money to spare and the State should adopt the speediest and cheapest transit to public knowledge – adding that piety brought nothing to the workplace and even the most devout employer adjusted his wages according to the swiftness and expertise of the workman, not his religious knowledge.

It is little wonder that those people who had been providing elementary education for over 25 years felt aggrieved.

The National Education Union
Even before reports of the NEL’s conference were published, the National Education Union had been created in opposition. From its headquarters in Manchester’s Cheetham Hill it circulated a letter to interested parties, inviting them to its proposed congress to be held in Manchester Town Hall in early November. In the letter, William Stanyer outlined the purpose of the Union, which was to promote enlightened discussion of the question of education by those who had hitherto borne the chief burden of educating the working classes. They would facilitate, not obstruct, the legislation due to be considered in the next parliamentary session. Clearly not in favour of introducing new schemes (i.e. those proposed by the NEL), Stanyer claimed that the English people did not respond well to the imposition of ‘methods and systems foreign to their character’ so any further legislation would need to harmonise with past legislation. He believed any changes should be approached by the earnest and zealous promoters of education under the present system, in a careful and practical spirit – and not left in the hands of doctrinaires and theorists.

It seems that Stanyer and his associates had long been considering the subject of education and planned to engage with the government as the legislation was discussed in the House of Commons. However, the formation of what he and his associates saw as a powerful association in support of secular education, and ‘actively bent on eliminating religious and denominational teaching from the code of popular instruction’, necessitated a union of all in favour of denominational teaching. The opinions of the defenders, as well as of the opponents of the existing system, would be widely communicated.

The National Education Union Congress
As planned, the congress took place in Manchester on 3 and 4 November 1869. The Union’s stated objective was to secure the primary education of every child, by judiciously supplementing the present denominational system of national education, and to assist its aims it had elicited the support of those already working in education to give practical and experimental opinions, not theoretical ones. Described as mainly a clerical synod in one newspaper, these included prominent defender of the Church of England Dudley Ryder, 2nd Earl of Harrowby; Lord Edward Howard, chairman of the Catholic Poor Schools Committee; Lord Robert Montagu, MP for Huntingdonshire and former vice president of the Committee on Education; several school inspectors and several archdeacons, canons, bishops and vicars.

Their rhetoric was often rather caustic. Of course, delegates were defensive of what they saw as an attack, by the NEL, on the education they had long been providing. Lord Harrowby, admitting that although a great deal had been already done there was more yet to do, dismissed the statistics put before the public by the NEL as ‘utterly fallacious’ and ‘absurdly exaggerated’. He claimed that the numerous objections brought against the course proposed by the Union had simply been raised to frighten them out of their intended path.

It seems that the Rev William James Kennedy (a ‘clerical school inspector who profoundly believes in the system he is employed in administering’), set an unsatisfactory tone, perpetuated by other speakers. He used the word ‘secularist’ several times, despite being well aware that the word had a potentially insulting meaning when applied to a certain sect of persons with hostile views towards religion. He also made unseemly remarks about town councillors (who through the NEL’s proposals would share in the management of schools), suggesting that schools should be run by men of high principle ‘with clean hands; men of largeness and tenderness of heart’ – implying that town councillors were not such people.

His remarks were criticised by Dr James Harrison Rigg, principal of the Wesleyan Westminster Training College for day school teachers (once described as an irascible and self-opinionated Victorian minister), who said that to impute bad motives, call names, and to extenuate the evil they all desired to remedy ‘would be a very grave fault of policy’ and many of those strongly disposed to support the Union would be deterred by Kennedy’s manner.

The Dean of Durham, declaring it was very wrong of the NEL to propose anything which he called ‘sweeping encroachment upon religious liberty’, contended that a great deal had been achieved by England’s clergy in the service of religion. Landowners and clergy had contributed financially to the education of children and it was a needless piece of extravagance to throw away the subscriptions derived from children’s pence in National and other schools (the proposal at the time was for schooling to be free, paid for by ratepayers, whereas parents were currently required to pay a small fee for their children’s schooling). He believed that Parliament would not entertain any such proposition. In contrast to assertions by the NEL, he argued that no purely secular plan of education had flourished, apart from in America. Countries such as Prussia and Switzerland, cited by the NEL as being ahead in education, did not have a purely secular system of education, and both Switzerland and France taught religion in schools. The NEU, he said, should endeavour to engage strong popular feeling in favour of their system of education.

The press
The future well-being and prosperity of the nation being dependent on the education of the humbler classes, both congresses were followed eagerly by journalists and the rival schemes reported on in the press.

One paper described the meetings as Birmingham vs Manchester, with the speakers at Birmingham declaring ‘The people are ignorant; let us make it the duty of local authorities to give them knowledge’ and those in Manchester crying ‘The people must be educated; but, whatever you do, don’t let those Birmingham Leaguers educate them.’

At least it was generally agreed that much needed to be done in order to keep pace with other nations: multitudes of children were growing up uneducated and what schooling was available remained unsuited to the future occupations and circumstances of those for whom it was intended if Britain was to succeed in the great industrial competition.

Of the two systems being contested – the NEL’s new free and secular education (supported by local rates), and the NEU’s extension, by use of State grants, of its existing voluntary and denominational system (where it was essential that children contributed to the cost of their education) – it might have made sense to choose the latter’s. It had raised school buildings in every part of the land, and millions of men and women owed it all the (little) knowledge they possessed. It was independent and free from State control and therefore claimed to be more suited to the English mind and character. And, although lacking in some areas, it could be infinitely extended and improved at far less cost than implementing a new, untried and ‘un-English’ system.

But by introducing a new regime – a new start – legislation could make school attendance compulsory. However, since it was difficult to compel the poor to send their children to school if they were unable to pay the ‘school pence’, establishing a free school in every district, supported by either the Exchequer or by local rates, was a better way forward. And by making it secular, there would be no religious rivalries.

The outcome
With local branches of the National Education League in all major conurbations, public meetings to discuss the future of elementary education elicited lively debate between those who identified as either Leaguers or Unionists about how the industrial classes should be taught and how their teaching was to be funded.

By mid-December 1869, the executive committee of the National Education League had prepared heads of the bill (The National Education League Bill), to be introduced into Parliament in the session of 1870.

William Edward Forster, Liberal MP for Bradford, was to take the Bill through Parliament. Although he shared many of the views of the National Education League, he believed that making education secular would create discord with the churches and that in the short term, making schooling compulsory was not practical – there were too few schools. When the Bill was introduced on 17 February 1870, Forster credited both George Dixon and Anthony Mundella with stimulating educational zeal.

The Elementary Education Act 1870 was given Royal Assent on 9 August 1870. Compromise and practicalities meant schooling was neither free nor compulsory and it supplemented rather than superseded the voluntary schools. It was the start of a long process during which many more heated arguments would ensue.