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Since the start of the industrial revolution, education had been a bit of a hit and miss affair. There were a few “public” schools, which charged a very high fee and were only available to the very rich. That is still true today. If my parents were paying for my education today then with school fees, books, lunches, clubs, they would have paid out about a quarter of a million pounds over the 14 years I was at school.
There were also 'Dame' schools”, which were usually run by one woman. She wasn't a trained teacher more of a child-minder. She would often be quite poor so she would take as many children as she could fit in and the also poor parents would pay her a few pence a week to look after their children and maybe teach them how to read and sew.
There were Sunday Schools which were there to teach children religion and there were also so called Ragged Schools for poor children. Here older children might teach younger ones. From 1833 factory owners were supposed to provide at least 2 hours education every day for child-workers, but not many children actually got lessons.
In 1870 Parliament brought out an Education Act which said there had to be a school in every town and village and these schools would be run by local people. Families would pay about 3 pence (about £10 in today's money) to send their child to school. However poor families really needed the extra income children could earn so attendance wasn't that good.
In 1880 another act said that all children aged 5 to 10 must go to primary school, so every child would receive at least a basic education. Attendance officers often visited the homes of children who failed to attend school. Children under the age of 13 who were employed were required to have a certificate to show they had reached the educational standard. In 1893 the age for compulsory education was raised to 11 and in 1899 it was put up to 12,
In 1891 yet another act made education free for everyone attending one of the new schools set up under the 1870 act.
In those days, lessons were mainly a teacher writing with chalk on a black board and pupils copying things down on a slate using a pencil or learning things by memory. The class size could be as high as 60.
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