Elementary Education from the 1860s to 1914

Before the mid nineteenth century British governments were suspicious of bureaucratic centralization and state intervention, and felt it unnecessary to emulate the mass system of state schooling adopted by some European countries for the purpose of strengthening centralized government, promoting national unity, encouraging economic development and buttressing ruling élites. In Britain the ruling classes felt little need for a supportive bureaucracy, while national unity and economic prosperity were achieved with a minimum of state interference. It is true that, in Scotland, belief in the national educational system inaugurated in the seventeenth century persisted, with tradition giving the Church (in lieu of a Scottish state) an intimate role in schooling and with the universities regarded as state institutions. But England was the dominant partner and preferred to regard secondary schools and universities as independent institutions and to leave elementary schooling to voluntary effort with limited and indirect state support.1