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Issues associated with school absenteeism have attracted considerable attention and have long been one of the focal points of government strategies for school improvement. Pupil non-attendance is not a new phenomenon and featured prominently in Her Majesty’s Inspectors’ reports from 1839. This paper outlines the patterns of and influences on elementary education in early Victorian industrial Monmouthshire during the period 1839–1865. The twin problems of irregular attendance and early withdrawal of pupils are discussed together with the limitations and unreliability of contemporary statistics. An examination of the reasons for absence is then discussed together with the remedies proposed to alleviate the problem with particular reference to the contribution of the Prize Schemes. The paper illustrates the disadvantages of basing an educational system on voluntary endeavour and enlightened self-interest and highlights the paradox that, despite the introduction of mandatory attendance, the problem is still persistent and protracted and finding definitive solutions still remains elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The separation of examining from teaching, pushed furthest in the ‘examining university’ of which London University, founded in 1836, was the model, was a much-debated principle in nineteenth-century Britain. This separation was generally rejected in Scotland, but only after complex controversies that illustrate how Scots defined their university tradition in comparative terms, and how Scottish developments interacted with those in England and Ireland. Among the issues involved were proposals for a National University or central examining board, and claims that graduates should have a right to give ‘extramural’ teaching in competition with professors. The paper traces this aspect of university reform in Scotland from the 1820s to the 1890s, and argues that the professorial model and the integration of teaching and examining were successfully consolidated and defended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The nineteenth‐century archive of the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) has been overlooked by economic historians. Yet the archive reveals how the PWLB came to play a major part in the financing of new schools, water supplies and sewers in the 1870s. Ten thousand loan applications have been analysed to highlight the changing patterns of the PWLB's lending, while the 60 volumes of minutes indicate why the pattern changed. The analysis shows that in the 1870s there was a large rise in local infrastructure investment caused by the switch from permissive to compulsory public health and education legislation. At the same time, the PWLB became predominantly a low‐cost, rather than a market rate, lender. This change shows how MPs’ views developed as they became more sensitive to the impact of the local costs of parliamentary legislation. Overall, the activities of the PWLB illustrate the legislative and institutional changes that contributed significantly to the growth in the role and spending of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The children of navvies were subject to the vagaries of an itinerant lifestyle, and during the latter years of the nineteenth century this invariably affected their relationship with an educational system that mandated compulsory attendance. Based primarily on school records, this article explores the contrasting ways in which teachers perceived navvy children who were admitted to a number of schools during the construction of one particular railway in the mid-1890s. Perceptions concerning the children’s behaviour, attendance, abilities and educational progress, together with evidence of the treatment they received, are considered in the context of contemporary attitudes towards the navvy community and aspects of the navvy lifestyle. The admission of navvy children also had logistical implications for schools, and these are assessed in terms of the pressures placed upon financial resources and teaching staff. This illustrates the disparity that could exist between small rural schools and larger schools in urban areas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Unlike the majority of the major female authors of the Victorian period, Elizabeth Gaskell was a mother, and her understanding of motherhood was one of the defining preoccupations of both her life and her fiction. In her lively and intimate letters to her four daughters, Gaskell provides a fascinating insight into mid-Victorian motherhood. ‘Conscientious and well-informed’, frank and self-reflexive, Gaskell's letters reflect the social and intellectual ferment of the period and shed light on some of the most pressing issues faced by mothers of the period, including the psychological development and education of children, the Victorian crises of religious schism and unbelief, and the rise of feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]