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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]

This paper explores the contribution of James Bryce as an Assistant Commissioner to the Taunton Commission from 1965 to 1868. It highlights his criticisms of the English middle class and of middle-class education represented in the endowed grammar schools of Lancashire, England. These criticisms were based partly on finely detailed observation of the buildings of these schools in their local and geographical settings. They also drew on acutely developed responses of a sensory and emotive nature relating to a broad sensory register of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The paper therefore helps to develop the potential value of sensory history in the history of education well as to provide a detailed examination of middle-class education in England in the 1860s. It also suggests that the realism characteristic of mid-Victorian writing and art may help to shed further light on the nature and experience of schooling in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the contribution made by the mechanics’ institute movement in Britain just prior to, and following, the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. It argues that far from making little contribution to education, as often portrayed by historians, the movement was ideally positioned to respond to the findings of the Exhibition, which were that foreign goods on display were often more advanced than those produced in Britain. The paper highlights, through a regional study, how well suited mechanics’ institutes were in organising their own exhibitions, providing the idea of this first international exhibition. Subsequently, many offered nationally recognised technical subject examinations through relevant education as well as informing government commissions, prior to the passing of the Technical Instruction Acts in 1889 and the Local Taxation Act of 1890. These acts effectively put mechanics’ institutes into state ownership as the first step in developing further education for all in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The conservativeness of Georgian grammar schools used to be emphasised; however, as the case of geography teaching shows, this picture is complex with the growth of British trade and empire and the requirements of polite society and culture fostering a demand for 'modern' subjects. Drawing on work in the history of education, Georgian society and culture and the history of geography, this paper argues that there was considerable change and development in geographical teaching in some grammar schools stimulated by changes in the nature and perceptions of 'classical' education and increasing demands for 'modern' subjects. It contends that Robert Mayhew's emphasis on the continuity of the early-modern humanist textual geographical tradition within grammar schools does not sufficiently account for changes in teaching practices that occurred in these institutions. It explores how and why geographical subjects were introduced in grammar schools, including the role of teachers such as John Clarke and John Holmes, institutional government and external bodies, and assesses the importance of opposition to this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the effects of imperialism on British (or chiefly English) social life and education in the nineteenth century rather than examining the effects on the colonised as is usually done. It is shown that the nineteenth century was infused with different visual and written images which helped develop attitudes and ideas which influenced social change in Britain. The “imperial gaze” demonstrated a fascination with the unknown and exotic; a scientific curiosity to discover, collect, classify and explain; an economic desire to find and exploit; and mixed motivations from religious, humanitarian and nationalistic impulses to convert, “civilise” and dominate. In different ways and at different levels this entailed a wish to “know” and an urge to pass on presumed “truths” that interlocked imperial influences into educational enterprise, although not necessarily within formal schooling. As the century progressed, events within the expanding empire, combining with scientific theories, helped to develop cultural arrogance, dominated by ideas of white, Western superiority. Yet there was no homogenous, uncontested discourse. As post-imperial debates suggest, chronological shifts, differing gender and class responses are significant. Effects could be paradoxical as those of imperial opportunities and rhetoric were on women's lives. Examples from other imperial nations, especially France and the Netherlands, indicate parallel imperial, sometimes imperialistic, concerns and interests and varying consequences, but in different contexts. The paper ends with some suggestions on how the difficulties of analysing the effects of empire on social change and education could be addressed within history of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is a technology, a production system whose elements comprise material, linguistic and conceptual inventions. This multi-dimensional sense of educational technology is useful whenever attempts are made to understand educational practice. To this end, my paper examines a small corner of the historical or technological record, 'patents of invention', a set of sources that has seldom, if ever, been used in English-language histories of education. To evaluate this source, my attention focuses on the 'abridgements', published between 1855 and 1930, where patent applications were grouped according to their use (e.g. as 'furniture' or 'stationery'); and the diversity of these records will be illustrated by reference to an invention - the school desk - that was prominent over the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

William Horsley (1775-1858) was active in London from the late 1790s. A founder member of the Philharmonic Society, Horsley was at the heart of the musical establishment, working as a composer, organist, commentator and teacher. His teaching career spanned over 50 years, during which time he took private pupils, trained choristers and organists and taught at many boarding-schools for young ladies. In 1809 Miss Ann Black took up residence at 37 Kensington Square, where she opened a boarding-school and engaged Horsley as music master in 1828. Her school prospectus and surviving correspondence offer an insight into the difficulty of sustaining a viable school business in a competitive market. Horsley's papers shed light on the business dealings between masters and school proprietors, both depending on income from pupils to sustain them. Through his correspondence and published work we learn more of Horsley's teaching method and of his working relationships with his pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The British school system is no longer capable of delivering what it claims because of increasing educational diversity requiring a move away from traditional approaches. Exploring the realist and naturalist ideas of Dickens' Hard Times (1998) and Eliot's East Coker (2001) show how ideals of the Victorian system can be expressed in teaching today for raising personal and academic standards. New technology, changing mores and political interventions threaten education with little consensus on its purpose in today's world. Government statistics reveal a decline in UK standards with one of European's highest illiteracy rates. The review analyses the ethical dilemmas surrounding education. It contributes uniquely and significantly to provoke the creative and scientific imagination of educators and model a spirit of enquiry for better futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents case studies of the use of physics textbooks in science education in France and England in the nineteenth century. The author discusses growing demand for physics textbooks in both England and France and examines textbook production, authors, and the relationship between textbook production and teaching. Textbook physics is considered in a cross-national context.

The blackboard, a useful teaching tool in nineteenth-century England, was transformed into a teaching necessity in the decades follwing 1870, when the Education Acts made school free and mandatory for all children. The resulting huge population of schoolchildren inspired the development of teaching techniques appropriate for large-group learning. Many of these techniques relied on the blackboard as a reusable demonstration space visible to the entire class at once, unlike a book or slate. To share these new practices among teachers, particularly the novice teachers recruited to serve the increased school population, dozens of teaching manuals were published around the turn of the twentieth century. These manuals’ instructions for how to teach reading, writing, arithmetic and nature study to elementary school students offer historians a rare glimpse into teachers’ and students’ school experiences by suggesting how the blackboard shaped classroom practices in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Grant regulations under the Education Minutes of 1846 prohibited ministers of religion teaching in aided schools. This article examines the background to this professional disability, the extent of its application and its survival for 112 years. The impact of changing social conditions and the creation of new justifications as the policy became anachronistic are discussed. The fiftieth anniversary of its abolition in 1959 allows a long view of this regulation, unjust yet remarkably resistant to change. Documentary sources, public and personal, reveal the actions of policy-makers and concerns of groups and individuals, and expose complex issues forming the historical context of this contested aspect of teacher employment. Attention is given to the effects of central policy on individual schools and teachers at significant stages in the account. Finally, suggestions are made for further research on the employment of ordained teachers since the ban was lifted 50 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the nature of physical education in late-19th and early-20th century Great Britain in pubic and private elementary schools, preparatory schools, boys' grammar schools and girls' schools. It discusses how the students that attended these schools during this time would later serve as imperial administrators in Tanganyika and as a result much of what they experienced would serve as the basis for the physical education that would be taught there. The article examines the types of activities that were part of the British physical education curriculum and explores the influence it had on British-ruled Tanganyika and later on Tanzania.

The article examines the introduction of organized team sports as a mandatory part of the curricula of the British private schools known as endowed public schools in the latter half of the 19th century. Sports are considered as part of a larger reform of those schools, which previously had been known for both poor living conditions, harsh discipline, a culture of bullying and violence, and cases of actual rebellions against administration. The use of sports as an element of social control and social engineering to restore school discipline and create positive sentiments among students is examined. George Cotton, headmaster of Marlborough School, who took that position after a rebellion by students in 1851, is used as an example of an educator who used sports as a means of social control.

The article examines the 19th century educational philosophy of the British private schools known as endowed public schools. The idealistic statements of headmasters of those schools on the aims of education, which stressed the moral and ethical development of students, are contrasted with statements from former students of the period which depict a harsh environment where physical strength and ability to endure poor conditions were more essential than scholarship. It is argued that the stated concern of the schools for moral and religious education was used to hide a system based on social Darwinism, and that the headmasters and other educators were at pains to hide the fact from themselves as well as others.

The article focuses on British school administrator Edward Bowen, assistant headmaster at Harrow School, a leading private school of the type called endowed public schools, from 1859-1901. Bowen's advocacy of the importance of sports in education due to its moral and ethical benefits is considered. That advocacy is examined in its relationship to Victorian society's concern with the relationship between physical and moral health. Bowen's own athletic ability in a wide variety of sports and his influence on sports at Harrow School are described. Bowen's political and social ideas, very progressive for his time and profession, are compared to the philosophy of sports he endorsed.

The article discusses public education in Great Britain in the 19th century, focusing on the public schools known as grammar schools. The transformation of several such schools into the private schools known as endowed public schools is considered as a part of the trend of the spread of the idea of the so-called "games ethic," a belief in the importance of sports and physical education as part of curricula, throughout British education of the period. It is noted that failing grammar schools frequently became highly successful endowed public schools. This is attributed to the growth of the country's middle class, who were attracted to the values those schools represented.

The article examines the philosophy of education in Great Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly that of the elite private schools known as public schools, and how that philosophy was installed in the educational systems of Great Britain's colonies. The emphasis on both the physical and moral benefits of sports stressed by those schools is seen as one of the basic tenets of that philosophy, which stressed the development of a student's character more than the acquisition of knowledge. Colonial administrators of the period are cited in which this idea is explicitly stated. Accounts of education in British colonies in Africa are given to support the contention that the African students of the period had exactly the opposite view of their schooling, placing the acquisition of academic credentials far ahead of sports.

The article examines social conditions at the private schools known as "public" schools in Great Britain in the mid-19th century, focusing on the role of sports in school life. Quotations from memoirs of school life written by graduates are cited as evidence that harsh living conditions, poor and inadequate food, frequent corporal punishment and inadequate supervision leading to endemic bullying and other problems were common features of these self-consciously elite schools. Sports, particularly rougher sports such as rugby and soccer, were often developed as an alternative outlet for the fist-fighting among students which was a notable feature of life at the public schools until at least 1850. The Marlborough School is used as an example of the upper class public school of the period.

The article presents a historical analysis of object lesson cards which were used in object centered and child centered education in Great Britain and the United States in the early 19th century. The lessons associated with the cards, which featured an object adhered to cards, were developed to teach children about the senses and sense perception and about subjects such as geography, natural history, industry, commodities, and religion. A discussion of an object lesson card from the Cotsen Children's Library at Princeton University, which featured a cookie and was used to instruct children on the ways that wheat was utilized in food products, is presented.

This article examines the opinions, arguments and actions which led to the foundation of universities in the North: in alphabetical order, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield. Among the topics discussed are: the availability of funding from private sources, the extent of local (especially aristocratic) support, the limited involvement of governments, the differing attitudes towards science and technology, and civic rivalries. Essential features of the ‘university movement’ are displayed, along with the assumptions and ambitions of the Victorians, locally and nationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A.F.B. Roberts' article "A New View of the Infant School Movement," and J.H. Higginson's article "Dame Schools," previously published in the "British Journal of Educational Studies," both indicated that there were grounds for re-assessing the position of the Dame School in the history of English Education. It is not therefore the intention of this article to defend the many thousands of dame schools in the nineteenth century which undoubtedly were travesties of schools, even by nineteenth-century standards and which official reports sought to expose, but rather, to put forward certain hypotheses for consideration and discussion.

This article presents information on the criticism faced by the public schools education curriculum in the 1860s in Great Britain. In general critics found the curriculum of the public schools inadequate in two ways. In the first place it was too narrow. In the second place it was irrelevant to the new industrial society which had established itself. It was inevitable therefore that much of the debate should concern itself with the importance of expanding the curriculum through the development of the Sciences and the so called Modern subjects such as History and Geography. And it was likewise inevitable that considerable attention should be paid to the role of the mother tongue as a necessary field of study within a reformed curriculum. The article further informs that the debate on the mother tongue took place through Commission, through pamphlet, through speech, through editorial, with great vigor over a whole decade. The author comments on the clarity and insistence with which the failure to teach the mother tongue was picked out as a major deficiency of the school curriculum and the obscurity and half-heartedness of any practical proposals to remedy the deficiency.