work of elementary education, the reading, writing and arithmetic of young children; but they thought that the importance of this training, which must be the foundation of all other teaching, had been lost sight of, and that there was justice in the common complaint that while a fourth of the scholars were really taught, three-fourths after leaving school forgot everything they had learnt there.
Mr Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) as vice-president of the Committee of Council (1859–1864) adopted the system of payment by results in what became famous in history as the Revised Code, issued in 1862 and so called because it was a revision of the minutes and regulations of the Committee of Council, which were first collected and issued in the Revised Code.form of a code in 1860. The Revised Code provided for the payment of a grant of 4s. upon the old principle and a further grant of not more than 8s. upon the result of examination. Mr Lowe declared of the system in the House of Commons that “if it was costly it should at least be efficient; and if it was inefficient it should at least be cheap.” In fact, it proved to be cheap; the giant fell from £813,400 in 1861 to £636,800 in 1865. The upholders of the existing system denounced the Revised Code as an undeserved slight upon the voluntary managers, and even as a breach of faith with the great religious denominations. On purely educational grounds, which need not be here re-capitulated, it was at once viewed with misgiving by many authorities, including Matthew Arnold. To meet objections, some modifications were introduced in the code under the Conservative government in 1867. The system of paying grant upon the result of individual examination of the scholars was not finally abolished till 1904.
The years immediately preceding 1870 were occupied with discussion and preparation for the great legislative measure for which the time was now felt to have arrived. Good work was done in this direction by the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1866, over which Sir John Pakington presided. For reasons Proceedings preliminary to
the act of 1870.connected with the political situation of the moment this committee never reported, but the minutes of evidence and the draft report prepared by Sir John Pakington contained much valuable material in the way of criticism of the existing system and suggestion for the coming settlement; in particular the draft report insisted upon the inevitableness of an education rate. In 1868 the Conservative government brought in, but did not proceed with, an education bill deliberately discarding the principle of rate-aid on the ground that it would destroy voluntary contributions and gradually starve out the denominational schools. In 1867 and again in 1868 Mr Bruce (afterwards Lord Aberdare), Mr W. E. Forster and Mr Algernon Egerton introduced a bill which formed the basis of the measure of 1870. As redrafted in 1868 the bill of Mr Bruce and his coadjutors proposed a universal system of municipal and parochial rating with liberty for voluntary schools to unite themselves to the rate-aided system under their existing management, subject to the acceptance of a conscience clause. The bill also proposed to empower town councils to co-opt outsiders upon their education committees. Thus both in the principle of co-optation and in the extension of rate aid to schools not under public control the bill of these Liberal statesmen in 1868 anticipated certain controverted features of Mr Balfour’s Education Act of 1902. In the meantime, in the country the Education League, originated at Birmingham, was carrying on a propaganda in favour of free secular schools, whilst the Education Union, formed to counteract the influence of the league, urged a settlement upon the old lines. As a concession to the popular feeling against secularism, the league proposed to allow Bible reading without doctrinal exposition. Thus opinion was sufficiently focussed to enable Mr Gladstone’s administration in 1870 to undertake the comprehensive measure of educational reform for which the country had had to wait so long.
The Elementary Education Act of 1870 bore in every respect the marks of compromise. As Mr Forster explained in introducing the bill, the object of the government was “to complete the voluntary system and to fill up gaps,” not to supplant it. To this end the Education Department was charged with the duty of ascertaining whether or not there was Act of 1870.in every parish a deficiency of public school accommodation, and provision made for the formation of school boards in every school district (i.e. parish or municipal borough) requiring further public school accommodation. Such accommodation might consist either of public elementary schools as defined by the act, or other schools giving efficient and suitable elementary education. The definition of public elementary school contained in section 7 of the act is still in force. Shortly, a public elementary school is a school subject to a conscience clause entitling scholars to complete exemption from all religious instruction and observance whatsoever. Any religious instruction or observance in the school must be either at the beginning or the end of the school meeting. The school must also be open at all times to the government inspectors and must be conducted in accordance with the conditions required to be fulfilled in order to obtain an annual parliamentary grant. In the same connexion an important change was made in the conditions of inspection by declaring that it should be no part of the duties of the inspector to inquire into religious instruction, whilst a later section of the act provided that no parliamentary grant should be made in respect of any religious instruction.
Three important changes were made in the measure during its passage through parliament. As at first proposed, (1) the school boards were not to be directly elected by the ratepayers, but were to be appointed by the town council or the vestry. (2) These nominated boards were empowered either to provide schools themselves or to assist existing public elementary schools, provided that such assistance was granted on equal terms to all such schools, upon conditions to be approved by the Education Department. Thus the school board, if it exercised the option of assisting denominational schools, would have been obliged to assist all or none. (3) With regard to its own schools, the school board was to settle the form of religious instruction. These proposals raised serious opposition in the country, and when the committee stage of the bill was reached two fundamental changes were made in the policy of the bill. In the first place, as Mr Gladstone put it, the government had decided “to sever altogether the tie between the local board and the voluntary schools.” In lieu of the suggested rate-aid they proposed an increased grant from the treasury, that is to say, the voluntary schools were left standing as state-aided schools under private management, side by side with the new rate-supported schools.
Next, the character of the religious instruction in the board schools was determined upon an undenominational basis by a provision which has become known to history after the name of its author, then Mr Cowper-Temple, as the Cowper-Temple clause (section 14 of the act), directing that “no religious catechism or Cowper-Temple clause.religious formulary which is distinctive of any particular denomination shall be taught in the school.” The clause was not intended to exclude doctrinal exposition, and was in fact a compromise not merely between absolute secularism and denominationalism, but between denominationalism and the view of those who would have the Bible read without note or comment. The Apostles’ Creed as a symbol common to all denominations of Christians was held by Mr Forster (at the suggestion of Mr Gladstone) not to be excluded under the Cowper-Temple clause. The result was the establishment in the schools, upon the lines laid down by Joseph Lancaster at the beginning of the 19th century, of what may be termed the common Protestantism of the English nation; and though Mr Disraeli urged that a religion without formularies was in fact a new religion, and that in leaving its exposition to the teachers we were creating a new sacerdotal class, the Cowper-Temple compromise, notwithstanding its inherent want of logic, stood the test of experience for more than a generation against the consistent denominationalists on the one hand and the party of secular education on the other. It is important to observe that the act of 1870 left the giving of
