Although the Elementary Education Act didn’t receive the Royal Assent and become law until the 9^th August 1870, it is fair to treat the whole of 2020 as the 150th anniversary year of this key piece of education legislation in England.

The 1870 Elementary Education Act stands as the very first piece of legislation to deal specifically with the provision of education in Britain. Most importantly, it demonstrated a commitment to provision of schooling on a national scale rather than the piecemeal provision that had existed before this date.

The 1870 Act allowed existing voluntary schools to carry on unchanged, but established a system of ‘school boards’ to build and manage schools in areas where they were needed. The boards were locally elected bodies which drew their funding from the local rates. Unlike the voluntary schools, religious teaching in the board schools was to be ‘non-denominational’.

This compromise saved the government a great deal of money, as it didn’t have to deal with either buying or replacing the existing schools, many of which were run by the various churches and especially the Church of England. The legacy of that decision is still obvious in the governance of schools in England in 2020.

Although the 1870 Education Act was a start, like many pieces of legislation it didn’t fully achieve the aims of its supporters, and further Acts of Parliament were necessary to ensure that all young children were attending school and not working. However, right up until the 1970s, some children were identified as medically ineducable and not required to attend school, even though the concept of ‘special schools’ had been introduced in 1893.

How will we celebrate this key anniversary in education? Not I suspect in the same way that the government will celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the ending of World War 2 in 1945. How many local libraries and museums will arrange exhibitions to record the value of education to Society across the generations since 1870?

Many of the board Schools built as a result of the 1870 Act still exist, and their recognisable brick built outlines, often three stories in height under a pitched roof, can still be seen across the urban areas of England, built where schools in sufficient numbers had not existed in 1870. Some have been converted into flats, but many that survived the bombings of the two world wars still serve their original purpose of providing a building for schooling. Today they are often primary schools and not all-through elementary schools.

According to English Heritage, there are over 5,000 listed school buildings in England https://historicengland.org.uk/advice/planning/local-heritage/historic-school-buildings/ Their search mechanism doesn’t make it easy to identify whether there are Board Schools built as a result of the 1870 Act that have been listed. Certainly, many listed school buildings either pre-date the 1870 Act or are of a much more recent construction.

I look forward to hearing of celebrations to mark this important piece of legislation as 2020 unfolds.