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Schools Introduction

In the early nineteenth century education was provided by a variety of different schools. Ragged schools provided a basic education to poor children living in towns and cities. Some factory and colliery owners ran their own schools. Sunday schools were founded in 1785. Dame schools were run by women often with little education themselves, in a room in their own home and were really a type of childminding. Some schools, like the Old Church Schools in Moorfields, were founded by churches. As early as 1827 the Corporation provided two free Elementary schools, the North and South Corporation Schools. The Blue Coat School was founded in 1708 to help educate poor children.

However as late as the 1860's half the children in Britain did not go to school. Liverpool had particular problems as its population increased rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Many of these people were very poor. They could not afford to pay for their children to go to school and needed them to earn some money from working.

Minutes of the meeting of
the Liverpool School Board
1st December 1873.

This situation changed after the Education Act 1870 when the Liverpool School Board was set up. This organisation could build and look after its own schools and many that they built are still used today. Schools were inspected to make sure that standards were maintained. By 1880 all children up to the age of 12 were supposed to go to school, although this was not easy to enforce. In 1876 forty thousand children still did not attend school in Liverpool. School fees were abolished in 1891. By 1902 School Boards were replaced by Local Education Authorities and Board Schools, as they were known, were renamed Council Schools.

Immediately after 1870 the emphasis had been on education for young children, but after 1902 more attention was given to extending secondary education for older children. By 1918 the school leaving age was 14 and it was not raised to 16 until 1965. School meals were first provided in 1906 and a school medical service in 1907. After 1944 secondary education for children over 11 was divided into grammar, technical and secondary modern schools. From the mid-1960's comprehensive schools, catering for children of all abilities, were increasingly common, although today ideas are changing again.