A brief history of Church schools

Before the early 19th Century it was largely only children from the upper classes who had any formal education, largely provided through private tutoring. However, during the early and middle part of the 19th Century there was a drive for mass provision of a Christian education for the poor, through the ‘National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church’. This was the forerunner to the National Society (Church of England) for Promoting Religious Education, which was founded in 1811. This is now known more simply as the National Society.

By 1851 the Church had established 17,000 schools. Nearly sixty years later the 1870 Education Act brought state provision of public education into being and this Act produced the partnership over education between the state and the church that still exists today. At the beginning of the 20th century there were 14,000 voluntary schools, of which over 1,000 were Roman Catholic, a similar number were provided by the Wesleyans and others, and the majority of the remainder were Church of England. At the beginning of the Second World War, seventy years after the introduction of state provision, the Church still provided schooling for nearly one-third of school-age children.

Difficulty was being experienced in maintaining the quality of premises and equipment, but the schools were still needed in order to maintain education provision nationally. The 1944 Education Act enabled Church schools to choose to become either Voluntary Controlled, and accept a measure of state funding and control, or to remain more independent as Voluntary Aided. The Act also brought in the compulsory daily act of collective worship and religious instruction. In the 1950s and 1960s the number of Roman Catholic schools expanded considerably, especially at secondary phase. Anglican expansion at this level was more modest, and there was actually a decline in the number of primary phase schools.