The document summarizes education in Victorian Britain from the late 18th century to 1891. It provides a timeline of key acts and legislation that established and expanded the education system. Sunday schools in the late 18th century provided basic learning for poor children. The 1833 Factory Act restricted child labor and supported schooling. The 1870 Education Act established school boards and built schools. The 1880 act made school attendance compulsory from ages 5-10. In 1891, education became free for all children. The document also describes what a typical Victorian classroom was like, including large class sizes, gender separation, teaching methods focused on religion, reading, writing and arithmetic, and strict discipline with corporal punishment.

1. Education in Victorian Britain

2. Timeline
1833
Factory Act
Restriction of children’s
employment in factories and
support for schooling
Late 18th century
Sunday Schools
provided for basic
learning
1870
Education Act
Establishment of a
system of schools
1880
Education Act 2
Compulsory
school for
children aged 5-
10
1891
Education free for
children

3. Historical overview
• In the late 18th century, Sunday schools were
held at church, supported financially by the
middle class.They provided children from poor
families with opportunity to receive some
basic learning, usually the ability to read. Then
the promoters of Sunday schools became
involved in setting up schooling in the growing
industrial towns.

4. • 1833 – The Factory Act restricted the
employment of children in factories and a
state grant was approved to support
schooling. This made it clear that there was a
duty on the government ‘to promote the
religious and moral education of the labouring
classes’. In particular it was felt that literacy
needed to be extended so that working
people had the power to understand their
responsibilities as citizens.

5. • 1870 – The Education Act established a
system of 'school boards' to build and manage
schools in areas where they were needed.
• In 1880 a further Education Act finally made
school attendance compulsory between the
ages of five and ten
• Education became free for all children in 1891

6. Useful links
• http://www.channel4.com/learning/microsites/Q/
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/primaryhistory/vic

7. A Victorian class
• Classes were very large, with 40/50 pupils
• Boys and girls sat separatedly
• Children sat in rows and the teacher sat at a desk facing
the class. At the start of the Victorian age, most teachers
were men, but later many women trained as teachers.
• Teachers were poorly paid. Older children often helped
them.
• Most children wrote on slates (=lavagna di ardesia). They
wiped their slates clean by spitting on it or rubbing with
their coat sleeve or finger! Older children learnt to write in
ink on paper. It was difficut to write without leaving blots
on the paper.

8. A Victorian class

9. Methods and subjects
• The Victorians valued facts more than imagination
• The education system was based on Utilitarian
theories
• Lessons were based on the four 'R's - reading, 'riting,
religion and 'rithmetic.
• Children were often taught by copying and repeating
what the teacher told them. Lessons included
teaching in right and wrong, cleanliness and the
Christian religion.

10. Rules and punishments
• Discipline in schools was often strict. Children
were beaten for even minor wrongdoings,
with a cane, on the hand or bottom.

11. • A teacher could also punish a child by making
them stand in the corner wearing a 'dunce's
cap‘ or a label saying what they had done.

12. • Another, very boring, punishment was writing
'lines'. This meant writing out the same
sentence (such as 'Schooldays are the
happiest days of my life' 100 times or more).
• Obedient children were given prizes

13. From “Hard Times”

14. Quotes from “A Man of Realities”
(“Hard Times”)
Description of MR GRADGRIND
• A man of fact and calculations
• With a rule and a pair of scales and a multiplication table
always in his pocket, ready to weigh and measure any parcel
of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to

15. • Cannon loaded […]with FACTS and prepared to blow them
clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge
• A galvanizing apparatus charged with grim mechanical
substitute for the tender imaginations that were to be
stormed away

16. Methods and subjects
“the little pitchers before him […] were to
be filled so full of facts” from “Hard Times”

17. DEFINITIONS
CALCULATIONS
FACTS
UNIFORMITY
LACK OF
DIVERSITYMONOTONY
REALITY
BLACK AND
WHITE

18. CHILDREN
imagination
feelings
spontaneity
innocencebright
colours
magic
fantastic
stories
individuality
and diversity
lively mind

19. What’s a horse
according to Mr Gradgrind?
‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four
grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in
the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard,
but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in
mouth.'

20. What’s a horse
according to Sissy?
affection tenderness
the circus
warm feeling enjoyment
softness
strength
neigh
her father

21. Marc Chagall, “Le cirque”