Also known as the Forster's Act, it allowed school boards to make education complusory at the local level. This act affected the children between ages 5 and 12 in England and Wales. This was seen in footnote 1 of page 43 in A City Girl, when it came to disussing about the school children smiling at the blackboard. "Later versions of the act (1876, 1880) helped to increase the number of East End children in schools, but their removal from wage-earning oppurtunities was not unproblematic" (footnote 1)