The Elementary Education of 1870, also known as The Forster Act after the liberal Parliament member William Forster, was a reformation act that required national compulsory education for children ages five to 13 in England and Wales. The Act was one of the first passed by Parliament that promoted compulsory education and its goals were to provide free, compulsory, nonreligious education for children where schools were not available and to reduce the amount of child labor in England and Wales. Many more acts dealing with compulsory education were passed between the years 1870 and 1893 (Dalgleish). The Elementary Education Act covered reforms for many aspects of a child’s education, including public funding for schools, regular inspections by the school board to ensure proper educational spaces as well as a high quality of schooling, and educational financial support from parents who are able. The Act also institutionalized a religious separation from public education, stating that religious teachings be non-denominational and the Act also allowed parents to decide whether or not to withdraw their children from any religious schooling. The Act also allowed women to be elected on school boards as reforms for women’s rights were also being promoted through the Married Women’s Property Act of the same year (Tucker). 

     The main backlash against the Elementary Education Act dealt with religious pressures and uncertainty of funding. With the general advancement away from education intersecting with religion, the Church of England was afraid of a loss of control over the education of Great Britain while some specific schools also wanted to continue to have denominational teachings. The Educational Act resolved these issues by still allowing schools to choose to teach religion but also allowing parents to withdraw students from these teachings as well as not favoring one denomination of Christianity over another. Another fear that arose from the Act was the uncertainty of mass education and state subsidies (Dalgleish). The Act then required parents who could afford to pay for their child’s schooling to do so while those who could not would be supported through state subsidies. 

Dalgleish, Walter. A Plain Reading of the Elementary Education Act. London, John Marshall & Co., 1870.

Tucker, Herbert F. “In the Event of a Second Reform.” BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History. Ed. Dino Franco Felluga. Extension of Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, June 2012, Web. Accessed 2 November 2020.