England, History of Education Technical, Vocational, Teachers, University, and Adult Education (National Institute)

Technical and Vocational Education
Nowadays we think of this as being for those over 16 who have achieved a secondary school certificate of some kind. It was not always thus, for example universities catered largely for 15 to 19-year-olds coming out of private/public or grammar schools. Boys destined for the clergy went to Oxford or Cambridge, the only English universities until 1826. The most important early medical training centres were not in England, but at Edinburgh and other Scottish universities and at Leyden in Holland.

After finishing public or grammar school boys wishing to take up law typically entered one of the London Inns of Chancery and Inns of Court whose admission registers date from 1669 (Hey), but may have gone to a university instead or in addition. Apprenticeships in trades usually started at age 14.

LEAs (Local Education Authorities) were also given responsibility for further education in 1944, taking over existing facilities and building new colleges of art, commerce, technology and teacher training. Polytechnics began in 1969 and achieved university status in 1992.

Teachers
Early teachers were all clergymen appointed by the Roman Catholic Church. After the reformation the Anglican Church continued the firm hold on education, teachers being required by a canon of 1603 to be licensed by a bishop. These licenses will be found in diocesan records with the occasional dismissal for heretical teaching, whilst prosecutions of unlicensed teachers can be found in the church court records. Jews, Quakers, and after the Act of Toleration in 1689 other nonconformists, were permitted to teach and have their own schools. Grammar school teachers were often clergymen on meagre stipends, receiving an additional salary whilst waiting for a more lucrative benefice.

Few head teachers at the beginning of the 19th century had been college-trained, although many had studied part-time for a certificate. Many had risen from the ranks of the stipendiary monitors who had no formal training and could be as young as 11. In 1846 the pupil-teacher system was introduced whereby 13-year-olds were appointed and paid for a five-year period apprenticing as teachers, learning their own lessons in the evenings. If they performed well they could go, by payment or scholarship, on a two- or three -year teacher training course which opened up a new career path, particularly for young women. The minimum age for apprenticeship as a pupil-teacher was raised to 14 in 1877, and this system lasted until 1906.

Records of National Society teachers trained at the Central School 1812-1851, St. Marks Chelsea 1841-1848, and Battersea 1844-1848 are kept at the Church of England Record Society and copies of the National Society Monthly Paper 1849-1874 and the School Guardian 1875-1930s are also available there.

Records of the nonconformist British and Foreign School Society are at the Old School House, 1 Hillingdon Hill, Uxbridge, Middlesex UB10 0AA.=; George F. Bartle has written a brief description in 1989. The Records of the British and Foreign School Society. Genealogists’ Magazine Vol 23 #3, page 102-103. Teachers’ records begin in 1804 for men and 1806 for women, and there is a detailed online catalogue available.

The Teachers Registration Council Registers 1902-1948 are at the Society of Genealogists are comprise 160 volumes giving date, number, name of school at which employed, certificates, memberships, training, and career (Cleaver).

University
For hundreds of years the main function of the universities was to prepare young men for church ministry, as well as provide an education for the aristocracy and the occasional brilliant commoner or peasant. In England, Oxford was established during the 12th century and Cambridge during the 13th. There were four early Scottish ones, St. Andrews (1410), Glasgow (1451), Aberdeen (1494) and Edinburgh (1582) and an Irish one founded in 1571 - Trinity College, Dublin. There were no early Welsh universities, most students from Wales going to Jesus College, Oxford.

All of the early universities were ecclesiastical establishments responsible to Rome. Students were mostly aged 15-19 and were considered clerics, with heads shaved and wearing gowns and hoods like monks, hence the origin of modern academic dress. The early curriculum consisted of seven liberal arts: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium) and rhetoric, grammar and logic (the trivium) all taught in Latin! Consequently clerics and scholars from all parts of Europe could converse with one another in this lingua franca.

Control passed out of the Pope’s hands at the Reformation in the 1530s and teaching became more secular. Some new colleges were created at Oxford and Cambridge but no others until the redbrick universities commenced in the 19th century, the first being London (1826) and Durham (1837). Significant numbers of new universities were established in the late 19th century, followed by another wave in the last four decades of the 20th century, including the long-distance Open University which awarded its first degrees in 1973, and the more informal University of the Third Age (U3A) providing educational opportunities for the over-fifties. The foundation dates of the major British universities, including the halls and colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, are given by John Richardson’s The Local Historian’s Encyclopedia.

Prior to 1871 Oxford, Cambridge and Durham admitted only Anglican students, but London was non-sectarian from its foundation in 1826. Of course the situation was reversed before 1534, when Oxford and Cambridge were affiliated with the Roman Catholic church so students were all, at least nominally, Catholic

Although a few women did attend Girton College, Oxford from 1869, or Newnham College, Cambridge from 1871, London was the first university to admit women to its degrees, in 1878.

Adult Education
The Adult School Movement was established by the Quakers in the 19th century to provide religiously-based, but undenominational education.

The first Mechanics Institute was established in 1810 in Chester and others followed rapidly, especially in the industrial areas of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire; there were 70 in England by 1825. They were intended for mechanics (which meant craftsmen and manual workers) but were not as successful as had been hoped, largely because the students lacked sufficient prior elementary schooling.

Working Men’s Colleges were initiated in 1842 in Sheffield for both men and women. Classes were offered at 6.30am and 7.30pm and cost 9d per week. More than a dozen similar colleges came into being during the next 25 years, generally open to those over 16 who were proficient in the three R’s.

In 1867 the University extension movement was founded to provide adult education opportunities. The latter part of the 19th century also saw the formation of middle class musical, scientific, philosophical, and literary societies as well as book clubs and circulating libraries.

Night Schools were established from 1889 where capable young people could study part-time for occupations previously closed to those from working class backgrounds.

The Association to Promote the Higher Education of Working Men was established by Albert Mansbridge in 1903. The first branch started in Reading in 1904 and in 1905 the group adopted its present name, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), under which a plethora of courses, including genealogy, are offered to adults nowadays. A history of the adult school movement is provided by Rowntree and Binns’ A History of the Adult School Movement.

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