Education for working class children in Barnsley during the nineteenth century, with particular reference to the Barnsley school board

Abstract

The opportunities and limitations of Barnsley's educational provision for working-class children during the nineteenth century, were necessarily determined by the economic, social and religious changes which took place as a result of industrialisation. Prior to 1870, education for the masses was largely a matter for local charity, supplemented after 1833, by government grants. Children, if they went to school at all, attended Sunday schools and denominational day and evening schools where the concern was less with learning than with social and religious objectives. Destitute children could attend Ragged schools or the Workhouse school. For the exceptionally clever working-class child there was, in theory, the endowed grammar school. Private schools of various types were available for those who could pay. In 1870, Forster's Act extended the education of working-class children by putting it under the jurisdiction of the. Barnsley School Board, a locally elected, ad hoc body, with powers to build and maintain schools out of the rates and to enforce compulsion on all children between the ages of 5 and 13. Despite numerous difficulties, this Board effected sweeping changes in the borough's educational outlook and administration. By the end of the century, new schools had been built, old ones extended, attendance increased and the scope of education considerably widened. When, in 1903, the Barnsley School Board was superseded by the Education Committee of the Town Council, a link with the past was retained when Board members were co-opted on to the new authority. These men, experienced in educational administration and alive to the needs of the working-class, were vital to the work of shaping the future educational policy of the borough.