Elementary school (England and Wales)

History

In the early 19th century, working class children could attend private schools charging modest fees or charity schools offering subsidised places, but both were limited. Many children worked from an early age and learned reading at Sunday schools run by churches, which became popular from the 1780s. Ragged schools, free charitable schools, were established from the 1840s for destitute children not welcomed elsewhere. Dame schools, run by older women in their homes, cared for children under seven and remained popular despite often poor literacy of the teachers.

The Church of England founded the National Society for Promoting Religious Education in 1811, establishing National schools focused on Anglican religious education with basic literacy and numeracy. In 1814, the British and Foreign School Society began British schools for Nonconformist and other Christian children. Methodist and Roman Catholic churches also opened schools in following decades, collectively called voluntary schools.

Architecture

Early elementary schools used the monitorial system, requiring only a large space with desks for 50 to 100 children, with a National Society report of 1816 noting that a barn served as a suitable model. As classes became smaller and urban schools needed to accommodate up to 1,500 pupils on small sites, three-storey schools were developed with classrooms opening directly onto a large hall on each floor, avoiding poorly lit corridors. Infants under seven occupied the ground floor, while older boys and girls each had an upper floor with separate entrances and staircases to prevent mixing of sexes.

The first such three-decker school was built in Fulham in 1873 by architect Basil Champneys in the Queen Anne style, championed by Edward Robert Robson, architect to the London School Board from 1871. The Queen Anne style avoided expensive decoration of Gothic Revival and emphasised secular function. Alternative designs included two-storey buildings with a separate infants building, or all departments on the ground floor requiring a large plot.

Organisation

The first universal age progression structure in English and Welsh schooling was introduced in 1862. The 1862 Revised Code, following the Newcastle Commission's concerns about rising government grant costs, based funding on attendance and annual tests in reading, writing and arithmetic conducted by a visiting inspector. Children aged six to twelve were grouped into six standards corresponding to each year of schooling, from first standard for six- to seven-year-olds to sixth standard for eleven- to twelve-year-olds.

Recommendations for expected achievement levels were issued but often not attainable in practice. Guidance was updated several times, and a seventh standard was added in 1882. The system was criticised for narrowing the curriculum but praised for focusing on basic academic skills over religion. Infants schools admitted children aged two to seven, with the formal entrance age set at five by the Elementary Education Act 1870.

A government document from 1893 encouraged infants schools to consider all aspects of children's development, and by the interwar era they had adopted a child-centred approach.