Education and learning

This essay provides an overview of key shifts in the history of education and learning in Britain over the course of the long nineteenth century, from 1770 until 1914. It examines the transformation of educational opportunities for children and adolescents, which saw the patchy and voluntary-controlled provision of the earlier part of the century, replaced with a state-directed and funded nationwide system of formal elementary education after the Education Act of 1870. It also considers the ways in which secondary education for the children of middle- and-upper-class families developed over the same period. Finally, it explores important changes in adult and higher education, in particular the flourishing of locally based initiatives such as mechanics’ institutes in the first half of the nineteenth century, followed by a considerable expansion of university provision into London and the major provincial towns from the 1820s onwards.