... into University. During that time the grammar schools provided education for the able sons of parents of relatively modest means. Almost all grammar schools had free places for 'poor and indigent' pupils. Nevertheless education provision for the vast majority of children was very limited. By the end of the eighteenth century the best education available for most of the children were one-day-a-week schools. Such a system was quite inadequate to meet the needs of a country that was fast becoming a great industrial power. The first advance towards a statutory system of public education was only made in 1870, in the Elementary Education Act. But only the Education Act of 1902 laid the basis for a national system of secondary education, although this was very limited. The system of elementary schools did not lead into secondary schools but formed a parallel system for the majority of children. Only the 1944 ...

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