Historical Background
Until 1870 the development of a national system of education was left entirely to voluntary initiative, with the churches as main providers. When the Church of England’s National Society was formed in 1811, educational opportunity for the majority of the population was strictly limited. Existing schools were for the wealthy (‘public schools’) or for the poor, on a charitable and local basis. The intention of the National Society was to provide a national system of a school in every parish, run by a trained teacher. Sites were mainly given by local benefactors, under the 1841 School Sites Act, with the vicar and churchwardens as trustees. Trust deeds usually refer to education ‘for the poor of the parish’.
The Education Act of 1870 was designed to make good the gaps in the church system by providing Board schools where church schools did not already exist. By the time of the 1902 Education Act which created the LEAs, the dual system of educational provision was firmly established both as a principle and in reality. That Act made LEAs financially responsible for both voluntary and Board schools, except for voluntary school buildings, which the governors had to maintain.
The two main church providers of schools were the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church. In the nineteenth century the Free Churches decided to support the development of Board schools, and apart from a small number of Methodist primary schools, this policy has continued. The Roman Catholic Church’s policy has been to provide Catholic schools for Catholic children taught by Catholic teachers trained in Catholic colleges.
The 1944 Education Act enabled church schools to opt into the maintained system by choosing between aided and controlled status; some chose to become independent.
In an aided school, church involvement was very significant, and the church had majority representation on the governing body. Aided school governors, unlike those in county and controlled schools, were employers of their staff, responsible for building extensions and external repairs (for which they received a percentage reimbursement from the LEA) and admission authorities for their schools with responsibility for admission appeals.
Controlled status was designed to enable many of the older church schools to undergo major physical renovations with state funding. LEAs became totally responsible for controlled school finance, but the school sites continued to be owned by the trustees. The church retained a minority representation on the governing body.
The above position remained the one that was in operation when the statistics for the study of primary schools were collected. For various reasons the Church of England’s contribution to education within the state sector is largely primary. At the time of the 1944 Act many of the Church of England elementary schools became primary, and the church did not have the resources, nor in many cases the will either, to build new secondary schools. Thus the Church of England’s provision of secondary schools is 6% compared with 25% primary schools.
This project started life as a study of the distribution of church primary schools alone. Shortly before publication the authors were asked to add information about Church of England secondary schools in the light of the requirements of the Church Schools Review Group, led by Lord Dearing. However, to provide equivalent information for the much more numerous Roman Catholic secondary schools would require a separate research project.
The distribution of Church of England secondary schools is dealt with in the second part of this booklet.