Truancy is any intentional, unjustified, unauthorized, or illegal absence from compulsory education. It is a deliberate absence by a student's own free will and usually does not refer to legitimate excused absences, such as ones related to medical conditions. Truancy is usually explicitly defined in the school's handbook of policies and procedures. Attending school but not going to class is called internal truancy. Some children whose parents claim to homeschool have also been found truant in the United States.
The School Board for London, commonly known as the London School Board (LSB), was an institution of local government and the first directly elected body covering the whole of London.
Anthony John Mundella PC was an English manufacturer and later a Liberal Party MP and Cabinet Minister who sat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1868 to 1897. He served under William Ewart Gladstone as Vice-President of the Committee of the Council on Education from 1880 to 1885 and as President of the Board of Trade in 1886 and from 1892 to 1894. As education minister he established universal compulsory education in Britain and played the major part in building the state education system. At the Board of Trade he was instrumental in the reduction of working hours and the raising of minimum ages in the employment of children and young people. He was among the first to prove the effectiveness of arbitration and conciliation in industrial relations. He also brought in the first laws to prevent cruelty to children. His political achievements in the late Victorian age are said to have anticipated 20th century society.
Local education authorities (LEAs) were defined in England and Wales as the local councils responsible for education within their jurisdictions. The term was introduced by the Education Act 1902 which transferred education powers from school boards to existing local councils.
Education Act is a stock short title used for legislation in Australia, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States that relates to education. The Bill for an Act with this short title will have been known as a Education Bill during its passage through Parliament.
The Factory Acts were a series of acts passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom beginning in 1802 to regulate and improve the conditions of industrial employment.
The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, authorized public money to improve existing schools, and tried to frame conditions attached to this aid so as to earn the goodwill of managers. It has long been seen as a milestone in educational development, but recent commentators have stressed that it brought neither free nor compulsory education, and its importance has thus tended to be diminished rather than increased.
The Birmingham board schools were set up very rapidly after the Forster Elementary Education Act 1870 was enacted, covering England and Wales. Over forty were created in Birmingham.
The National Education League was a political movement in England and Wales which promoted elementary education for all children, free from religious control. It was founded in 1869 and dissolved in 1877. It developed from the Birmingham Education League, co-founded in 1867 by George Dixon, a Birmingham Member of Parliament (MP) and past mayor, Joseph Chamberlain, a nonconformist and future mayor of Birmingham, and Jesse Collings, but was expanded to include branches from all over England and Wales. Dixon was chairman of the League's council, Chamberlain chairman of the executive committee, and Collings the honorary secretary. Other leading founding members were R. W. Dale, A. Follett Osler, J. H. Chamberlain, George Dawson, and William Harris. Twenty founding members subscribed £14,000. The first general meeting was in October 1869, by which time William Dronfield of Sheffield was acting as Secretary. It resolved that a bill should be prepared to present to Parliament at the next session.
School boards were ad hoc public bodies in England and Wales between 1870 and 1902, which established and administered elementary schools.
The raising of school leaving age is the term used by the United Kingdom government for changes of the age at which a child is allowed to leave compulsory education in England and Wales as specified under an Education Act.
The Education Act 1902, also known as the Balfour Act, was a highly controversial Act of Parliament that set the pattern of elementary education in England and Wales for four decades. It was brought to Parliament by a Conservative government and was supported by the Church of England, opposed by many Nonconformists and the Liberal Party. The Act provided funds for denominational religious instruction in voluntary elementary schools, most of which were owned by the Church of England and the Roman Catholics. It reduced the divide between voluntary schools, which were largely administered by the Church of England, and schools provided and run by elected school boards, and reflected the influence of the Efficiency Movement in Britain. It was extended in 1903 to cover London.
The history of education in England is documented from Saxon settlement of England, and the setting up of the first cathedral schools in 597 and 604.
The Short Titles Act 1896 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Short Titles Act 1892.
The Agricultural Children Act 1873 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which prohibited the agricultural employment of children under the age of eight and also provided for the education of children involved in farm labour. As part of this, the act stated that children could not be employed in agricultural work without parental confirmation that they had attended school a certain number of times in the preceding twelve months, specifically 250 times for children aged eight to ten and 150 times for individuals over the age of ten.
Elementary schools were the first schools in England and Wales intended to give a basic education to the children of working class families. At the start of the 19th century, the only schooling available to these young people was run by private concerns or by charities, and was often of a very poor standard. In the first decades of that century, a network of elementary schools was established by societies backed by the Christian churches. In an effort to expand this "voluntary" system, the government made grants available to these societies, initially for new school buildings but later towards their running costs. It became apparent that although this system worked reasonably well in rural communities, it was far less successful in the rapidly expanding industrial cities, and that Britain was falling behind the rest of the developed world. In 1870, an act of parliament established elected school boards throughout England and Wales, which were empowered to create secular "board schools" funded by local taxation where there was no provision by the church societies. Further legislation made school attendance compulsory, and eventually free of charge. The problem of how the education of older pupils should be managed was solved by abolishing school boards in 1902 and passing responsibility to local councils. Elementary schools were eventually replaced in 1944 by the system of primary and secondary education.
The Education (Scotland) Act 1872 made elementary education for all children between the ages of 5 and 13 mandatory in Scotland.
The Newcastle Commission set up in 1859 inquired "into the state of public education in England and to consider and report what measures, if any, are required for the extension of sound and cheap elementary instruction to all classes of the people". It produced the 1861 Newcastle Report and this led to the Elementary Education Act 1870.
Anthony John Mundella, known as Anthony Mundella, was an English journalist, education reformer and campaigner for child welfare. After working as Private Secretary to his namesake uncle, Rt Hon Anthony John Mundella, a Liberal Party Member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, he became a journalist and parliamentary sketch writer for The Manchester Guardian. He was elected Chairman of the Press Gallery. Subsequently, he was for 35 years Secretary of the National Education Association, and campaigned for a free progressive system of national education, publicly controlled and free from sectarian interest. He was well known in the House of Commons and much sought after by MPs and government ministers for his wide knowledge and expertise in educational reform and child welfare. It is said that he was responsible more than any other for the abolition of the injurious employment of children of school age.
