as late as 1834, ‘the curriculum in the better class of national
schools was limited in the main to religious instruction, reading,
writing and arithmetic: in some country schools writing was
excluded for fear of evil consequences.’^11
The major impetus to the Day school movement came from
what was termed the ‘Peel’s Act of 1802’. This Act required the
employer of young children ‘to provide, during the first four
years of the seven years of apprenticeship, competent instruction
in reading, writing and arithmetic, and to secure the presence of
his apprentice at religious teaching for one hour every Sunday
and attendance at a place of worship on that day.’^12 ‘But the Act
was unpopular’, and its ‘practical effect...was not great.’^13 At
about the same time, however, the monitorial method of teaching
used by Joseph Lancaster (and also by Andrew Bell, supposedly
borrowed from India)^14 came into practice and greatly helped
advance the cause of popular education. The number of those
attending school was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792, at
6,74,883 in 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851. The total number of
schools, public as well as private in 1801 was stated to be 3,363.
By stages, it reached a total of 46,114 in 1851.^15
In the beginning, ‘the teachers were seldom competent’,
and ‘Lancaster insinuates that the men were not only ignorant
but drunken.’^16 As regards the number of years of schooling,
Dobbs writes that ‘allowing for irregularity of attendance, the
average length of school life rises on a favourable estimate from
about one year in 1835 to about two years in 1851.’^17
The fortunes of English Public schools are said to have
fallen strikingly during the eighteenth century. In January 1797,
the famous school at Shrewsbury, for instance, did not have
‘above three or four boys.’ After some major reorganisation, it
had about 20 pupils a year later.^18 In public schools like Eton,
teaching consisted of writing and arithmetic (a number of
English and