The 1870 Education Act made elementary education compulsory for all to be provided by locally elected school boards and paid from local rates. For the first time publicly controlled primary schools were established across the whole country.

The grant to Church (Anglican and RC) schools was doubled to enable them to become part of the same system.

Sherlock Holmes said “The Board Schools. Lighthouses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules, with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.”