Schooling for all via financing by some: perspectives from early modern and Victorian England

Abstract

Historians of the rise of popular education have often emphasised the role of national governments as sources of funding. However, for the case of England work by W.K. Jordan among others with probate records suggests that by the English Civil War substantial philanthropic funding was available for education. The presence of this philanthropy suggests a blurring of the line between private and public and the presence of both top-down and bottom-up forces at work. Moreover, parliamentary inquiries into educational charities in the early and mid-nineteenth century indicate their persistence as a source of funding for popular elementary schools. Counter to literature emphasising the importance of landed elites, both early modern and nineteenth-century evidence indicate the importance of other groups including merchants and clergy as sources of educational philanthropy. The formation of a national, government-funded system of elementary schooling in England during the last two-thirds of the nineteenth century incorporated elements of funding deriving from philanthropic sources with origins in earlier times. While there are parallels with other European countries, the extent of English educational philanthropy may be distinctive.

Keywords:

• Education
• philanthropy
• charity
• poor
• private
• public
• religious
• secular

Notes

¹ Elwood P. Cubberley, The History of Education: Educational Practice and Progress considered as a Phase of the Development and Spread of Western Civilization (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1920), 152; Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood (London: Jonathan Cape, 1962), 137ff; W. K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England 1480–1660: A Study of the Changing Pattern of English Social Aspirations (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1959); Nicholas Orme, Medieval Schools from Roman Britain to Renaissance England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006).

² Peter H. Lindert, Growing Public (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Peter H. Lindert, “Private Welfare and the Welfare State,” in The Cambridge History of Capitalism, Vol. II, ed. Larry Neal and Jeffrey Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 464–500.

³ Ben W. Ansell, From the Ballot to the Blackboard: The Redistributive Political Economy of Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 4.

⁴ A rough benchmark for mid-nineteenth-century relative levels of commitment to popular education is E.G. West’s admittedly controversial estimate that in 1833, on the advent of government involvement in schooling, England was devoting about 1% of its national income to supporting primary education, a percentage West suggests was respectable relative to European countries at that time. See E. G. West, “Resource Allocation and Growth in Early Nineteenth-Century British Education,” The Economic History Review 23 (1970): 68–95. For criticism of this estimate and West’s rejoinder see John Hurt, “Professor West on Early Nineteenth-Century Education, The Economic History Review Second Series 24 (1971): 624–32 and E. G. West, “The Interpretation of Early Nineteenth-Century Education Statistics,” The Economic History Review Second Series, 24 (1971): 633–42. Based on parliamentary and Church of England surveys, one can estimate that about 40% of those enrolled in English elementary schools were in schools receiving subsidies and that of those schools about two-thirds of their income came from either endowment or subscription income with the remaining one-third coming from school fees.

⁵ See Andy Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France, and the USA. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990) and the literature cited in Nancy Beadie, “Education, Social Capital and State Formation in Comparative Historical Perspective: Preliminary Investigations,” Paedagogica Historica 46 (2010): 15–32.

⁶ G. Jones, The Charity School Movement: A Study of Eighteenth Century Puritanism in Action (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938).

⁷ Thomas Adam, “Der unverzichtbare Beitrag von Stiftungen zur Finanzierung des hoheren Schulwesens in Preussen im 19.Jahrhundert,” Paedagogica Historica 48 (2012): 451–68.

⁸ See West, “Resource Allocation in Education”; Hurt, “Professor West on Early Nineteenth Century Education”; R. D. Anderson, “Education and the State in Nineteenth-century Scotland,” The Economic History Review 36 (1983): 518–34.

⁹ E. G. West, “Educational Slowdown and Public Intervention in Nineteenth Century England: A Study on the Economics of Bureaucracy,” Explorations in Economic History 12 (1975): 61–87.

¹⁰ Vincent Carpentier, “Public Expenditure on Education and Economic Growth in the UK, 1833–2000,” History of Education, 32 (2003): 10.

¹¹ For arguments supporting the effectiveness of payment by results see Laaden Fletcher, “Payment for Means or Payment for Results: Administrative Dilemma of the 1860s,” Journal of Educational Administration and History IV (1972): 13–21; John Hurt, Education in Evolution (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1976); Norman Morris, “State Paternalism and Laissez–faire in the 1860s,” in Studies in the Government and Control of Education since 1860, History of Education Society (London: Methuen, 1970), 14,19; Norman Morris, “Public Expenditure on Education in the 1860s,” Oxford Review of Education 3 (1977): 3–21; Gillian Sutherland, Policy-Making in Elementary Education 1870–1895 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), Chs.7 and 8.

¹² See A. J. Marcham, “Recent Interpretations of the Revised Code of Education, 1862,” History of Education 8 (1979): 121–33. A. J. Marcham, “The Revised Code of Education, 1862: Reinterpretations and Misinterpretations,” History of Education 10 (1981): 81–99; Brendan A. Rapple, “A Victorian Experiment in Economic Efficiency in Education,” Economics of Education Review 11 (1992): 301–16.

¹³ See Jordan, Philanthropy in England; W. K. Jordan, “The English Background of Modern Philanthropy,” American Historical Review 66 (1961): 401–08; and Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran, The Growth of English Schooling 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985).

¹⁴ See S. Engerman, E. Mariscal and K.Sokoloff, “The Evolution of Schooling in the Americas, 1800–1925,” in Human Capital and Institutions. A Long-Run View, ed. D. Eltis, F. D. Lewis and K.L. Sokoloff (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 93–142; S. Galiani, D. Heymann, C. Dabus and F. Tohme, “On the Emergence of Public Education in Land-Rich Economies,” Journal of Development Economics 86 (2008): 434–46. O. Galor, O. Moav and D. Vollrath, “Inequality in Landownership, the Emergence of Human-Capital Promoting Institutions, and the Great Divergence,” Review of Economic Studies 76 (2009): 143–79; O. Galor, Unified Growth Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011); Kenneth L. Sokoloff and Stanley L. Engerman, “History Lessons: Institutions, Factor Endowments, and Paths of Development in the New World,” Journal of Economic Perspectives14 (2000): 217–32.

¹⁵ Wallace E. Oates, “The Theory and Rationale of Local Property Taxation,” in State and Local Finance for the 1990s: A Case Study of Arizona, ed. Therese J. McGuire and Dana Wolfe Naimark (Tempe: School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, 1991), 407–24.

¹⁶ Richard Gawthrop, “Literacy Drives in Preindustrial Germany,” in National Literacy Campaigns: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Robert Arnove and Harvey Graff (New York, Plenum Press, 1987), 29–48. James van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

¹⁷ West, in “Educational Slowdown”, argues that government funding in Victorian England crowded out private funding. Hurt, Education in Evolution, Morris, “State Paternalism,” 14, 19, Morris “Public Expenditure” and Sutherland, Policy-Making, Chs 7 and 8, argue that government funding crowded in philanthropy.

¹⁸ Theodore Bergstrom, Lawrence Blume and Hal Varian, “On the Private Provision of Public Goods,” Journal of Public Economics 29 (1986): 25–49.

¹⁹ Joseph Stiglitz, “The Demand for Education in Public and Private School Systems,” Journal of Public Economics 13 (1974): 349–85.

²⁰ See James Andreoni and A. Abigail Payne, “Charitable Giving,” in Handbook of Public Economics, Vol. 5, ed. Alan Auerbach et al. (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2013), 1–50; James Andreoni, “Privately Provided Public Goods in a Large Economy: The Limits of Altruism,” Journal of Public Economics 35 (1988): 72; James Andreoni, “Philanthropy,” in Handbook of the Economics of Giving, Altruism and Reciprocity Applications, Vol. 2, ed. Serge-Christophe Kolm and Jean Mercier Ythier (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006), 1201–69.

²¹ Bernard Mandeville, “An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools,” in The Fable of the Bees or Private Vices, Publick Benefits (London: J. Tonson, 1732, reprinted Indianapolis, Liberty Classics, 1988), 277–86; David Hume, "Of Qualities Immediately Agreeable to Others," in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 142–3, 150–1, 154–6; Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Vol. II, ed. Edwin Cannan with a new Preface by George J. Stigler, Two volumes in one (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 312–3. For historians’ views on the difficulty of inferring motives see Jordan, Philanthropy in England; Mordecai Feingold, “Jordan Revisited: Patterns of Charitable Giving in Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century England,” History of Education 8 (1979): 257–73. G. R. Elton, “Review of Philanthropy in England, 1480–1660 by W.K. Jordan,” Historical Journal 3 (1960): 89–92; Nicholas Orme, “The ‘Laicisation’ of English School Education,” History of Education xvi (1987): 81–89, reprinted in Nicholas Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London: Hambledon Press, 1989), 23–32.

²² See Orme, “Laicisation,” 31.

²³ Jordan, Philanthropy in England; Joseph P. Ward, Culture, Faith, and Philanthropy: Londoners and Provincial Reform in Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).

²⁴ For the case of Germany see Adam, “Der unverzichtbare Beitrag.”

²⁵ Orme, Medieval Schools.

²⁶ Ibid., 213.

²⁷ The wording of the categories listed is taken from the preamble to the Charitable Uses Act and as cited in Jordan, "Philanthropy in England," 112-3; B. Kirman Gray, A History of English Philanthropy (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1967), 35–6 with reference to the original statue.

²⁸ See W. E. Tate, “Some Sources for the History of English Grammar Schools,” British Journal of Educational Studies 1 (1952–1953): 164–75; Moran, Growth of English Schooling, 82.

²⁹ Orme, Medieval Schools, 214, 236–40.

³⁰ Ibid., 237.

³¹ E. H. Phelps Brown and Sheila V. Hopkins, “Seven Centuries of Building Wages,” Economica 22 (1955): 195–206.

³² See Orme, Medieval Schools, 242–43 for examples of such disputes.

³³ Ibid., 244.

³⁴ Ward, Culture, Faith, and Philanthropy, 79–93.

³⁵ Jordan, Philanthropy in England.

³⁶ Ibid., 241.

³⁷ See William G. Bittle and R. Todd Lane, “Inflation and Philanthropy in England: A Re-assessment of W.K. Jordan’s Data,” The Economic History Review 29 (1976): 203–10; J. D. Gould, “Bittle and Lane on Charity: An Uncharitable Comment,” The Economic History Review 31 (1978): 212–23; J. F. Hadwin, “Deflating Philanthropy,” The Economic History Review 31 (1978): 115–17. D. C. Coleman, “Philanthropy Deflated: A Comment,” The Economic History Review 38 (1978): 118–20. Feingold, “Jordan Revisited.”

³⁸ Orme, Medieval Schools, 241–44.

³⁹ See Ward, Culture, Faith, and Philanthropy, 79–93.

⁴⁰ Jordan, “The English Background of Modern Philanthropy.”

⁴¹ A. F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England (London: 1915); Moran, Growth of English Schooling.

⁴² Jordan, “The English Background of Modern Philanthropy,” 406.

⁴³ Ibid., 281.

⁴⁴ Feingold, “Jordan Revisited,” 263.

⁴⁵ Orme, “Laicisation.”

⁴⁶ Stephen Broadberry et al., British Economic Growth 1270–1870 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015), 201.

⁴⁷ Jones, Charity School Movement.

⁴⁸ Select Committee on the Education of the Poor, “Digest of Parochial Returns on the Education of the Poor,” British Parliamentary Papers (1819) [224] Vol. 9.

⁴⁹ These percentages are calculated from the returns for each county reported in Select Committee on Education of the Poor, “Digest of Parochial Returns.”

⁵⁰ Census of Education (1851), British Parliamentary Papers 1852–3, Vol. 90 [1692].

⁵¹ Select Committee on the Education of the Poor (1819), “Digest of Parochial Returns on the Education of the Poor,” British Parliamentary Papers [224] Vol. 9; Kerry Commission (1833), “Abstract of Returns on the State of Education in England and Wales,” British Parliamentary Papers 1835, [62], Vols 41, 42, 43.

⁵² National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, “Summaries of the Returns to the General Inquiry Made by the National Society into the State and Progress of Schools During the Years 1856–7, throughout England and Wales” (London, 1858); National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church (1868), “Statistics of Church of England Schools for Poor in England and Wales for the Years 1866 and 1867,” 2nd ed. (London, 1868).

⁵³ Lindert, Growing Public, 114; Neil Smelser, Social Paralysis and Social Change: British Working-class Education in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

⁵⁴ Education Department Great Britain, “Summary of Statistics, Regulations etc. of Elementary Education in England and Wales 1833–1870,” British Parliamentary Papers 1898 [C.8943], 437–40.

⁵⁵ Newcastle Commission, Reports of the assistant commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of popular education in England. Report of Assistant Commissioner the Rev. James Fraser, on the State of Popular Education in Specimen Agricultural Districts in the Poor Law Unions of Sherborne, Dorchester, Cerne, Beaminster, Axminster, Chard, Yeovil, Hereford, Ross, Leominster, Bromyard, Ledbury, and Upton-on-Severn in the Counties of Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Hereford, and Worcester. British Parliamentary Papers (1861), Vol. 21, Pt. II [2794-II], 23–140.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 73.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 74.

⁵⁸ Ibid.

⁵⁹ Ibid.

⁶⁰ Ibid., 74.

⁶¹ National Society, “Statistics of Church of England Schools,” 25.

⁶² The report provides a table for Durham showing in coal districts the large share of costs born by owners or lessees of mines and landowners, and in lead-mining districts the large (two-thirds) share of landowners. See National Society, “Statistics of Church of England Schools,” 25.

⁶³ F. M. L. Thompson, English Landed Society in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), 208.

⁶⁴ John Hurt, “Landowners, Farmers and Clergy and the Financing of Rural Education before 1870,” Journal of Educational Administration and History 1 (1968): 6–13.

⁶⁵ Fletcher, “ Payment for Means”; Morris, “State Paternalism”; Morris “Public Expenditure.”

⁶⁶ West, “Educational Slowdown.”

⁶⁷ Sutherland, Policy-Making in Elementary Education, Chs 7 and 8.

⁶⁸ Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 21, 396–97; Christopher Carlsmith, “Struggling toward Success: Jesuit Education in Italy, 1540–1600),” History of Education Quarterly 42 (2002): 215–46.

⁶⁹ Leon Aroz et al., Beginnings: De La Salle and his Brothers (Romeoville, IL: Christian Brothers National Office, 1980), 13.

⁷⁰ Adam, “Der unverzichtbare Beitrag.”

⁷¹ Grendler, Schooling, 5, 396, 399.

⁷² Gerald Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 25, 316, n.117; Marjorie Lamberti, State, Society, and the Elementary School in Imperial Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 14.

⁷³ Mary Jo Maynes, “The Virtues of Archaism: The Political Economy of Schooling in Europe, 1750–1850,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 21 (1979): 611–25.

⁷⁴ Richard Gawthrop, “Literacy Drives in Preindustrial Germany,” in National Literacy Campaigns: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Robert Arnove and Harvey Graff (New York: Plenum Press, 1987), 29–48. James van Horn Melton, Absolutism and the Eighteenth-century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Christine Mayer, “Poverty, Education and Gender: Pedagogic Transformations in the Schools for the Poor (Armenschulwesen) in Hamburg, 1788–1871,” Paedagogica Historica 47 (2011): 91–107.

⁷⁵ Melton, Absolutism; Aries, Centuries.

⁷⁶ Maynes, Virtues, 624.

⁷⁷ Sarah A. Curtis, “Supply and Demand: Religious Schooling in Nineteenth-Century France,” History of Education Quarterly 39 (1999): 51–72; Karen E. Carter, Creating Catholics: Catechism and Primary Education in Early Modern France (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011).

⁷⁸ Curtis, “Supply and Demand,” 58, 68.

⁷⁹ R. D. Anderson, Education in France 1848–1970 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 30–31.

⁸⁰ Carter, Creating Catholics; Sarah A. Curtis, Educating the Faithful: Religion, Schooling, and Society (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2000).

⁸¹ Newcastle Commission, “Report of Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the State of Popular Education in England, British Parliamentary Papers (1861), vol. 21, Pt. I. [2794-I], 456, citing Guizot, Memoires, Vol. iii, 24.

⁸³ Great Britain, Newcastle Commission Report, “Reports of Assistant Commissioners,” vol. IV; Patrick Cumin, “Report on Educational Charities,” British Parliamentary Papers, 1861, vol. 21, Pt. IV [2794-IV].

⁸⁴ See Newcastle Commission main report, 457; Great Britain, Newcastle Commission, “Report of Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into Popular Education in England,” British Parliamentary Papers, 1861, vol. 21, Pt. I, [2794-II], 457 and Cumin, "Report on Educational Charities," 275.

⁸⁵ This expenditure estimate is based on an estimate of expenditure per student in average attendance in all types of English public elementary schools in 1858 in specimen districts surveyed of £1.07 given in the Newcastle Commission, “Report of Commissioners,” p. 586; An estimate of 2,002,658 students in average attendance in public and private schools combined based on pupils on the books in each type of school reported in the Newcastle Commission, “Report of Commissioners,” p. 591; The estimates of the proportion of students on the books in average attendance in private and public schools respectively reported in the Newcastle Commission, “Report of Commissioners,” p. 573

⁸⁶ Cumin, “Report on Educational Charities,” p. 281.

⁸⁷ Newcastle Commission, “Report,” 457; Newcastle Commission (1861c), Cumin, "Report on Educational Charities," 281.