Early Education Reforms
Before education became compulsory, most kids learned from family and community rather than formal schools. The government only stepped in during the 1870s to help newly voting workers get basic education - but this was still pretty limited stuff.
Class inequality was massive in education back then. Your social background determined everything about your schooling, and boys and girls studied completely different subjects because society expected them to do different jobs. The Fisher Education Act of 1918 tried to fix things by raising the school leaving age to 14 and creating nurseries and part-time schools for working teens.
Unfortunately, budget cuts (called the Geddes Axe) killed most of these improvements. The Hadow Report in 1926 suggested dividing education into primary and secondary levels with three types of secondary schools: grammar, technical, and modern schools. This tripartite system sounded brilliant on paper but got ignored because politicians were too busy dealing with unemployment and preparing for war.
Key Insight: Even good education reforms can fail without proper funding and political commitment - a lesson that's still relevant today.
University was basically an elite club limited to Oxford, Cambridge, and a few Scottish universities, plus some newer "red brick" universities in industrial cities that focused on practical skills like engineering.
