Early education in England

The earliest education in Britain began in monasteries, such as that of the Venerable Bede in Northumbria in the 680s. The first attempt to create secular schools was made two centuries later in the time of King Alfred. The University of Oxford was established in the 12th century and Cambridge in the 13th century. But throughout the medieval period most students were destined to go into the church. Illiteracy was common among lay people. In addition, craftsmen were trained through town guilds, serving lengthy apprenticeships.
After the Reformation, church influence was reduced but not eliminated. Grammar schools were established, such as that attended by William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon in the 1560s. Students flocked into the universities, which enjoyed a boom that would not be seen again before the 19th century. In the 1640s, many members of the Long Parliament were university graduates. The curriculum was also transformed, beginning in the 16th century with the influence of the Renaissance that encouraged the study of history, literature, and languages and culminating in the scientific revolution of the 17th century that saw the creation of the Royal Society.
In the 18th century Oxford and Cambridge, still England’s only universities, stagnated, but the four ancient Scottish universities–Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Saint Andrews–were among the most famous in Europe during the age of philosopers Adam Smith and David Hume. Literacy increased rapidly among the masses, assisted by the spread of dissenters’ academies, mechanics’ institutes, and literary and philosophical societies. In 1839 the state began to subsidize and regulate schools. In 1870 the Elementary Education Act made elementary education free and compulsory for children between the ages of 5 and 10, although an extensive network of voluntary schools, many of them provided by churches and charities, existed long before that date. Compulsory education was extended by law to 11-year-olds in 1893 and 12-year-olds in 1899. During the Victorian period, new universities were founded in the expanding industrial cities of the north of England, such as Manchester and Leeds, and of the Midlands, such as Birmingham. Technical colleges that trained skilled workers were also established.
In the 20th century the minimum age for leaving school was raised to 14 after World War I and to 15 after World War II. A universal system of secondary education was created following the 1944 Education Act, but a distinction continued to be drawn between grammar schools for the academically able and “secondary modern” schools for the rest until the emergence of comprehensive schools in the 1960s that combined grammar and secondary modern schools. In 1973 the minimum age for leaving school was again raised, to 16, where it remains, although the majority stay in school until age 18. A growing proportion then goes on to higher education.read more about the
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