Laws

1829   

Catholic Emancipation Act

1834   

Poor Law Amendment Act

1836   

Marriage Act

1851   

Ecclesiastical Titles Act

1870   

Forster's Education Act

1871   

Repeal of Ecclesiastical Titles Act

1876   

School leaving age fixed at 10 years

1880   

Mundela's (compulsory) Education Act

1891   

Elementary education free in practice

1893   

School leaving age fixed at 11 years

1899   

School leaving aged fixed at 12 years

1902   

Balfour's Education Act (made Local Government responsible for elementary education)

1918   

Elementary education free in law - school leaving fixed at 14 years

1926   

Catholic Relief Act (abolishing laws against processions, religious habits etc. written into the 1829 Act but seldom if ever resorted to)

1936   

Education Act raising school leaving age to 15 years in 1939 but suspended because of outbreak of war

1944   

Butler's Education Act raising school leaving age to 15 (in 1947) and 16 later, and giving local authority grants to denominational schools, government grants to fee-paying secondary schools and making tripartite system of secondary modern, technical and grammar schools for 11 plus

1965   

Comprehensives replace secondary modern and grammar schools