Before 1870, many children did not go to primary school full-time. Most did not go to secondary school at all. They left school at 12 and started work. In 1870 an act of Parliament stated that all children aged 5 to 11 had to go to school. It set up school boards (or committees) in each local area to make sure all children had a proper elementary (or primary) education.

How many children went to school in 1870

The SBL needed to find out how many children there were so that they could work out how many new schools to build. They used information from the 1871 census. [A census of the population is carried out every ten years to learn about the people who live in this country: how many are there? what do they do? Where were they born?] The SBL thought it would be a good idea to attach another part to this form to discover how many schools were needed. The information they collected was:

• Names of children and where they lived
• How many boys and girls
• How old they were
• If they were already attending school and where
• If not attending school, why not
• If they were working, full-time or part-time
  

The results of this survey showed that the number of children needing elementary (primary school) education was 574,693. Of these children 398,679 went to school already and 176,014 were not in school at all.