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The 1902 education act and Roman Catholic schools: a study of a community's efforts to gain and to preserve denominational education in its schools

Cashman, John

The 1902 education act and Roman Catholic schools: a study of a community's efforts to gain and to preserve denominational education in its schools Thumbnail


Authors

John Cashman



Abstract

By 1902, a quarter of a million children were attending Catholic elementary schools in England and Wales. The thesis suggests that the initial impetus for the founding of these schools was the desire of the Catholic immigrant community to manifest its identity in an alien and hostile environment. The presence of the Irish Nationalist Members of Parliament at Westminster encouraged the Catholic community by defending its schools whenever education issues were raised. The Cross Commission, 1885 - 1888, established to examine the working of the Education Acts, emphasised the inevitability of the demise of the voluntary school system, unless it was assisted financially to compete with the board schools. The use of the Catholic vote to safeguard the schools became an issue in specific election campaigns. When the Liberal/Nonconformist Government was returned in 1905, the settlement achieved in 1902 became an immediate target for amendment legislation. Efforts made in 1906 and 1908 to introduce changes on a national scale were unsuccessful. When the outbreak of war in 1914 halted legislation on purely
domestic issues, the prospect for the success of even a modest measure, confined to single-school areas, had become remote. The difficult role of the Irish Nationalists, anxious to persuade the Liberal Government to introduce a Home Rule for Ireland Bill, and, at the same time, to preserve the advantages of the 1902 settlement for the Catholic schools, is examined in some detail. Finally, the problem of the education of the Catholic teachers to staff the Catholic elementary schools when there were very limited opportunities for Catholic children to attend recognised Catholic secondary schools are examined. The fact that, by 1914, alone of the voluntary schools, the population of the Catholic elementary schools was still increasing in size, yet there was an adequate supply of qualified Catholic teachers to staff the schools, suggests that the problem had been solved successfully.

Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024

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