ABSTRACT
The formation of the School Boards was the beginning of a social revolution in England. It brought to the well-intentioned a regular and defined field of work whose utility was obvious, and which was maintained by official regulation and not by the fluctuating force of personal enthusiasm. It opened to the eyes of the world the facts of life in the cities, and allowed numbers of people to have daily experience of conditions which, before, it had required a Royal Commission to reveal. In the country it brought the first opportunity that many districts had ever had of democratic organization. The School Board was the assertion of independence against the dominance of squire and clergyman. Moreover as there was no property qualification for membership of the Boards, as there was for membership of the Town Councils or the Boards of Guardians, working-men could be elected, and after a few years were; Birmingham, for example, having a regular working-class representative on the Board. Also, as women were eligible to serve, it was their introduction to official public life. Something of this was felt at the time, both by those who supported and by those who opposed the creation of Boards.
