ABSTRACT
By 1885 it was felt that a survey of the working of the Elementary Education Acts was due, and the next year a Commission under the chairmanship of Sir Richard Assheton Cross was appointed. When it reported in 1888 it once more set educational reform in motion. The recommendations of the Commission fell into two main groups. One concerned the developing work of schools which were feeling towards technical and secondary education, the other modification of the present elementary system. Among these latter it suggested that school premises should be improved—and teachers should have greater freedom of classification; but, on the all-important topic of payment by results, it could not bring itself to give a definite decision. The system was condemned on all hands. No longer were the teachers alone in their protests. The Nineteenth Century had published an article saying:
Children are treated by a public department, by managers and schoolmasters as suitable instruments for earning government money
—and as of little other importance.