ABSTRACT
The greater precision which the requirements of the Revised Code gave to every aspect of school keeping enabled the inspectors and others interested to see just how far short the schools fell from an acceptable standard. The ignorance of the children and their irregular attendance were well known; but the numbers of children who did not go to school at all gradually assumed greater prominence in men's thoughts. The inspectors' reports for 1866 and 1867 are full of comments on the position. This was worse in the towns than in the country. Capel, reporting in 1866 on Birmingham and Warwickshire, said:
In Birmingham there is a class of children which does not exist in rural parishes, who do not profess to go to any school, and who pass the day idling about the streets, learning nothing but evil, and acquiring habits which, in a few years, utterly unfit them for honest labour. 1
