ABSTRACT
Many features of modern British education were established in the Victorian era. In 1870, the state accepted responsibility for ensuring that a basic education was available to all, and by the end of the century general literacy had been achieved. The system of ‘public schools’ for the elite developed as a uniquely English form of secondary education for boys, and was connected with the reform and modernization of Oxford and Cambridge, which were transformed from inward-looking religious institutions into centres whose ethos shaped Britain’s educational and cultural identity. Modern, middle-class alternatives to the public schools and to ‘Oxbridge’ were also a significant Victorian achievement. The result was a compromise with tradition, and a hierarchy of prestige in which the old dominated the new, but by 1900 it was possible to envisage a unified educational system under the general supervision of the state.
