ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the evolution of the British state's involvement in the provision of primary, secondary and higher education since 1850; to put these events in context by relating them to developments in three comparable countries. The chapter identifies themes cutting across time and type of education, especially as they relate to broader social, economic and political trends. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 and the Education Act of 1872 signalled the arrival of the British state as an education provider, free primary education would be guaranteed by the state; and into the twentieth century before secondary schooling began to come under the state's remit. British children would have to wait until the 1944 Education Act for a true national system of schooling from age five to 15, finally establishing the three phases of primary, secondary and further education, with the decisive post-primary break at age 11.
