ABSTRACT
Few aspects of life indicate the hierarchy of Victorian society so starkly as education. The value of education for all classes was all but universally accepted by the 1840s, but there was almost equal agreement among the leaders of society that its primary function was to fit recipients for their proper station in life. Only in exceptional circumstances was it thought desirable to encourage people to better themselves by learning. The three major royal commissions on education emphasized the apparent immutability of social divisions. It was the task of the Clarendon Commission (1861) to investigate how far the education at England's nine great public schools remained appropriate to the training of the nation's leaders. The Taunton Commission (1864) studied the vast range of schools provided for 'those large classes of English society which are comprised between the humblest and the very highest'. The Newcastle Commission (1858) examined schooling for the labouring classes on the understanding that it should be cheap, efficient and should not normally take children beyond the age of eleven.
