The need for universal education

In January 1804 the Society for Bettering the Condition of the Poor outlined a suggested inquiry into the existing condition of charity and other schools so as to make possible an extension of educational provision among the poor. It proposed this should ascertain:

The places in which those schools are entirely adequate to the object;

The places where a greater extension of their benefits is wanted, and such extension is practicable; and

Those where new schools for the poor are necessary or expedient.

Sir Thomas Bernard, Of the Education of the Poor (1809) 306.