ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some of the labels which were used to refer to the 'working-class private school' — itself a label, but conceived in this study as the one which carries the greatest descriptive accuracy and analytical utility. It asks who used the labels and when; how the labels evolved over time; and how they shaped and coloured the understanding that they were supposed merely to express. Knowledge and skills were picked up during brief favourable periods through an enormously diverse network of educational agencies. The simple omnibus classifications of the 1833 returns did little then to highlight the enormously complex and variegated educational reality which they are supposed to represent. The authentic differences between the dame school and the common day school were in fact determined by the nature of working-class educational demands. Dames' schools which attempted this kind of expanded curriculum probably existed in most localities, but they were likely to have been a minority of the total.
