The Act provided funds for denominational religious instruction in voluntary elementary schools, most of which were owned by the Church of England and the Roman Catholics.

It standardized and upgraded the educational systems of England and Wales and led to a rapid growth of secondary schools, with over 1,000 opening by 1914, including 349 for girls only.

With John Gilbert Talbot, Cranborne organized opposition to the Education Department and the radical spokesman Arthur Acland from 1894.

In their place, Balfour proposed to establish local education authorities, which would administer a state-centred system of primary, secondary and technical schools.

Chamberlain, religiously a Unitarian,[7] was anxious about the Bill's proposals, aware that they would estrange Nonconformists, Radicals and many Liberal Unionists from the government.

Chamberlain warned Robert Laurie Morant about the probability of Nonconformist dissent, asking why voluntary schools could not receive funds from the state rather than from the rates (local property taxes).

Chamberlain sought to stem the feared exodus by securing a major concession: local authorities would be given discretion over the issue of rate aid to voluntary schools; yet even this was renounced before the guillotining of the Bill and its passage through Parliament in December 1902.

Historian Standish Meacham explores their position: the act put an end to the broad-based expansion of secondary education that had originated in the so-called higher grade schools established by progressive, popularly elected local boards.

This important issue [was] a matter of major concern to working-class reformers anxious to provide a democratic "highway" rather than an exclusionary "ladder" to secondary education.

Nonconformist opposition was championed by John Clifford, the Baptist pastor of Westbourne Park Church in London, who became the recognized leader of the passive resistance to the education act.

[10][11][12][13] The 1902 Act developed into a major political issue, which contributed significantly to the Liberal Party landslide victory in the general election in 1906.

[15] The Cabinet, hoping to bring an end to this long-standing matter of dispute, included many compromises to satisfy lobby groups, including Clause 4, which allowed any borough or urban district with population in excess of 5,000 to provide denominational teaching every day, provided at least 80% of parents demanded it – a condition likely to be met only in Catholic areas of Liverpool and perhaps other large cities.

For the rest of the year, Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, accusing them of defying the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act.

[17] In the end, Balfour, now leader of the Conservative opposition, used his mastery of parliamentary procedure to defeat any compromise and keep his 1902 Act intact.

[20] American historian Bentley Gilbert evaluates the political wisdom of Liberal dependence on Nonconformist support: The Campbell-Bannerman government was, as its sorry performance would show in the next three years, more the hostage than the master of its swollen and unhealthy majority.

It seemed to be at the mercy of single-issue eccentrics and special-interest cranks who forced it to waste valuable parliamentary time attempting to enact huge and complicated quasi-constitutional measures that would best benefit only a minority of the king's subjects, while the rest, the majority, if not opposed, remained uninterested.