[5] It was passed during William Ewart Gladstone’s first ministry, to restructure endowed grammar schools in England and Wales (one jurisdiction).

[8][9] The commission proposed the creation of a national system of secondary education by restructuring the endowments of these schools for modern purposes.

[8][9][10] The Act also finally removed the requirement for grammar school teachers to have a license to teach issued by a Church of England Bishop or Ordinary, which had been formalised by the 77th Canon of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer 1604 edition.

[11] In the late 1860s, land in St Pancras, left by Richard Platt as the endowment of Aldenham School, was compulsorily purchased as the site of the new St Pancras railway station, and the Midland Railway had to pay compensation of £91,000, equivalent to £10,617,759 in 2023.

The Aldenham headmaster of the time, Alfred Leeman, called this "a violent act of confiscation".