History of infant schools in Great Britain

As it was integrated into the state system, infant education in England and Wales came under pressure to achieve quick academic progress in children and shifted towards rote learning.

New forms of child labour developed in factories, which enforced more intensive and disciplined conditions than children had experienced while working under the supervision of parents in pre-industrial times.

While factory labourers were typically (but not exclusively) older than eight, children as young as three years did contractual work at home or were employed as climbing boys to clean the inside of chimneys.

Owen believed that every aspect of a child's personality was formed by the circumstances in which they grew up and saw the infant school as a way of minimising negative influences from the family home.

[18] Employers also established factory infant schools with the aim of preparing pupils to be better-behaved child labourers when they started work.

In Glasgow, David Stow was a major promoter of infant schools who remained truer to Owen's aims even with an increased focus on class teaching.

There was an increasing emphasis on religion, yet the essentials of the system remained: the acceptance of very young children; learning through play; a variety of short lessons; exercise in the playground, and the cultivation of kindly feelings.

Some of the methods sometimes deteriorated into mere rote-learning and marching displays ... but the system had at least permeated the country, and had survived through the pioneering efforts of enthusiastic individuals and the financial support of enlightened philanthropists.The ideals of infant schools were contradictory.

But the focus of those promoting infant schools was on the practical issue of finding cheap and effective ways to educate large groups of young children.

W. B. Stephens, an historian, is sceptical of the movement, suggesting that infant schools gradually lost most of their distinctiveness and failed to become the preferred childcare option for working-class parents.

[27] Whitbread comments that the early infant schools offered safety and a degree of compassion to young children living in a difficult environment with few other options.

One school inspector, HMI[note 2] Fletcher, wrote in 1845 about the infant system "in the course of improvement in which it appears to be embarked, its preparatory labours will constantly increase in value as they become wider in scope and less ambitious in their immediate aim ... an education at once physical, intellectual, industrial, moral and religious."

The schoolroom was a large hall complete with gallery for simultaneous instruction, and the walls were lined with black boarding for the children to draw and write on.

The curriculum included drawing, music, physical exercises, sewing, knitting, gardening, at least the preliminary steps towards reading and sometimes writing, and Pestalozzian 'object lessons' on natural objects and domestic utensils.Tiered galleries were structures in which children were seated in progressively higher rows, used when the whole class was being lectured by a teacher.

Galleries were intended to restrict the movement of older children placed at the back, while giving them a clear view of the teacher as a reminder that they were being watched.

[42] Teachers were advised to allow accidents and minor incidents of bad behaviour; these could be used later as a negative example in a lesson about correct conduct.

[44] Children were provided with various equipment—such as building blocks, vaulting ropes and rotating swings—designed to develop the practical skills and physical strength needed for manual work.

[47] For instance, Wilderspin's advice book on infant teaching included a chapter covering playground safety, that largely focused on swings.

A second wave of industrialisation related to steam power and Irish immigration due to the Great Famine had led to the British population increasing.

For instance, pupils were forced to write with their right hand, art lessons consisted of exactly copying an image provided by the teacher and physical education took the form of drills along with marching on occasion to martial music.

[75] High levels of military recruit rejection on health grounds during the Second Boer War drew the government's attention to the poor living conditions experienced by much of the British population.

[77] From the government's point of view, there were a variety of economic and practical reasons for excluding children under five from school and new guidance issued to local education authorities in 1905 allowed them to do that.

[93] Subjects such as "nature study, pre-history, and craft-work" were introduced, based on the idea that children recreated humanity's intellectual development throughout history in their play.

[92] There were flaws in the child centred system; some teachers failed to teach reading to poorer pupils who had no reason to develop an interest in the subject outside of school.

[106] Historians Gareth Elwyn Jones and Gordon Wynne Roderick give the following description of 1950s infant school teaching:[107] In the first year, the "reception class", children were usually occupied with activities similar to those in a nursery school, but were also taught to acquire the rudiments of reading and number, learned to draw and paint and to measure and weigh, while music, dance and movement also played an important part.

The report described Scottish primary schools as generally having more emphasis on formal instruction and discipline than their English counterparts but does not specify if this was true of infant departments.

While there is no evidence of concern among parents; sections of the political debate began to argue that schools were performing poorly academically and lacked discipline.

For instance, if a child had answered a mathematical problem incorrectly the teacher would vaguely allude to the issue ("I think you need to check this one") or emphasise the positives ("good try, actually it's less than that").

[127] In 2000, the Early Years Foundation Stage was introduced in England to set guidance for educating young children up to the age of five with an emphasis on play and informal learning, including in reception classes.

It argued that this was linked to schools in Wales encouraging young children to use pictures to guess the meaning of unknown words as well as phonics.