The National Public Schools Association (NPSA), founded 1850, was a significant and prominent English pressure group campaigning for elementary education.
At the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria, state control of the education system was opposed by Anglican churchmen, such as James Shergold Boone.
[2][4] The Lancashire Public Schools Association (LPSA) was founded in 1847, by a group of seven including Alexander Ireland and Samuel Lucas, drawing heavily on Anti-Corn Law League activists; and was dominated by Unitarians.
[5] During the 1850s it campaigned for an education system that was secular or non-sectarian, having financial support from local rates and under political control.
[9] Richard Cobden and William Johnson Fox were national leaders of the NPSA, and the educational system of Massachusetts taken as a model.