He was educated at the school of the blind Quaker mathematician John Gough at Kendal and proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted as a sizar in 1813.
[1] From 1818 to 1836 Dawes was mathematical tutor, fellow, and bursar of the newly founded Downing College, Cambridge.
At this time Dawes was strongly influenced by the contemporary circle of notable Cambridge scientists, including William Whewell, John Stevens Henslow, and Adam Sedgwick.
In 1837 Sir John Mill, his former pupil at Downing, presented him to the rectory of Kings Somborne, Hampshire, where he built a school and developed his ideas on educating the poor.
Dawes is remembered for his seminal contribution to the development of applied science in elementary education: traditional teaching was replaced with heuristic learning and a rudimentary laboratory was established to promote the use of technical apparatus and simple scientific experiments.