London School Board
런던 교육위원회
An elected local authority created under the Elementary Education Act 1870 that built and ran elementary schools in London until 1904. It was the first directly elected body covering the whole of London, and women could vote and stand on the same terms as men. Abolished under the Education Act 1902, it handed its work to the London County Council in 1904.
In depth
The Elementary Education Act 1870, the first to provide for the education of the whole population of England and Wales, created elected school boards with power to build and run elementary schools where voluntary places were insufficient and to compel attendance. In London a single board covered the whole area of the Metropolitan Board of Works, today’s Inner London. The entire board was elected every three years, at first 49 members from ten divisions. Its first election, in November 1870, was the first large-scale election in Britain held by secret ballot, and cumulative voting, which let electors give all their votes to one candidate, often gave minority interests representation.
At the first election the physician Elizabeth Garrett topped the poll and Emily Davies also won a seat. The board attracted leading figures of the day such as the scientist Thomas Huxley, and Lord Lawrence was its first chairman. Benjamin Lucraft of the International’s General Council was the only one of nine working men’s candidates elected, and he was re-elected every three years until he retired in 1890. John Hales stood in Hackney in 1870 and 1882 without success, while Annie Besant topped the poll in Tower Hamlets in 1888.
The board set out to provide school places for London’s poorest children, and a by-law of 1871 compelled parents to send children aged five to thirteen to school, although education became compulsory nationally only in 1880. By the end of the 1880s it provided places for more than 350,000 children, and it built over four hundred schools, many designed by its first chief architect, Edward Robert Robson. Criticised as bureaucratic and expensive, the school boards were abolished by the Education Act 1902, and the London board held its final meeting on 28 April 1904.