Northamptonshire national schools, 1812-1854

"The Northamptonshire branch of the National Society played a major role in the first half of the 19th century in extending educational opportunity in the county's towns and villages, working with local clergy, landowners and others to build and maintain schools and to provide some minimal training for teachers while attempting to hold at bay what they saw as unwarranted government interference or nonconformist rivalry. This study is based on the surviving records of the county and the parent societies supplemented by other sources with relevant information in the Northamptonshire Record Office and elsewhere. The records include detailed correspondence which brings vividly to life the state of parishes and their children before and after the provision of schools and the problems they faced in a period of economic turbulence and widespread child labour. By the end of the period the society was working in (sometimes uneasy) partnership with the government; there had been radical changes in methods of teaching, subjects taught, and the training of teachers, though major problems remained and the contrast between bigger and smaller schools had if anything grown."