The first infant school in Great Britain was founded in New Lanark, Scotland, in 1816. It was followed by other philanthropic infant schools across Great Britain. Early childhood education was a new concept at the time and seen as a potential solution to social problems related to industrialisation. Numerous writers published works on the subject and developed a theory of infant teaching. This included moral education, physical exercise and an authoritative but friendly teacher.

In England and Wales, infant schools served to maximise the education children could receive before they left school to start work. They were valued by parents as a form of childcare but proved less popular in Scotland. State-funded schools in England and Wales were advised in 1840 to include infant departments within their grounds. 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. The new "kindergarten" methods of teaching young children had some limited influence on the curriculum in the late 19th century.

Beginning in 1905, infant education in England and Wales shifted towards more child-centred methods of teaching, where education was meant to reflect the preferences of children. Many of the youngest children, under five, who were considered ill-suited to school, were removed entirely, though some nursery classes were later attached to infant schools to cater to this age group. The child-centred approach reached its peak following a report in 1967. In 1988, a more centralised curriculum was introduced, but there have been moves away from that in Wales since devolution. The term "infant department" for the early years at school was used widely in Scotland in the 1960s but is no longer generally used there.

Terminology The term infant school is used in the United Kingdom. It refers either to a separate school or to part of a larger school such as a primary school. Dictionaries give various age ranges for this phase of education. Cambridge describes infant schools as "for children who are four to seven years old". Collins defines them as "for children between the ages of five and seven". Merriam-Webster uses the age range from "five to seven or eight". Oxford does not give a lower age limit, just stating "usually under seven years of age". A UK government document published in 2013 described "infant (5 to 7 or 8)" as the middle phase of primary education in England and Wales but commented that "in Scotland and Northern Ireland there is generally no distinction between infant and junior schools."

Background

Before the 19th century, children learnt the skills needed for work and home life from their families at an early age. Children below the age of eight frequently attended the village or grammar schools. No particular accommodation would have been made for the younger children as these were single-room institutions that catered to a wide range of ages. The limited group of children who had access to schooling generally started their education at home. There were some institutions similar to infant schools in continental Western Europe dating from the second half of the 18th century and early 19th century, including one that was established by J. F. Oberlin.

During the agricultural and industrial revolutions, 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. Many young children with working mothers were left alone or in the care of older children. Dame schools provided a cheap childminding service, generally with low standards of care and education.

Interest developed in expanding access to education as this situation came to public attention. Reformers attempted to protect children from suffering, while instructing them in morality, religion and obedience. The British and Foreign School Society and the National Society for Promoting Religious Education were established in 1808 and 1811 respectively to found new "voluntary schools". These schools were intended for children of "school age", which was understood to mean older than six or usually seven, although children as young as four years were sometimes admitted. Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838), an influential educational theorist, believed that "initiatory" schools should be created to provide safety and education focused on personal character to children younger than seven years. However, the societies did not aim to cater for the younger age group, and no initiatory schools were established. In 1833, the societies began to receive government funding.

Early infant schools

First establishments The first infant school in Great Britain was established in 1816 for the children of mill workers in New Lanark, Lanarkshire, in Scotland. It was founded by Robert Owen, who was manager of the cotton mills there. The school catered for children between one and six years old. Information about this infant school is quite limited; accounts often focus more on the uniqueness of the experiment rather than on the activities in the school. The children appear to have spent much of their time playing, but there was also some formal education. In 1819, children under the age of four were reported to be learning to recognise letters. Older children were organised into a different class and taught to read simple texts. Owen believed that every aspect of a child's personality was formed by the circumstances in which they grew up; he saw the infant school as a way of minimising negative influences from the family home. He saw child labour as damaging, and forbade children under the age of ten from working in his factory. Owen was sceptical of toys, and the children largely did activities that did not require physical objects, such as singing, dancing, and marching.

In 1818, the first infant school in England was sponsored by Henry Brougham, and other political radicals, in Brewer's Green, Westminster, London. Brougham believed that the first years of life were developmentally important, but placed less value on early education than Owen. He was primarily interested in providing childcare and moral instruction. He employed James Buchanan, a teacher who had previously worked at New Lanark, and used similar methods to the first infant school. The families who lived in the slums around Brewer's Green were initially reluctant to send their children to the infant school. Brougham put significant effort into recruitment, and numbers increased sharply over several months. Two further infant schools were established in London over the next six years. The London Infant School Society was active from 1824 to 1835. It had some success with founding new infant schools but less in training teachers. The London Society was followed by other regional societies including in Leicester and Glasgow. Employers also established factory infant schools with the aim of preparing pupils to be better-behaved child labourers when they started work.

Theory and motivation Samuel Wilderspin was an advocate of infant schools across England. The philosophy he promulgated had more emphasis on formal instruction than Owen's, though he tried to adapt the instruction to the abilities of young children. Nanette Whitbread, an educationalist, suggests that Wilderspin had some understanding of young children but lacked a "unifying pedagogical theory". In Glasgow, David Stow was a promoter of infant schools who remained truer to Owen's aims even with an increased focus on class teaching. Various other figures also established infant schools and wrote books about the subject. David Turner, an academic who studied 19th-century infant schools, wrote that the pedagogy of the various early iterations of infant schools were heavily influenced by Owen's ideas. He commented;

By the mid 1830's the schools had sometimes become training grounds for the lower classes, to accustom them to good habits and industry and to prepare them for National [Society for Promoting Religious Education] or British [and Foreign School Society] schools. 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.

Infant schools were intended to be both an ordered environment and give children freedom. Children were seen in a generally positive light and as likely to cooperate if well managed. They would ideally develop an affectionate relationship with the teacher that would motivate them to learn. These ideas had little connection to a philosophy about child development or education. Some links existed to the ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish philosopher. There were also connections between the infant school movement and phrenology, a pseudoscientific theory about how human thought works that was popular at the time. However, the focus of those promoting infant schools was the issue of finding cheap and effective ways to educate large groups of young children.

Promoters of infant schools were interested in reducing petty crime and protecting property. The years after 1811 saw a sharp increase in birth rates; juvenile crime rates increased as young children were often left alone while their parents and older siblings worked. , a historian, argued that people associated the threat posed to their property by crime with the perceived threat posed to their property by politics (i.e. a revolution in the style of the French Revolution). Alasdair Roberts, an educationalist, suggests that the decline in financial support given to infant school societies in the late 1820s, as revolutionary activity declined, might be evidence of this. There were also a variety of motivations for supporters of various ideological views. In England, the focus was usually on child welfare along with inculcating moral virtues, discipline and practical skills. In Scotland, where the concept of mass schooling was more established, there was greater interest in adapting education for young children. Some people opposed the infant schools, worrying about Owen's socialist political views or seeing them as a form of interference in family life.

Evolution