Elementary Education (School Attendance) Act 1893

Primary education or elementary education is typically the first stage of formal education, coming after preschool/kindergarten and before secondary school. Primary education takes place in ''primary schools'', ''elementary schools'', or first schools and middle schools, depending on the location.

The International Standard Classification of Education considers primary education as a single-phase where programmes are typically designed to provide fundamental reading, writing, and mathematics skills and establish a solid foundation for learning. This is ISCED Level 1: Primary education or first stage of basic education.Annex III in the ISCED 2011 English.pdf
Navigate to International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED)

Definition

The ISCED definition in 1997 posited that primary education normally started between the ages of 5 – 8 and was designed to give a sound basic education in reading, writing, and mathematics along with an elementary understanding of other subjects. By 2011 the philosophy had changed, the ''elementary understanding of other subjects'' had been dropped in favour of "''to establish a solid foundation for learning''".

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), believes that providing children with primary education has many positive effects. It:

* Decreases poverty
* Decreases child mortality rates
* Encourages gender equality
* Increases environmental understanding

The ages cited cover a rapidly developing phase of child development. This is studied in the discipline of developmental psychology, which attempts to describe how children learn.

In the United Kingdom, reception, the first year of primary school, is part of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

The philosophy of education—teaching and learning—has, over the millennia, occupied many great minds. It attempts to say what children should be taught.

History

In pre- agrarian cultures, children learnt by following their instinct to play. There was no need for enforced education.
In agrarian cultures, agriculture, husbandry, bartering, and building skills can be passed on from adults to children or master to apprentice.
Societies agree on the need for their children to learn and absorb their cultural traditions and beliefs. They attempt to do this informally in the family or by gathering the children together and employing a tutor to handle the task. This worked well for the landowners, but the children of the landless would be employed from the age of seven as servants. In one source from the turn of the 15th century, a French count advised that nobles' huntsmen should "choose a boy servant as young as seven or eight" and that "...this boy should be beaten until he has a proper dread of failing to carry out his masters orders." The document listed chores that the boy would perform daily and that the boy would sleep in a loft above the kennels to attend to the hounds' needs.

Religious communities became providers of education and defined the curriculum. Learning to recite passages from their holy text is a priority. For their society to advance, the oral tradition must be superseded by written texts; some students must write down the passages. Monasteries students needed to read out what is written in the religious language and not just the vernacular. This led to formal education in madrassas and schools. Martin Luther declared that salvation depends on each person's own reading of the Scriptures.
Trading and management create a demand for accountancy. Basic skills thus included literacy and numeracy. This was the core of Elementary Education.

In mid 17th century America, Massachusetts became the first colony to mandate schooling for this purpose. Beginning in 1690, children there and in adjacent colonies learned to read from the New England Primer, known colloquially as "The Little Bible of New England".

History of elementary education in Europe

During Greek and Roman times, boys were educated by their mothers until the age of seven, then according to the culture of their location and times, would start formal education. In Sparta until twelve, it would be at a military academy building up physical fitness and combat skills, but also reading, writing and arithmetic while in Athens the emphasis would be on understanding the laws of the polis, reading, writing, arithmetic and music with gymnastics and athletics, and learning the moral stories of Homer. Girls received all their education at home. In Rome the primary school was called the ''ludus''; the curriculum developed over the centuries featuring the learning of both Latin and Greek. In AD 94, Quintilian published the systematic educational work, ''Institutio Oratoria''. He distinguished between teaching and learning, and that a child aged between 7 and 14 learned by sense experience, learns to form ideas, develops language and memory. He recommended that teachers should motivate their pupils by making the teaching interesting, rather than by corporal punishment. The trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) and quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music) were legacies of the Roman curriculum.

The medieval church and education in Europe

As the Roman influence waned, the great cathedral schools were established to provide a source of choristers and clergy. Kings School, Canterbury dates from 597. The Council of Rome in 853 specified that each parish should provide elementary education: religious ritual but also reading and writing Latin.
The purpose of education was to explain salvation, not social change. The church had a monopoly on education; the feudal lords concurred and allowed their sons to be educated at the few church schools. The economy in most of Europe was agrarian and the children of serfs started work as soon as they were able. It was accepted as a truth by Christians that man was created by God in the image of Adam with his share of original sin and that a boy was born sinful. Therefore, only the teachings of the church and the sacraments could redeem him. The parishes provided elementary education- but had no requirement to provide it to every child. The need was to produce priests, and in a stable kingdom such as that of Charlemagne, administrators with elementary writing skills in Latin and the arithmetic needed to collect taxes and administer them. Alcuin (735–804) developed teaching material that was based on the catechetical method- repeating and memorizing questions and answers, although often understanding the information was not important. These skills were also needed in the great abbeys such as Cluny. There was a divergence between the needs of town and monasteries and we see the development of the parish, chantry, monastic, and cathedral schools. With the entry of women into church life, convents were established, and with them convent schools. Girls entered at the age of eight and were taught Latin grammar, religious doctrine, and music, and the women's arts of spinning, weaving, tapestry, painting, and embroidery. Bede entered the monastic school at Jarrow at the age of seven and became a writer and historian. Chantry schools were the result of charitable donations and educated the poor. Beginning in 804, parishes were obliged to have a school, and cathedrals had to establish schools after the Lateran Council of 1179. Elementary education was mainly to teach sufficient Latin for the trivium and the quadrivium that formed the basis of the secondary curriculum.

Renaissance

While Humanism had a great change on the secondary curriculum, the primary curriculum was unaffected. It was believed that by studying the works of the greats, ancients who had governed empires, one became fit to succeed in any field. Renaissance boys from the age of five learned Latin grammar using the same books as the Roman child. There were the grammars of Donatus and Priscian followed by '' Caesar's Commentaries'' and then St Jerome's Latin Vulgate.

Wealthy boys were educated by tutors. Others were educated in schools attached to the parishes, cathedrals, or abbeys. From the 13th century, wealthy merchants endowed money for priests to "establish as a school to teach grammar". These early grammar schools were to teach basic, or elementary grammar, to boys. No age limit was specified. Early examples in England included Lancaster Royal Grammar School, Royal Latin School, Buckingham, and Stockport Grammar School. The Reformation and the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1548) disrupted the funding of many schools. The schools petitioned the King, Edward VI, for an endowment. Examples of schools receiving endowments are King Edward VI Grammar School, Louth

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