English: Education System and school reforms during the Victorian Age; Charity schools, the theme of the educational model in “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte; the theme of Utilitarianism in the novel “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens

The Cultural context during the Victorian period and the Education Act of 1870
Before 1870, education was largely unregulated and emerged in various forms such as the dame schools and charity schools. Dame schools were run by women who had little or no educational training themselves and were unsanitary, sometimes exploitative businesses where working-class children were taught basic literacy in overcrowded classes. The charity schools movement ensured basic education for children of low income families. These schools were run and owned by private individuals and were financed partly by student subscriptions and partly by endowments. The curriculum was based on strict moral and religious discipline, lessons were often taught from the Bible and students learned to be submissive and accept their lowly position in society.
The upper and middle class sent their male children to expensive public (private) boarding schools and to college to become gentlemen, future heads of industry, finance and business, or top-rank civil servants to be employed throughout the Empire, in other words the future ruling class. Upper and middle-class girls were closely guarded by their parents till marriage and were generally educated at home by a governess. They had to hand their property and money over to their husbands on marriage and their only means of earning an independent living was through teaching or writing. They were only expected to read novels and learn embroidering, singing and playing the piano as their role in life was to marry and have children.
However, the spread of literacy during the Victorian Age had a strong impact on the cultural development of the age and culminated in the Educational Act which provided primary education all over the country. In fact finally, in 1870, the government introduced a bill to provide public elementary education in England and Wales, which was passed after six months of contentious debate. Its introducer, William Edward Forster, explained that its purpose was supplementary, to ensure an efficient school in every part of the kingdom, to make the erection of such schools compulsory where they did not already exist. The full significance of the Education act of 1870 lies in the fact that the English state then definitely assumed direct responsibility for public education, whose provision became a state service like that of defence or the administration of justice; it was no longer a matter of private charity conducted by the well-to-do for the benefit of the poor. For the time being, this responsibility was confined to elementary instruction; but its extension was unavoidable.
By the end of the century women’s position ha changed too: there were schools and colleges for women and they acquired the right to enter various professions.

Chapter 5 of the novel “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte, the educational model in the Victorian boarding schools

Summary of the chapter: January 19, the date of Jane's departure from Gateshead has arrived. She rises at five o'clock in the morning, so that she'll be ready for the six o'clock coach. None of the family rises to bid Jane farewell, and she happily journeys far away from the Reeds. The day of Jane's arrival at Lowood is rainy, windy, and dark. Jane is led through the unfamiliar, labyrinthine halls of Lowood, until she reaches a large room in which eighty other girls sit doing their homework. Soon it is bedtime, and Jane wearily makes her way to bed. The next day, Jane follows the full routine of the school, studying from pre-dawn until five o'clock in the evening. The chapter is filled with Jane's observations of the school. Jane discovers the kind Miss Temple and the unreasonable Miss Scatcherd, who unfairly punishes Helen Burns. While solitary and isolated through most of the day, Jane does converse with Helen, who tells Jane that Lowood is a charity institution for orphan children.

Modelled after the Clergy Daughters School at Cowan Bridge where Charlotte Brontë and her sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Emily were sent, Lowood is not appealing. The school day begins before dawn, the students are offered eat meager rations of burnt and unappetizing food, and the grounds surrounding the school are blighted and decayed. The chapter shows the harsh realities of charity-school life in Victorian times.