There were many signs in the middle fifties of a growing public interest in education, apart from the events at Exeter and at Oxford which have already been recounted. The Manchester and Salford Education Bill, proposing to raise a rate in aid of denominational schools in those towns, was finally defeated in 1854, though in the ensuing years a series of bills was introduced into the House of Commons, and a Royal Commission was appointed to enquire into the state of popular education in 1858. In June 1857 an Educational Conference was held under the auspices of Prince Albert, which concerned itself mainly with primary education and with problems of early leaving, but which also considered prize and certificate schemes and the educational aspects of the Civil Service Examinations. Among the papers read was one by W. L. Sargant on ‘The proposed middle-class examinations as a means of stimulating the education of the lower classes’.

It is very interesting to note how much attention was given to educational matters in the 1857 issues of two such important provincial newspapers as the Manchester Guardian and the Leeds Mercury. The latter was owned by the Congregationalist Edward Baines who was one of the chief opponents of state intervention in primary education, and the newspaper columns naturally reflect his interests in that they oppose state taxation for educational purposes. A great deal of space is given to Mechanics' Institutes and their work and to the examinations of the Society of Arts, which were first held in a provincial town at Huddersfield in 1857.