As the Conservative-Unionist government assumed power in the summer of 1895 it was plain that, within the life of the new Parliament, education would be a major issue. The Bryce Commission, set up to examine how a national system of secondary education could be created, was completing its report. The financial difficulties of the voluntary schools, exacerbated by Arthur Acland's initiatives, were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Ominously, echoes of the debate on religious instruction begun at the London School Board by the Rev. John Coxhead and Athelstan Riley were beginning to be heard in Parliamentary circles.

The National Union of Teachers had long been dissatisfied with the administration of elementary education. The voluntary bodies, in existence long before 1870, had redoubled their efforts to earn building grants during the six months' grace that they were permitted under Section 96 of Forster's Act. In the 1870s and 1880s their efforts to establish schools without these grants and without rate aid did not slacken. Hence a nationwide, though incomplete, network of voluntary schools existed. Intermeshed with it, a system of schools provided by boards was developing. In urban areas voluntary schools and board schools might compete and thereby improve. In the country isolated schools, voluntary or board, often lacked any such motivation.