It was during the nineteenth century that education for all in Britain became a reality. The 1870 Elementary Education Act (Forsters Act) attempted to provide elementary education for all. It created the first local school boards following on from this in the 1876 Elementary Education Act (Sandon's Act) placed a duty on parents to ensure that their children received elementary instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic; created school attendance committees, which could compel attendance.

In the early twentieth century the 1902 Balfour's Education Act moved responsibilities for education to Local Government and set the basis for secondary education ( the school leaving age being set at 12 in 1899).
In 1918 Elementary education was made free in law and the school leaving age fixed at 14 years.
In 1936 the school leaving age was going to be raised to 15 but it was suspended due to the war and did not finally come into force until 1947.

It was the Butler Education Act in 1944 that established the tripartite system of secondary schooling for the over 11's. The three types being secondary modern, technical and grammar schools.
However, in practice the system that developed was largely bipartite, since few technical schools were established. The vision for children's education was, to quote, "to provide instruction and training as may be desirable in view of their different ages, abilities and aptitudes".
In fact the 1944 Education Act was a landmark piece of social and welfare legislation, as well as being designed to address pupils' personal and academic development. You, or maybe your parents, might recall, with affection or otherwise, free medical examinations, frozen milk in winter or the transport paid for by the local education authority.
In 1951 O-levels and A-levels are introduced, replacing the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate.

However the tripartite system of secondary education had one enemy with the population the dreaded eleven plus examination. This method of selection to which type of secondary school a pupil would attend was pilloried, for being class distinctive.
It meant, in reality, that about 20% of pupils mainly from the upper classes went to grammar schools and the rest went to secondary modern schools. Because of this it was deemed that standards of education were poorer at secondary moderns.
This could be attributed to the fact that many in secondary modern schools took a vocational line of education so examination results in academic subjects were poor as a percentage of pupils attending those schools.
To address this, the Government introduced the CSE examination in 1965 and subsequently set about abolishing grammar schools and the tripartite system of education by the introduction of comprehensive schools. It was thought at this time that to obtain equality in education by having only one type of secondary education every pupil would have the equal opportunities.