Compulsory Education

Compulsory Education refers to a period of education that is required of persons, imposed by law. In some countries the education needs to take place at a registered school. Other countries allow the education to happen outside of school, for example via homeschooling.

Although Plato's The Republic is credited with having popularized the concept of compulsory education in Western intellectual thought, every parent in Judea since ancient times was required to teach their children at least informally. Over the centuries, as cities, towns and villages developed a class of teachers called Rabbis evolved. According to the Talmud(tractate Bava Bathra 21a), which praises the sage Joshua ben Gamla with the institution of formal Jewish education in the 1st century AD, Ben Gamla instituted schools in every town and made formal education compulsory from the age of 6 or 7.

The Aztec Triple Alliance, which ruled from 1428 to 1521 in what is now central Mexico, is considered to be the first state to implement a system of universal compulsory education.

Early Modern Era:-

The Reformation prompted the establishment of compulsory education for boys and girls. Most important was Martin Luther's text 'a die Ratsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes,' (1524) with the call for establishing schools. Especially the Protestant South-West of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation with cities like Strassburg became pioneers in educational questions. Under the influence of Strasbourg in 1592 the German Duchy Pfalz-Zweibrücken became the first territory of the world with compulsory education for girls and boys. The South German Duchy Wuerttemberg installed a compulsory education already in 1559, but for boys only.

In Scotland the Education Act of 1496 had obliged the children of noblemen and freeholders to attend school, but the School Establishment Act of 1616 commanded every parish with the means to establish a school paid for by parishioners. The Parliament of Scotland confirmed this with the Education Act of 1633 and created a local land-based tax to provide the required funding. The required majority support of parishioners, however, provided a tax evasion loophole which heralded the Education Act of 1646. The turmoil of the age meant that in 1661 there was a temporary reversion to the less compulsory 1633 position. However, in 1696 a new Act re-established the compulsory provision of a school in every parish with a system of fines, sequestration, and direct government implementation as a means of enforcement where required.

During the Reformation in 1524, Martin Luther advocated compulsory schooling so that all parishioners would be able to read the Bible themselves, and Palatinate-Zweibrücken passed accordant legislation in 1592, followed by Strasbourg—then a free city of the Holy Roman Empire— in 1598.

Modern Era:-

Europe:-

Compulsory school attendance based on the Prussian model gradually spread to other countries. It was quickly adopted by the governments in Denmark-Norway and Sweden, and also in Finland, Estonia and Latvia within the Russian Empire, but was rejected in Russia itself. France and the United Kingdom did not, until the 1880s, introduce compulsory education: France due to conflicts between a radical secular state and the Catholic Church, and the UK due to the upper class defending its educational privileges and turfs.

United States:-

Following Luther and other Reformers, the Separatist Congregationalists who founded Plymouth Colony in 1620, obliged parents to teach their children how to read and to write so that they were able to read the Bible for themselves. In Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded by Puritans in 1628, a law obliged parents to teach their children reading and writing in 1642. Five years later, the first steps were taken to require free elementary instruction in the towns. The Puritan zeal for learning was reflected in the early and rapid rise of educational institutions. Harvard College was founded in 1636. The American Commonwealth of Massachusetts was the first state to pass a compulsory education law which occurred in 1852. These laws continued to spread to other states until finally, in 1918, Mississippi was the last state to enact a compulsory attendance law. Massachusetts had originally enacted the first compulsory education law in the American colonies in 1647. In 1852, the Massachusetts General Court passed a law requiring every town to create and operate a grammar school. 

Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were "unfit to have the children educated properly".

Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first five to seven years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six to eight years of schooling starting at the age of five or six, although this varies between, and sometimes within, countries. Globally, around 89% of children aged six to twelve are enrolled in primary education and this proportion are rising. Under the Education for All programs driven by UNESCO, most countries have committed to achieving universal enrollment in primary education by 2015, and in many countries, it is compulsory. The division between primary and secondary education is somewhat arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about eleven or twelve years of age. Some education systems have separate middle schools, with the transition to the final stage of secondary education taking place at around the age of fourteen. Schools that provide primary education are mostly referred to as primary schools or elementary schools. Primary schools are often subdivided into infant schools and junior school.

In India, for example, compulsory education spans over twelve years, with eight years of elementary education, five years of primary schooling and three years of upper primary schooling. Various states in the republic of India provide 12 years of compulsory school education based on a national curriculum framework designed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.