Equal education for all? A case study on differences in primary education between urban and rural areas and public and confessional schools in Amersfoort and Baarn between 1901 and 1911

Abstract

In the nineteenth century legislation uniformed primary education in the Netherlands step by step. In 1900 primary education became compulsory too and every child would, theoretically, receive a similar education. If this was really the case in the first decade of the twentieth century is tested in this study on differences in primary education in comparable public and confessional primary schools in the urban municipality of Amersfoort and the rural municipality of Baarn. After investigating differences between schools it is studied why these differences existed. Were they caused by the differences in the funding or location of these schools? Or were the differences in tuition requested in schools, and thus the social background of the children attending them, the most important variable?