A teacher sits in front of a number of children, many of whom do not appear very attentive. Which is your Right Hand?, illustration of an unidentified infant class, drawn by Paul Renouard [fr] and published in The Graphic (1898)[note 1] The first infant school in Great Britain was founded in New Lanark, Scotland, in 1816. It was followed by other philanthropic infant schools across Great Britain. Early childhood education was a new concept at the time and seen as a potential solution to social problems related to industrialisation. Numerous writers published works on the subject and developed a theory of infant teaching. This included moral education, physical exercise and an authoritative but friendly teacher.
In England and Wales, infant schools served to maximise the education children could receive before they left school to start work. They were valued by parents as a form of childcare but proved less popular in Scotland. State-funded schools in England and Wales were advised in 1840 to include infant departments within their grounds. As it was integrated into the state system, infant education in England and Wales came under pressure to achieve quick academic progress in children and shifted towards rote learning. The new "kindergarten" methods of teaching young children had some limited influence on the curriculum in the late 19th century.
Beginning in 1905, infant education in England and Wales shifted towards more child-centred methods of teaching, where education was meant to reflect the preferences of children. Many of the youngest children, under five, who were considered ill-suited to school, were removed entirely, though some nursery classes were later attached to infant schools to cater to this age group. The child-centred approach reached its peak following a report in 1967. In 1988, a more centralised curriculum was introduced, but there have been moves away from that in Wales since devolution. The term "infant department" for the early years at school was used widely in Scotland in the 1960s but is no longer generally used there.
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The term infant school is used in the United Kingdom.[2][3][4] It might refer to a separate school or a department within a larger school.[2] Dictionaries give various age ranges for this phase of education. Cambridge describes infant schools as "for children who are four to seven years old".[2] Collins defines them as "for children between the ages of five and seven".[3] Merriam-Webster uses the age range from "five to seven or eight".[4] Oxford does not give a lower age limit, just stating "usually under seven years of age".[5] A UK government document published in 2013 described "infant (5 to 7 or 8)" as the middle phase of primary education in England and Wales but commented that "in Scotland and Northern Ireland there is generally no distinction between infant and junior schools."[6]
