Table showing the reduction in entrants of females to the Asylum from 1836 to 1846

The Duke of York, as commander-in-chief of the Army, had among other innovative ideas created the Royal Military Asylum, Chelsea, as a haven for the children of fallen soldiers in the war with France. He laid the foundation stone in 1801 and the Asylum opened its doors in 1803. Being a member of Lancaster's committee as well as chairman of the board of commissioners of the new Asylum, it is not surprising that he should authorize the use of Joseph Lancaster's system of monitorial teaching. Under this system a teacher taught a select group of up to ten monitors who, in turn, delivered to their fellow students the lesson that they themselves had been taught; hence the name, monitorial teaching.

Dr. Andrew Bell (1753-1832), founder of the Madras system of education, arrived in London from India where he had been the superintendent of an orphanage in the city of Madras. Bell's system, which he had introduced in 1789, was similar to that of Joseph Lancaster. It promoted self instruction among the pupils of the orphanage. By 1807, Bell's Madras system replaced the system that had been in use in the RMA, Chelsea, from the year opened. Bell had the backing of the Bishop of London, who sat on the board of the Asylum. By the time Bell arrived on the scene, the Duke of York had become disenchanted with the Lancaster committee and left, so Dr. Bell found it easy to replace his rival in monitorial education.

Bell was also a shrewd entrepreneur. Through his powerful lobby through the Bishop of London, he established contact with parish church councils throughout the country, particularly in the midlands and the north. He used trained monitors from the Chelsea institution to help parishes far and wide start their own schools using his system. In fact, the army did the same thing to promote education in regimental units both at home and overseas. Boys of 12, 13 and 14 years of age were sent to regiments throughout the home and overseas commands to introduce the monitorial system of education. They were sent to units of the Duke of Wellington's Peninsular Army, safe in its winter quarters behind the lines of Torres Vedras (1810), to Upper Canada (now Ontario), India, Malta, the Caribbean and the West Indies. For how many years the dispersal of student monitors from the Asylum went on is not known. In any case, such was the deep entrenchment of monitorial teaching during the first forty-odd years of the RMA's existence. The winds of change, however, began blowing from the time the last girls left in 1845.

The force behind the drastic changes about to take place was Fox Maule Ramsay (1801-1874). After a spell in the army, Ramsay became the member of parliament for Perthshire in 1835, and quickly rose to a position of influence in the government. He was under secretary of state for home affairs (1835-1841) and, as a member of the privy council achieved a position of power. Ramsay it was who, as secretary at war (1846 to 1852) was the prime mover who brought about the changes that led to the creation of the corps of army schoolmasters. He addressed a number of questions on the subject of education to the RMA board of commissioners, questions designed to enlist the board's assistance in changing the climate of education instruction. The board's answers were not helpful and discouraged the idea of using the institution as a training establishment. These answers being given, the office of the secretary-at-war specified what changes were to take place.

It engaged two scholars to start an ecole normale (a teacher training school after a French model begun at the end of the 18th Century; hence the name ecole normale) and a 'model school' at which the student teachers could practice what they had been taught in the ecole normale. Dr Walter McLeod, a graduate of the University of Glasgow and Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, was engaged to manage the model school and to introduce a new method of teaching. McLeod was a former headmaster of the Battersea Training School for Teachers and a strong advocate of the methods of Pestalozzi, an internationally recognized authority on education. McLeod had written a number of books including Exercises in Arithmetic for Elementary Schools, which was popular enough to run into many editions. He was required to work closely with Dr. William du Sautoy, an Anglican minister and scholar who was to run the student teacher ecole normale.

In addition to the ecole normale, Dr du Sautoy (St. John's College, Cambridge) was hired to replace the incumbent chaplain, the Rev. George Clarke, and headmaster of the Asylum for over forty years. Clarke was not easily persuaded to leave. He refused to quit his quarters and yield his post. The school authorities lacked the will if not the authority to dismiss him. As a result, it was well over a year before Clarke at last quit the field, leaving du Sautoy and McLeod to develop their programme for producing a corps of reliably-trained schoolmasters.

A selection board was formed to screen volunteers wishing to join the course, which was widely advertised in the national press. A year-long programme had been designed, which did not include long breaks at Christmas, Easter and for the summer period. Although the student teachers were civilians, they followed a military routine and were subject to a strong regimen of discipline. A condition of joining the course was that following graduation they were required to enlist for a period of ten years and be willing to be posted to teach at whatever military unit the authorities chose for them. Postings were to be decided by the office of the secretary at war. Postings could be in the Home Command (which by 1847 included Irish Command) or overseas.

The results of the selection board's screening efforts were not as successful as the authorities might have wished. Of the first 29 students engaged, ten were dismissed, one was publicly expelled; three absconded, one was withdrawn, and another student encouraged to withdraw. In short, of the original 29 taken on, only fourteen graduated to enlist and be posted to units; not a good performance by any measuring stick.

The Elementary Education Act came into effect in 1870. It was the first nationally financed education system. That a national act had not been legislated before was due to the serious religious differences prevailing in the country during the mid-19th Century and the insistence of the Established Church that children be taught the Anglican catechism. This was not acceptable to the Roman Catholics, the Quakers and some non-conformist groups. There were other reasons, too, why the country was not ready for a national system of elementary education until 1870. Not the least of these was the resistance of working people to have their children attend school when they were needed to help contribute to the family's income as soon as they were old enough to work.

For example, writing to The Times in July 1861, one correspondent wished to bring to the public's attention an injustice inflicted on army schoolmasters, whom he described as 200 "...zealous, though humble, servants of the crown and country." Humble, however, would not be an adjective one would use to describe the average schoolteacher at any time in the history of the calling. The correspondent wrote to complain that the military authorities were to cancel the Royal warrant issued under Army School Regulations (c1852), which would "reduce army schoolmasters to the position of staff-sergeants, and to treat them as sergeants in every respect." He regarded the cancellation of the warrant as an "...anti-progressive movement to dishonour the instructor..." that would place "educated men" in an invidious position, which would be an indignity to them.

We know from the records that the 200 schoolmasters to whom the correspondent referred were far from 'educated gentlemen' by any standards when most began their course of teacher instruction at the army's expense. They had received the equivalent of a college education in return for ten years of military service, which is not much different from the contemporary practice of requiring military service in return for higher education funded at the public expense.