and teamwork. Robert Lowe (1811-1892), a powerful Liberal politician who worked closely with Prime Minister Gladstone, was a key reformer. He agreed with the consensus against too much centralization in English education, but wanted to improve educational standards, and prevent the waste of public money on inefficient teaching, especially in church schools. He introduced a revised code in 1861; future grants would be allocated not by the subjective judgment of inspectors but rather on the basis of the number of students passing an examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic. It was known as ‘payment by results’. The code ended the favouritism often shown by inspectors; it came under attack by schoolteachers, inspectors, and Anglican and dissenting opponents of state activity. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 Out of 4.3 million children of primary school age in England & Wales, 1 million were in purely voluntary schools and 1.3 million were in state aided schools, but 2 million had no access to schools whatsoever. William Forster's Elementary Education Act 1870 required partially state-funded board schools to be set up to provide elementary (primary, in modern parlance) education in areas where existing provision was inadequate. Board schools were managed by elected school boards. The schools remained fee-charging, but poor parents could be exempted. The previous government grant scheme established in 1833 ended on 31 December 1870. Section 74 of the Act empowered school boards to, if they wished, make local byelaws making attendance compulsory between the ages of 5 and 13 but exempting any child aged over 10 who had reached the expected standard (which varied by board). Other exceptions included illness, if children worked, or lived too far from a school. Two measures in the Act became, for religious reasons, matters of controversy within the governing Liberal Party. Firstly, nonconformists objected to their children being taught Anglican doctrine. As a compromise, William Cowper-Temple (pronounced "Cooper-Temple"), a Liberal MP, proposed that religious teaching in the new state schools be non-denominational, in practice restricted to learning the Bible and a few hymns: this became the famous Cowper-Temple clause (Section 14 of the Act). Section 7 also gave parents the right to withdraw their children from any religious instruction provided in board schools, and to withdraw their children to attend any other religious instruction of their choice. Secondly, Section 25 gave school boards the power to, if they chose, pay the fees of poor