...Must look into that Cadbury connection...
] While on the subject of educating the poor, here's a link to Joseph Lancaster: hope you find him interesting
... thanks Linden, as a matter of fact, his methods were in use in the beginning of obligatory Swedish primary schools back in 1840-ies.
I heard of schools with as much as 200 pupils aged from 5/6 – 14/15 years. I know for a fact girls were sometimes involved. The Lancaster method was considered about the only way to manage at the time. But the older students were sometimes taken from school if their parents thought they were only there to tutor the younger ones. And there seems to have been a tendency towards the rattling off kind of knowledge. Anyhow by 1864 it was determined that the children be divided into classes and taught directly by their teacher.

We have still got old museum schoolrooms designed for Lancaster’s pedagogy.