Education Act 1695
The Education Act 1695, "An Act to restrain Foreign Education", was one of a series of Penal Laws enacted by the Parliament of Ireland to secure the Protestant Ascendancy in the wake of the Williamite War. It prohibited the Catholics from sending their children abroad to receive a Catholic education.
Section 1 ruled:
At the same time, it sought to prohibit Catholics from delivering formal education in Ireland.
Section 9 read:
It further required that "every schoolmaster … conform to the Church of Ireland as it is now by law established", and that this conformity be certified by license from an Anglican bishop.
Subsequent developments
A result of the act's prohibitions was the proliferation in Ireland of so-called "hedge schools," small secretly convened classes meeting behind hedgerows or more frequently, as enforcement of the law relaxed, in barns and private homes. Children of "non-conforming" faiths were given the rudiments of a primary education. Some teachers would also teach secondary studies including classical languages and literature. Some of those teachers were beneficiaries of a prohibited continental education; or, in the case of Presbyterians, a Scottish education.Enforcement targeted Catholic schools run by religious orders, whose property was confiscated. But from 1723 no hedge teachers are known to have been prosecuted. The 1782, a reforming Irish Parliament passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1782 which repealed the 1695 act, although it was still provided that Catholic schoolmasters had to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and could not teach any Protestant children. Along with other laws of the former Irish parliament no longer enforced, the whole act was repealed by the Westminster Parliament by section 1 of, and the schedule to, the Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878.