National school (England and Wales)

Aston and Cote Church of England Primary School in Aston, Oxfordshire, built as a National School in 1856

A National school was a school founded in 19th-century England and Wales by the National Society for Promoting Religious Education. These schools provided elementary education, in accordance with the teaching of the Church of England, to the children of the poor. Together with the less numerous British schools of the British and Foreign School Society, they provided the first near-universal system of elementary education in England and Wales.

The schools were eventually absorbed into the state system, either as fully state-run schools or as faith schools funded by the state.