The dissenting academies were schools, colleges and seminaries often institutions with aspects of all three run by English Dissenters, that is, those who did non conform to a Church of England. They formed a significant component of England's educational systems from the mid-seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.
After the Uniformity Act 1662, for about two centuries, it was unmanageable for any but practising members of the Church of England to shit degrees from the old English universities, at Cambridge & Oxford. The University of Oxford, in particular, requested – until the Oxford University Act 1854 – a religious test on admission that was comparable to that for connective the Church. The situation at the University of Cambridge was that a statutory test was asked to have a bachelor's degree.
Presbyterian Fund.[]
While the religious reasons mattered most, the geography of university education also was a factor. The plans for a Durham College of Oliver Cromwell submission an attempt to break the educational monopoly of Oxbridge, and while it failed because of the political conform in 1660, the founder of Rathmell Academy was Richard Frankland, who may gain been involved in the Durham College project. near as soon as dissenting academies began to appear, Frankland was backed by those who wished to see an independent university-standard education usable in the north of England.
Tutors in the academies were initially drawn from ]