[352] 12 & 13 Vic. c. 13, sec. 1 (The Poor Law Relief Act 1849). Out of this sprang the Certified Schools Act of 1862 (25 & 26 Vic. c. 43), and the provision in the Poor Law Amendment Acts of 1866 and 1868 (29 & 30 Vic. c. 113, sec. 14, and 31 & 32 Vic. c. 122, sec. 23), enabling the Central Authority peremptorily to order the removal to a certified school of a child of non-Anglican parents, when the board of guardians refused to allow religious freedom. [353] 20 & 21 Vic. c. 48 of 1857; 24 & 25 Vic. c. 113 of 1861; 29 & 30 Vic. c. 118 of 1866. [354] 32 & 33 Vic. c. 63, sec. 11 (Metropolitan Poor Act of 1869); these ships were regulated by Special Orders. [355] "The vast number of the (outdoor) pauper children in London is as melancholy as it is remarkable" (Twenty-second Annual Report, 1869-70, p. xxii). During the next twenty years we see this policy of separate boarding schools for such of the Poor Law children as were on indoor relief being constantly pressed on boards of guardians. The erection of these costly barrack schools, which were each regulated by a separate Special Order, differing slightly from school to school,[356] the steady improvement in their accommodation and diet, and the continuous rise in the educational standard attained, which is the great feature of the ensuing period (though in accordance with the recommendations of the 1834 Report), marks a definite abandonment, as regards the children, of the principle that the condition of the pauper should always be less eligible than that of the lowest class of independent labourer. But although in the course of the period 1847-71, in the Metropolis and various large towns, the greater number of the boys and girls between five and fourteen were removed from the workhouses to these "barrack schools" and similar institutions, such schools were not made compulsory; the retention of children in the workhouse was not forbidden, and in hundreds of unions[357] they remained unaffected by the new policy of the Central Authority, which apparently felt unable to require the boards of guardians to adopt it. Even when the bulk of the children were placed in separate schools, there were always some in the workhouse itself; and it is remarkable that the Central Authority made no attempt to modify for these the provisions of the General Consolidated Order of 1847, the effect of which upon the workhouse administration of the period we have already described.[358] [356] _See_, for instance, as to the Swinton school of the Manchester Board of Guardians, Special Order of 6th July 1852; as to the Cowley school of the Oxford Board of Guardians, Special Order of 24th November 1854; as to the Kirkdale School of the Liverpool Select Vestry, Special Order of 7th August 1856.