en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pritchard

The statement is inaccurate in two ways.

1. Compulsory schooling did exist in some form before 1870.
   The 1833 Factory Act required schooling for younger children employed in factories. The National Archives summarizes the Act as including "two hours schooling each day for children", and an education-law chronology notes that the 1833 Factories Act "required attendance at school for younger children working in factories." So it is incorrect to say compulsory schooling simply "did not exist" before 1870.

2. The 1870 Elementary Education Act did not itself settle or impose general compulsory attendance.
   UK Parliament explains that under the 1870 Education Act, "The issue of making education compulsory for children had not been settled by the Act" and that "In 1880 a further Education Act finally made school attendance compulsory between the ages of five and ten." A separate education-law chronology likewise describes the 1870 Act as "only the start of a process" rather than the point at which compulsory schooling began generally.

A more accurate formulation would be that before 1870 there was no national, universal system of compulsory elementary schooling in England and Wales, although some earlier laws already required school attendance for particular groups of children, and broader compulsory attendance followed later legislation rather than the 1870 Act alone.