The three decades before the passing of the Elementary Education Act 1870 saw a national education campaign in the United Kingdom, carried out by a wide range of activist groups. In this period the debate on education was usually framed in terms of "national education" (i.e. universal state education) and its characteristics: fee-paying or free, compulsory or voluntary (and to what age), religious, non-denominational, or secular, inspection. A committee of the Privy Council on national education was set up in 1839.