Jules Ferry helped to establish free primary education in 1881 in France.
Jules François Camille Ferry was a French statesman and republican. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion. He was a French statesman of the early Third Republic, notable both for his anticlerical education policy and for his success in extending the French colonial empire. Jules Ferry was born at Saint-Dié, Vosges Department, on April 5, 1832.