[amalcon]

That seems a bit off. The Industrial Revolution was considered to have taken place from around 1760-1840 per Wikipedia, but compulsory education began in places in the 1500s, and public schools started popping up in the 1600s. The reason for this is actually quite well documented: early Protestants, dissatisfied with the Catholic clergy's stranglehold on religion at the time, wanted to encourage literacy so that everyone could read the Bible.

Indeed, the primary reason that the stereotypical factory worker in the early industrial revolution was a girl was that girls were not yet required to attend school.

I would totally believe that deliberate elements of compliance were added at some point, but those seem to have mostly appeared in the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries: clearly well past the Industrial Revolution.