The year 1863 is usually considered as crucial in the history of mathematics teaching and modern secondary education in general in the Netherlands. In that year, a Dutch version of the German Realschule was founded. But in earlier years too, mathematics teaching also showed interesting development and was by no means as backwards as is usually thought. The central government played only a partial and hesitant role in that development. Local authorities, pushed by the educational market, took the initiative in another crucial year, 1838. Without a proper legal basis, local government modernized its Latin schools and combined these schools with a kind of "Realschule", where mathematics was the most important subject. In 1863, the new school, usually called the HBS, was able to build on foundations laid in the decades before.