Fulfilling a Vision

The Contribution of the Church of Scotland to School Education, 1772–1872

John Stevenson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781610973441
  9781498260268
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630875848
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Education has contributed enormously to the Scottish national character. The emphasis has always been on making a good education available to all and on giving those with talent every opportunity of advancement. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, it was clear that the provision of schooling was failing to meet the needs of an expanding population and the growth and diversification of the economy. In 1824 the Church of Scotland began an ambitious program to tackle the problem. In setting up new schools and the first teacher training colleges, the Church saw itself as supplementing an existing system of national education for which it shared a statutory managerial responsibility. This book offers an account of the struggles and achievements of the Church of Scotland over some fifty years as it sought to control and strengthen school education throughout the country. In so doing, it furthered the model of education for which Scotland became famous. Readers interested in current debates about the curriculum and standards in school education, the involvement of parents, the place of religious education, and the desirability or otherwise of faith schools will recognize their beginnings in these pages.

1

A Duty Neglected

The Want of Schools

At its meeting in Edinburgh in May 1824, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was persuaded that the situation with regard to school education in many parts of Scotland was critical and agreed to consider the need for a special committee to tackle the problem. It reached its decision mainly on the basis of figures drawn from a government survey published in 1818 by Henry Brougham who had been appointed by the House of Commons to report on “the charitable establishments for education in Great Britain.” For the purposes of his report Brougham had asked the General Assembly in 1818 to circulate a number of questions to all parish ministers in Scotland with a view to establishing an accurate estimate of the educational provision in Scotland and an Assembly committee under the convenership of George Baird, Principal of Edinburgh University, was set up to undertake this task. The questionnaire sent out asked for the population of parishes, the number who had not been taught to read, and whether or not the parish school was situated where it could be conveniently accessed by children from every end of the parish. In the course of this investigation it came to light that the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK), whose work was so essential in the Highlands and Islands, had been turning down applications for new schools and closing down some of its existing schools, due to shortage of funds.1 Some seven hundred returns were received from ministers and passed on to Brougham who later returned them to Baird.2 The statistics which were presented to the General Assembly showed that certainly by the early nineteenth century there were large tracts of Scotland where there was little or no educational provision. Brougham’s enquiry recorded 942 parish schools in Scotland, but the inadequacy of even that number to meet current needs was, according to Baird, demonstrated by the fact that it was being supplemented with 2,222 adventure schools.3 The accuracy of Brougham’s figures and conclusions was questioned by the Aberdeen researcher Donald Withrington4 who was of the opinion that the English clerk appointed to collate the statistics for Scotland had difficulty applying Scottish terminology to the classifications which had been prepared for England. Certainly the observations made by the parish ministers in their returns showed just how varied the picture was throughout the country. In the County of Aberdeen alone the difference between parishes is striking. For example it was reported that in Aberdour the parish school was small and in a ruinous condition and in Crathie Braemar the school was totally unfit to meet the needs of the parish. On the other hand the parishes of Macher and Bourtie could boast that the schools were adequate and that all the children were taught to read and most of them could write and count. In the County of Argyll schooling was said to be sufficient in only three out of the thirty-two parishes, while in the County of Dunbarton in ten out of twelve parishes the means of education was described as sufficient even for the poorer classes.

Many of the problems highlighted by Brougham’s report had been long-standing. In 1696 the Act for Settling of Schools had made it the responsibility of the heritors in every parish to provide a school and the salary of the master. Where they refused the Act gave powers to presbyteries to appeal to the Commissioners of Supply5 who would then establish the school and pass on the cost to the heritors. Almost seventy years later, however, in 1758 the SSPCK reported to the General Assembly that, in spite of this legislation, within the bounds of the thirty–nine presbyteries where the Society had erected charity schools, some 175 parishes out of a total of 380 were still without parish schools.6 As a solution the SSPCK had recommended that the Assembly should instruct every presbytery in Scotland to conduct a survey to determine which parishes had schools. The SSPCK also reiterated its threat to withdraw its schools from those parishes where no parish school had been provided claiming that it was not the job of that organization to do the heritors’ work for them and substitute their Charity schools in place of parish schools. The Society had made the same complaint in 1749. At that time it had forcibly expressed its criticism of presbyteries which, it claimed, for some time had neglected to visit schools and had made no effort to enforce those Acts which required heritors to make provision for school education in each parish. Instead the Church had become totally dependent on the schools established and paid for by the Society. These complaints and threats would appear to have had little effect. Four years later the matter was again before the Assembly. In 1762 a committee which had been appointed to consider a reference to the building and repairing of kirks and manses, and the setting up of schools where there was a need, recommended that the Assembly should instruct presbyteries to carry out those Acts of Parliament which made provision for the building and repairing of churches and for establishing schools. It also suggested that a committee should be appointed to oversee this and that presbyteries should report back to the next Assembly. The Assembly agreed to these recommendations but it is doubtful if any were ever carried out. There is no account of any reports from presbyteries in the proceedings of the following Assembly. It would be the last years of the century before such a procedure would be followed.

Other sources of information available to the Church describe the same diverse and inconsistent picture. In spite of the SSPCK’s criticisms of heritors in the minutes of heritors’ meetings there is considerable evidence that at least in some areas many were attentive in the upkeep of school buildings and the appointment of schoolmasters. Even where the heritors themselves were not always present they appointed representatives to attend meetings and speak for them.

The Old Statistical Account (OSA)7 had revealed that while the provision of schooling over the country was patchy there were some striking examples of what was available. The small parish of Kiltearn (Ross and Cromarty) with some 1,616 inhabitants, for example, could boast of a parish school which taught Latin, French, geography, geometry, and mathematics to some sixty to eighty children, while a town like Paisley claimed to have an English school in each of its three parishes, a grammar school, a school for teaching writing and arithmetic, and several private schools. On the other hand the parish minister at Forbes and Kearn in Aberdeenshire claimed in his report that there never had been a parish school in that district. There were, however, many schools other than parish schools. Apart from adventure schools and subscription schools, there were a growing number of Charity schools. By the middle of the eighteenth century Edinburgh alone had four Hospital schools—Heriot’s, the Merchant Maiden, the Trades Maiden and George Watson’s. In addition in many of the major towns Burgh or Grammar schools had long been established and offered an extensive curriculum which included more scientific and practical subjects as well as the classics. In 1746 the Town Council of Ayr had adopted a scheme for a Grammar School teaching a wide range of subjects including Latin, Greek, natural philosophy, geometry and algebra. A similar Academy was opened in Perth in 1761. One of the ministers in the parish of Elgin reported that the magistrates and influential citizens planned to set up an academy in the town which would include mathematics, book-keeping and land-surveying in its curriculum. On the whole the portrayal of school education in the OSA is not so much a want of schools as an education system deteriorating as a result of poor salaries and the lack of properly trained and qualified schoolmasters. While there may have been some kind of school in the majority of parishes the need for more schools was recognized particularly in the remoter areas of the Highlands where distances made school attendance difficult.

The consensus view of historians today would appear to be that opportunities for elementary education in Scotland at the end of the eighteenth century and into the early years of the nineteenth were not as scarce as Brougham’s calculations made out. Scottish academics such as T. C. Smout and R. D. Anderson have taken the view that by the end of the eighteenth century there was a basic network of schools which could have been described as a national system.8 This was certainly the case in the Central Lowlands of Scotland. An examination of the 1818 returns bears this out. Parishes such as Dundee, Paisley, Renfrew, Port Glasgow, Dumbarton, Linlithgow, and Clackmannan were all reported as being able to provide access to schooling for even the poorest classes. It has to be remembered, however, that not all children of school age attended even where schooling was available. In his Digest, for example, Brougham’s calculations showed that out of a population of 1,805,688, only 176,525 children were attending school, and many of those for only part of the day. About one in ten fell into this category. Moreover the geography of the Highlands and the poverty of the people meant that for many children living there at that time there was little or no chance of attending school. To this must be added the fact that the situation in the towns was deteriorating as can be seen from the statistics provided by the New Statistical Account (NSA, 1834–1845). It would appear that in one parish in Glasgow (the Barony) at the end of the eighteenth century most of the people had been taught to read and write but the number fell drastically as the density of the population increased and by 1850 out of 592 children only ninety-nine were attending any school.9 Indeed Smout concluded that the provision of elementary education worsened for most members of Scottish society in the half-century beginning around 1780 due to the shift of population from the countryside to the towns.10

The Role of the Church Established by Law

The duties of presbyteries and kirk sessions had been clearly set out in Acts of the realm and in General Assembly instructions going as far back as 1565 when the Assembly claimed as a right that “none be permitted to have charge of Schooles, Colledges, or Universities, or yet privately or publickly to instruct the youth, but such as shall be tryed by the Superintendents or visitors of the Church,” and found to be able and sound in doctrine. This claim was ratified by an Act of Parliament in 1567.11 Here the reference to the Church’s power to examine teachers in “all scules to Burgh and Land” and to its responsibility for the instruction of youth “privatlie or openlie,” is worth noting. The Church believed that its powers of superintendence applied to all schools but it is evident that it saw itself also as part of a partnership. In 1645 the General Assembly passed an Act which stated that all schools, including burgh and grammar schools should be visited twice a year by inspectors appointed by presbyteries and town councils.12 These visitations were intended to ensure the provision of a high standard of school education and of suitably qualified schoolmasters. The Church, through the presbytery or parish minister, could exercise a large measure of control over the appointment of masters and their assistants, but in burghs the town council exercised an administrative control in such matters as school hours, vacations, the curriculum, repairs and equipment. This superintending power of the Church was established by the Treaty of Union in 1707 and was confirmed by a number of succeeding Acts. Of course, as might be expected, there were times when the jurisdiction of the Church was questioned and when cooperation between the Church and the town councils broke down. In November 1775 Dunfermline Town Council decided to remove the master of the Grammar School. This was unanimously opposed by the Kirk Session of Dunfermline Abbey who were perfectly satisfied with his ability and his conduct and claimed that since they paid part of his salary they had at least an equal say in his appointment. In the end the Session (apart from the Moderator) agreed to undertake a re-trial of the schoolmaster along with representatives from the Town Council. And there was always someone who took exception to a session being involved with schooling in this way. When Dunfermline Abbey Kirk Session was considering setting up a Sabbath Evening School one of the elders, a Mr Thomson, complained and stated his belief that the Kirk Session had no power to establish either public or private schools or to giving anyt...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Forward: In the Path of John the Commonweal
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: A Duty Neglected
• Chapter 2: The First Ten Years
• Chapter 3: The Cost of Progress
• Chapter 4: The Call for Reform
• Chapter 5: Legislating for a National System
• Chapter 6: A Vision Fulfilled
• Selected Bibliography