Scottish Schools and Universities
1872-1913 ; and some current
issues.
Iain Smith
Introduction
This may contribute something to an understanding of
educational opportunity and sometimes the lack of it in late 19th
and early 20th century Scotland. The growth of secondary schooling and of
university access set trends that were to continue for many subsequent decades.
These
trends have been well-researched. But that research perhaps was not always
expressed in a narrative that was easy to follow.
In this
modest piece, I have made some simplifications and probably some errors of
detail. For the latter I apologise.
The
baseline
Back in the 1870s and even later, many Scots faced barriers
to university access:-
- One had to be male: university graduation
for females did not begin until about 1892.
- One generally although not always had
to have a school which was teaching to university entrance standards: many
areas had no such schools. This is a complex issue. Mid-19th
century Scottish universities ran open entrance systems that were not
unlike modern-day US community colleges; and that were no less
controversial. By 1900, this form of university entry was defunct.
- One had to stay on in education
beyond the age of 13: and forego the wages available to teenagers, notably
in the flourishing Scottish industries and agricultural and fishing
enterprises of the time. This is what economists call “opportunity costs”.
See RD Anderson on this[1].
The concept applies today only to those parts of the UK – and there are
some, although not many- where there is a full-time employment market for
unskilled 16+ yr-olds.
- One had to pay university tuition
fees; and, for students from rural areas, the additional costs of travel to
and lodgings in one the four[2]
Scottish cities which housed universities.
The years following the 1872 Education Act in Scotland saw
elementary i.e. primary schooling reasonably well established across Scotland,
certainly once it became free -in 1890. Problems of truancy initially high were
largely solved.
Attention from about 1885 onwards increasingly came to focus
on what we now call “secondary education”[3].
This was in part fuelled by the Scotch (sic) Education Department (SED)’s
foundation in 1888 of the Higher Leaving Certificate -which quickly became, as
it largely remains today, the major benchmark for university entrance. There
was considerable agreement that post-elementary “higher” education should be
expanded, especially for able but poor students; but great controversy as to
how[4].
In a complex debate, the central choice was between
·
the School Boards developing their own
“higher grade” and eventually zero fee provision, albeit with the SED having a
regulatory function as to how and where government grant was to be spent ; and
·
the existing secondary provision of
fee-charging “endowed schools” and “higher schools” - e.g. Kelvinside Academy,
the High School of Edinburgh, Inverness Royal Academy, Aberdeen Grammar School,
Perth Academy, which were mostly independent of the Boards - receiving SED
grant to expand their provision. [5]
After an important digression we shall return to that unfolding
story.
Pupil
Teachers
Scottish universities became increasingly rigorous in their
entrance standards in the latter part of the 19th century and it was
to be some years before these standards could be met by school study in much of
Scotland. However some school students, always males prior to 1892, used the
pupil teacher scheme as an alternative route to university entrance and indeed university
graduation.
The
pupil teacher system was a teacher apprenticeship scheme of 19th century
Scotland and England: it consistently in the late 19th century gave
some elementary school students i) a moderately financially secure route to a
teacher training college i.e. “normal college” in 19th century
jargon, and to teacher certification; or ii) even directly to teacher
certification. For able pupil teachers - with good teachers as their school based
mentors- certification as a teacher could be achieved by sitting the relevant
exams, even without going to a teacher training college.
i)
One served post -13
a 5-year apprenticeship as a pupil teacher in one’s elementary school, followed
by 2 years at a “normal college” in Glasgow (at what is now the University of
Strathclyde School of Education) or in Edinburgh (at what is now the University
of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education) or in Aberdeen (at what is now the
University of Aberdeen School of Education); and thus became a certificated
teacher. The “normal college” courses
were supplemented, increasingly over the years, with study of university
subjects; and some pupil teachers used this as a bridge to becoming university
graduates.
ii)
Or one served a
5-year apprenticeship as a pupil teacher in a school and at some point, under
tutelage of a headteacher, took as an external candidate the certificate
examination - without prior attendance - at Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen.[6]
iii)
Or one could simply
remain as an uncertificated teacher, a category sometimes described as
“assistant teacher” and sometimes as “ex-pupil teacher”[7].
We know that in 1905 Scotland had 15,000 teachers:
about 8000, some of them university graduates, were in the first category;
about 4000 were in the second category; and about 3000 were in the last
category.[8] And
the last 3000 were disproportionately in rural Scotland. By 1906, the whole teacher training system was in the midst of a radical
reform, including the abolition of the role of pupil teacher. [9]
Higher Grade Schools
We can now return to
the issue of “higher grade” schools. In the first instance they were not in
receipt of government grant and the school parish boards were not supposed to
spend rates on them. Probably on the arguments we have read because the idea of
raising taxes and rates, in part measure often from the comparatively poor, and
then to spend the proceeds often on the offspring of the comparatively well-off
was regarded, to use a bit of contemporary economic jargon, as fiscally and
socially “regressive”. That argument today is at the heart of different approaches
within the UK to the question of who pays university tuition fees.
But at least, in contrast to the situation in
England, such schools were legal and began to be created. Then
In 1892, the first state
grants for secondary education appeared (10 years earlier than in England) and
were used to build up schools in smaller towns as well as to strengthen
existing ones……. They formed an effective national network able to prepare both
for the universities and for business careers.[10]
This was a new annual grant of £60,000 to promote secondary
education[11].
That is over £7m per year at today’s prices. After much debate, it had been
agreed that it should generally be administered by county committees on which
Board members, county councillors and HM Inspectorate served.
This was partly, as we have noted, fuelled by the SED’s
foundation in 1888 of the Higher Leaving Certificate. There was considerable
agreement that post-elementary “higher” education should be expanded; but, as we
have also noted, controversy as to how[12].
Some school boards were particularly active in creating new “higher grade”
schools. On the other hand, hitherto independent and pre-existing “endowment
schools” and “higher class schools” also
received SED grant to expand their provision; for some of them e.g. Edinburgh
Royal High School, Inverness Royal Academy, Perth Academy and Paisley Grammar
School it was the beginning of a path that led to them today being simply part
of public sector schooling.
While
both these things happened and while the controversy in some senses dragged on
as far as the 1970s, in essence it was the Board creation of “higher grade”
schools that came to dominate the system of public sector secondary schooling.
Govan
Parish School Board[13]
was particularly prominent and proactive in this with the foundation of no less
than five “higher grade” schools: Hillhead High School founded 1885 in Cecil St
and Hyndland School founded 1887, initially in Partick are still-functioning
memorials to that. To this day 'GOVAN PARISH SCHOOL BOARD' is emblazoned on their surviving 19th
and early 20th century buildings in large red sandstone letters. But
even Govan encountered opposition because of a nearby independent “higher
school” Kelvinside Academy and, where areas had several such pre-existing
“higher schools” e.g. Glasgow and especially Edinburgh, progress was slower and
mired in controversy. It took Edinburgh until 1902 to develop its first “higher
grade” schools.
In Stornoway in 1898 for the first time school students from
a local “higher grade” school, the Nicolson Institute, went direct to
university. Portree High School and
Kirkwall Grammar School students began to do the same only a few years later. Across
Scotland, even in remote rural areas, some barriers to university access were
coming down.
But formidable barriers of socio-economic status and gender
remained. Dina Macleod, leaving her
“higher grade” school in 1895 with an impeccable school record, had to settle
for a sub-degree LLA, the delightfully titled “Lady Literate in Arts”
qualification: Scottish universities began to admit women undergraduates to
degree courses only in 1892, and initially the numbers were small.
Success in secondary school provision across Scotland had
put financial pressure on government: for elementary students progressing to
secondary schooling attracted a high government grant for the parish School
Boards. So JL Robertson HMCI and the Scotch Education Department in the 1900s insisted
that 13/14-yr-old school students in elementary schools passed a newly
established “qualifying exam” to access the secondary education provision: this
was an institution which blighted the lives of many of us until well into the
1960s. It also blighted what we call today the Primary 7 curriculum.
We know from a variety of historical sources -some
national, some local- that student grants and bursaries to meet the costs of
secondary schooling and of university education became increasingly common from
the last few years of the 19th century onwards; they had existed,
but were uncommon, before then.
For school students to enter the newly founded Leaving
Certificate, explicit SED authority was required, not least because such
students attracted a higher level of grant. As we have noted, the Leaving
Certificate had been founded in 1888; but was only opened up to “higher grade” Board
schools in 1892.[14]
“Highers” in the Leaving
Certificate were quickly accepted for entrance purposes by universities and
“Lowers” by certain professions e.g. as an entry to banking. The category of
“Higher” lasts to this day, largely unchanged - and was a considerable advance.
The category of “Lower” was abandoned in 1962, to be transformed into Ordinary
Grade a success story[15], then
into Standard Grade, and now into National
qualifications.
The third category of “Honours”
was quickly abandoned. An intended 1888 function had been similar to one in
1998 for the “Advanced Higher” i.e. to give accelerated or “fast track” entry
to specialist university study. This intent of the late 19th century
was as unrealised as that of the late 20th century.
A Scot, one Andrew Carnegie, also made a very decisive
intervention in 1901. One can think of
Carnegie as a 19th century Donald Trump. Although he has a better claim than Trump to
Scottish ancestry and at least in his later years in Scotland, if not in his
younger years in Pittsburgh a more secure record in philanthropy.
Andrew Carnegie
In 1901, Carnegie decided he would
give about $5m to Scottish universities (at today's prices possibly about
a quarter billion US dollars, although these conversions are tricky). But,
never himself having been near a university, he took some advice and decided it
should go into a trust which might be expected to generate a spending power of
about £50,000 a year to pay tuition fees for poor students. £50,000 per
year was about what the state then spent annually on Scottish universities and
is over £2.5m a year at today’s prices. Scottish university principals a
largely unchanged breed to this day, were unimpressed: the money would in
essence go to students rather than to them. So Carnegie doubled his investment;
and gave the annual investment income from the “new” half to universities for
capital build – for example much of the still-standing science build in the
early 20th century in the University of Glasgow and the magnificent
organ in its Bute Hall came from Carnegie.[16]
The Carnegie Trust itself today says:-
To put
this in context, it should be stressed that, contrary to what is suggested,
access to university education in Scotland has not always been free. On the contrary,
fees were charged by the universities (originally by the professors directly)
which represented a significant barrier to access, and there was no provision
for subsistence. There was hot competition for the small number of available
bursaries, and the award of a bursary was, within living memory, the occasion
of a school holiday. It is precisely because student fees constituted such a
serious barrier to entry for the ‘qualified and deserving’ that Carnegie was
first persuaded to consider this endowment.[17]
By 1904, half of all Scottish university undergraduates were
benefitting from the Carnegie endowment.[18]
An excellent summary of the effect can be found in another Anderson publication.[19]
So, in the early 20th century, Carnegie made a difference in opening
up pathways to universities. But the Carnegie Trust records make it clear that
the main beneficiaries were the offspring of the lower middle class and the
upper working class. Stories of poor working class rural lads equipped only
with a formidable intellect and with a sack of oatmeal heading to university in
Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow are mostly that: rather isolated stories. They
have created a mythology.
Professor Sir Tom Devine has said about this:
There were enough real examples,
though untypical, to give credibility to the myth, especially when Carnegie
grants for university study were established from the early twentieth century.[20]
In
summary
The
development of widespread and what was eventually free public sector secondary education
in Scotland was well ahead of what happened in England. Perversely it was less
contentious and happened faster in the then Govan Parish than in central Glasgow
or in Edinburgh.
The Scottish university system expanded in the
period 1895 to 1913 having been largely static for years before that. The
initiation of female graduation from 1892 and the foundation of the Carnegie Trust for the Universities
of Scotland in 1901 played a large part in the expansion.
But,
prior to these two developments, for the second half of the 19th
century, the pupil teacher system in elementary schools, the associated income
stream for the pupil teachers and the
“Queen’s scholarships” which sent the best of the pupil teachers for college
training provided an important route to teacher qualification. Increasingly it
was used by women: indeed, until the 1890s, it was their only route to a higher
education qualification.
The distinguished RB Haldane wrote in 1917:
In Scotland the Education Act passed still more recently in
1908 has carried the process a stage further, with the result that instruction
of a secondary type is more widely provided than it is south of the Tweed.[21]
Some
of the statistics in the 1917 Haldane chapter are illuminating. In England, 39%
of 13-16 yr-olds got no education. The comparable figure in Scotland was 28%.
The university participation rate of 16-25 yr-olds in England was 3 per 1000;
in Scotland it was almost 10 per 1000.
The
key differences between Scotland and England in fact long predated the 1908 Act
to which Haldane refers. As we have seen the development of Board-provided
secondary education was well in flow in by the 1880s in Govan. In England such
action in London was deemed illegal by
the Cockerton judgment[22]
until an Education Act of 1902 enabled new education authorities both to
establish their own secondary schools and to provide funds to existing endowed
schools. The English solution was similar to the Scottish one, but years later.
Some
issues of contemporary relevance
In the late 19th/early 20th century, as
now, the extent to which education was or is a route to social mobility is
problematic. For some it was and is; for others it was and is more a confirmation
of an upward mobility which an earlier generation of a family had already
managed :“elite recruitment” in Anderson’s words of the 1980s; the “glass
floor” in words of the 2010s[23],
sometimes through educational mechanisms but often through other means
e.g. mercantile success. We can illustrate these tricky concepts historically
by the difference between two British prime ministers.
J Ramsay Macdonald came
from a very poor background in a single parent family and was educated in
an elementary school in Lossiemouth. There he distinguished himself
academically in a way that eventually led to No 10 Downing St. His social
mobility was (largely) educationally powered and in his own generation.
Harold Macmillan had a
crofter great grandfather of poor Arran origins whose son founded the great
publishing house of Macmillans[24].
Harold was educated at Eton and Cambridge; and married a daughter of the Duke
of Devonshire. The decisive upward
social mobility of the Arran crofting family was achieved by his grandfather
and Harold's education and subsequent career was but confirmation of that. That
is the "glass floor" idea.
Incidentally Ramsay
Macdonald was intensely ashamed of his starting point in life and sought to
conceal it. Harold Macmillan in a quite different way was equally deceitful.
When it suited him, he boasted of having come from a poor crofting
family.
‘Rab’ Butler allegedly
said in 1975:-
How was Harold Macmillan when you met him? Was he the Duke’s son-in-law
or the crofter’s great grand-son?[25]
By 1905 some sons
and indeed by then some daughters of crofters, labourers, fishermen and
shoemakers had found sources of support to aid their educational advancement.
But we should be careful about exaggeration: the commonest beneficiaries, as we
have already noted, appear to have been the children of the skilled working
class and of the lower middle class. [26]
The
expansion of free secondary education and of the provision of secondary school
and university bursaries certainly benefitted boys and girls of working class
origins in the early years of the 20th century in absolute terms i.e. numbers rose. However, in relative terms,
the numbers of boys and girls of middle class origins who benefitted rose
equally quickly. And that pattern has prevailed right through into the 21st
century; and remains a current topic of debate.
Select Bibliography
Anderson RD 1983 Education
& Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
Bone TR 1968 School
Inspection in Scotland 1840-1966
Edinburgh
Cruickshank M 1970
History of the Training of Teachers in Scotland London
Devine TM 2012 The Scottish Nation: A Modern History London
(Iain Smith is a part-time writer and speaker who at
one time worked in teacher education. He welcomes feedback via e-mail - smithiain00@gmail.com)
[1] p128
RD Anderson 1983 Education &
Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
[2] Five,
if one includes University College, Dundee from the end of the 19th
century.
[3]
Confusingly for us, it was often called “higher” education until well into the
20th century.
[4]
Chapter 6 RD Anderson 1983 Education
& Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
[5]
p123 TR Bone 1968 School Inspection in
Scotland 1840-1966 Edinburgh. Professor Bone points to a third category
i.e. pre-existing higher schools (e.g. the High School of Glasgow and Paisley
Grammar School) which had come under Board control after 1872.
[7] We
have seen both terms used, apparently synonymously, in school logs and in
census data of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
[12]
An excellent, if very dense, discussion of these issues can be found in the
definitive RD Anderson 1983 Education
& Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
[13]
The then Govan Parish School Board covered areas such as Partick and Hillhead
which are now simply West end parts of the city of Glasgow.
[14]p
124 TR Bone 1968 School Inspection in
Scotland 1840-1966 Edinburgh
[16]
pp 86, 100 N Haynes 2013 Building
Knowledge: An architectural history of the University of Glasgow Edinburgh & Glasgow
[18]
p288 RD Anderson 1983 Education &
Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
[19]
p132 RD Anderson et al 2003 The
University of Edinburgh : An illustrated history Edinburgh
[20]
Personal communication 2016
[21] p80 R Haldane ‘National
Education’, Chapter V in Lord Cromer et al 1917 After War Problems London
[22]
RS Betts 1992 ‘In Limbo: Edward Hance and
the Cockerton Judgement 1901’ Journal of Educational Administration and
History 24:1
[24]
p10 DR Thorpe 2010 Supermac: The life of
Harold Macmillan London
[25]
p9 DR Thorpe 2010 Supermac: The life of
Harold Macmillan London
[26]
The definitive work on this, as we have noted earlier, is RD Anderson 1983 Education
& Opportunity in Victorian Scotland Edinburgh
