The diverse religious and social conditions of the three constituent parts of the United Kingdom must necessarily cause the education problem to assume a different shape and to receive different solutions in England, Scotland and Ireland respectively; latterly also the special conditions obtaining in Wales have received partial recognition at the hands both of the legislature and the executive. In Scotland the conditions have been less complex than in England. The practical unanimity of the people in religious faith, which has remained undisturbed by the institutional divisions of recent times, the wider diffusion of a sense of the value of education, the greater simplicity of life which has rendered all classes largely content to avail themselves of the preparatory education afforded by the common school and favoured the development in the secondary sphere of day rather than boarding schools, are among the causes which have contributed to the early building up of a national system which in some respects resembles the continental rather than the English type.
The national appreciation of education is found marked already before the Reformation in a statute of James IV. (1494) requiring all freeholders of substance to send their heirs to school and to keep them there until they had Historical development. perfect Latin. The Reformation, asserting itself by common consent under one ecclesiastical form, and free from the divisions of religious organization which tended to neutralize it as an educational force in England, put fresh life into the educational aspirations of the people. As early as 1560 the Church Assembly, largely under the influence of John Knox, put forth the Book of Discipline, providing that “every several kirk” in a town “of any reputation” was to have its Latin school, that the “upaland” or country parts were to have a teacher of the “first rudiments” in every parish, and that each “notable” town was to have “a college for logic, rhetoric and the tongues.” Practical effect was later given to this scheme by an act of the Scottish parliament in 1696, under which parish schools were set up in connexion with the Established Church of Scotland. This system was extended by an act of 1803, which made better provision for teachers’ salaries and also confirmed the position of the parish school as an adjunct of the parish church. The system of inspection and state aid introduced in England in 1839 was made applicable to Scotland, thus grafting upon Scotland the English system of voluntary state-aided schools. At the same period another new factor was imported into Scottish education by the ecclesiastical disruption of 1843. As a result of these changes in 1861 a new act was passed which relaxed, though it did not sever, the ties which bound the parish school to the church.
The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 set up elective school boards for parishes and boroughs, and vested in them the existing parish and burgh schools. Long prior to the act it had been the practice of the Church of Scotland Scottish school boards and school attendance law. to allow exemption in the schools from religious instruction; consequently in imposing a compulsory conscience clause the act did little more than confirm existing usage. The school boards were left full liberty as to the religious instruction to be given in their schools, and in practice school boards universally adopt the Shorter Catechism, which is acceptable to all denominations of Presbyterians. The act made the school boards responsible for the supply of school accommodation, and introduced compulsory attendance, for which opinion in England was not at that time ripe. By the act of 1901, the age of compulsory attendance was raised to fourteen, with provision for exemption after twelve.
The experience of the Scottish Education Department, like that of the English, has led to the gradual abandonment of individual examination as the basis for the payment of grants. The institution of the merit certificate is Administrative progress. one of the features in which the Scottish system differs from the English. Prior to the code of 1903 the merit certificate, awarded on examination after the age of twelve, was properly described as the leaving certificate of the elementary school. Under the more recent codes merit certificates are awarded under a system designed to encourage the transference of promising pupils at an early age to supplementary courses or higher-grade departments. Under this system the fitness of the pupil to enter upon a course of higher studies is determined not solely by the results of a single examination, but by the whole character of his work during the preceding school course.
A notable factor historically in Scottish education was the extent to which the parish schools supplied their best pupils with higher or further education. The administrative changes last mentioned have led to a remarkable Higher-grade schools. development of organized higher-grade schools and departments. These departments have now been organized upon the lines of the higher primary schools of France, “to continue a stage further” (says the report of the Scottish Education Department) “the general education of that considerable body of pupils who, under new conditions, may be expected to remain at school till fifteen or sixteen.” The function “of giving something of the nature of a specialized education to pupils who will leave school at a comparatively early age” is now discharged by the supplementary courses.
Elementary education has generally been rendered free by the fee grants under the parliamentary vote, and by the sums accruing under the Local Taxation (Customs Free education. and Excise) Act 1890 and the Education and Local Taxation (Scotland) Act 1892.
Voluntary schools are not numerous, being chiefly those of the Roman Catholic Church. The average cost of maintenance per child in average attendance in public schools (according to the official report 1907-1908) was £3, 11s. 1¼d., of which £2, 4s. 4½d. was met by government grants for elementary education. In voluntary schools the average cost of maintenance was £2, 15s. 1¾d., of which £2, 2s. 7d. was met by elementary grants, including a special aid grant of 3s. per head under the Education (Scotland) Act 1897.
The total number of children (1907-1908) in average attendance in grant-earning schools was 712,076, and the percentage of attendances to numbers on the register was 87.66%. As regards teaching power, 81.52% of the male teachers and 56.71% of the female teachers in the elementary teachers had been trained in training colleges.
Certain miscellaneous additional powers are conferred upon school boards by the Education (Scotland) Act 1908, including powers to provide school meals; in outlying parts, to provide means of conveyance, or pay travelling expenses Education (Scotland) Act 1908. of teachers or pupils, or defray the cost of lodging pupils in convenient proximity to a school; to provide for medical inspection; and as to children neglected by reason of the ill-health or poverty of the parent, to supply food, clothing and personal attention.
Perhaps the most noteworthy provision in the act of 1908 is that which enables (not obliges) school boards to make bye-laws requiring attendance at continuation classes up Compulsory continuation classes. to the age of seventeen years. Apart from compulsory attendance, the act lays upon school boards the duty of making suitable provision of continuation classes with reference to the crafts and industries practised in the district.