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Education and Society in Modern Scotland: A Comparative Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Robert Anderson
Robert Anderson*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

The educational traditions of Scotland have always been distinct from those of England, and reputedly more democratic. Mass literacy was achieved at an early stage, the general character of the system was meritocratic, and the four universities were noted in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for their vigor and their popular base. Yet the country has attracted little attention from the growing band of scholars studying the comparative social history of education. One exception is Hartmut Kaelble, who has used Scottish evidence in his studies of education and social mobility; but Scotland does not figure either in the recent collection of essays on higher education edited by Konrad Jarausch or in the most substantial work in this field, Fritz Ringer's Education and Society in Modern Europe. Ringer's book includes brief treatments of England and the United States, but it is essentially about higher and secondary education in France and Germany, and is notable for the mass of statistical data that it assembles and analyzes.

Type
Articles
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 25 , Issue 4 , Winter 1985 , pp. 459 - 481
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 by History of Education Society 

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References

Notes

1. Kaelble, Hartmut, Historical Research on Social Mobility: Western Europe and the USA in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London, 1981); Kaelble, Hartmut, “Educational Opportunities and Government Policies in Europe in the Period of Industrialization,” in The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America , ed. Flora, Peter and Heidenheimer, Arnold J. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1981), 239–68; Jarausch, Konrad H., ed., The Transformation of Higher Learning, 1860–1930: Expansion, Diversification, Social Opening, and Professionalization in England, Germany, Russia, and the United States (Chicago, 1983); Ringer, Fritz K., Education and Society in Modern Europe (Bloomington, 1979).Google Scholar

2. Ringer, , Education and Society, 25.Google Scholar

3. A third dimension, “segmentation,” is discussed below.Google Scholar

4. Anderson, Robert D., Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland: Schools and Universities (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

5. The term public school is used in the special English sense of socially exclusive boarding schools. On terminology, note also that “Great Britain” includes England, Wales, and Scotland. Wales went with England for most purposes but developed distinctive educational institutions in the late nineteenth century.Google Scholar

6. Whatever the ideal, class differentiation was in fact well advanced in urban areas by the mid-nineteenth century. Parish school legislation did not apply there, and most working-class schools gave a purely elementary education.Google Scholar

7. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 148–53 (no data for 7 percent). Working-class representation remained similar in later years.Google Scholar

8. Kaelble, , Historical Research, 70.Google Scholar

9. See Anderson, Robert, “In Search of the ‘Lad of Parts’: The Mythical History of Scottish Education,” History Workshop 19 (Spring 1985):82–104.Google Scholar

10. This was reverse of the situation in France, where philosophy and mathematics were studied at a high level in the lycées because of the underdevelopment of general higher education.Google Scholar

11. Ringer, , Education and Society, 272, 316. Ringer discusses in detail the many difficulties of interpretation; his figures differ only marginally from those calculated by other scholars.Google Scholar

12. British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter B.P.P.), 1867–8, XXIX, Third Report of Royal Commission on Schools in Scotland, No.4011, pp. vii–ix (1868). Figures refer to school year 1866/7. The comparative data, and the comment on England, were taken from Matthew Arnold's reports on continental countries.Google Scholar

13. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 135.Google Scholar

14. This allowance seems reasonable. The multiplier would be lower for boys alone than for both sexes, but we need to allow also for “secondary” pupils in parish schools — nearly six hundred in the late 1870s (Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 119).Google Scholar

15. Perkin, Harold J., “Middle-Class Education and Employment in the Nineteenth Century: A Critical Note,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 14 (Aug. 1961): 124. This total was made up of 36,874 in endowed schools, 2,956 in ancient public schools, and about 12,000 in proprietary schools.Google Scholar

16. Ringer, , Education and Society, 272, 316. These figures relate male pupils to the age-group for both sexes and should be doubled to give the “real” percentage.Google Scholar

17. The special question (not repeated in subsequent censuses) asked about school attendance up to thirteen; for older children, the census officials presumably used the occupational data. See also Anderson, Robert D., “Education and the State in Nineteenth-Century Scotland,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 36 (Nov. 1983):530–1.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Attendance at age fourteen was over 40 percent in three Highland counties but only 13 percent in industrial Lanarkshire; even at fifteen, it was over 30 percent in some Highland counties.Google Scholar

19. The Robbins Committee, reporting on university policy in 1963, estimated that in “Great Britain” in 1870 only 40 percent were attending school at age ten, and 2 percent at fourteen, and Ringer uses these figures in a rather unsatisfactory discussion of secondary enrollments (Ringer, , Education and Society, 220–3). They seem untenable for Scotland.Google Scholar

20. Wade, Newman A., Post-Primary Education in the Primary Schools of Scotland, 1872–1936 (London, 1939), 110.Google Scholar

21. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 243–9. These figures cover all schools receiving state grants. Private education had now greatly declined; there were perhaps 2,000 boys in boarding and proprietary schools, and a similar or greater number of girls. For Scottish population figures, see table 4.Google Scholar

22. B.P.P., 1895, XLIX, Report of Royal Commission on Secondary Education, vol. 9, pp. 374, 433, 437, C. 7862-VIII (1895). This report covers a narrower range of schools than the Taunton Commission, so the similar figure of 2.5 per thousand implies some expansion.Google Scholar

23. Lowndes, G.A.N., The Silent Social Revolution: An Account of the Expansion of Public Education in England and Wales, 1895–1965, 2d ed. (London, 1969), 39–40, 45, 80. Made up of endowed schools (secondary pupils only), 30,000, public schools 30,000–40,000, proprietary schools 35,000, higher grade schools 24,584.Google Scholar

24. B.P.P., 1924–5, XII, Report of the Board of Education for 1923–4 , p. 24, Cmd. 2443 (1925).Google Scholar

25. Calculated from the (incomplete) figures for individual schools in The Public School Year Book: The Official Book of Reference of the Headmaster's Conference: Twenty-fifth Year of Publication, 1914 (London, n.d.).Google Scholar

26. Sadler, Michael E., Report on Secondary and Higher Education in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Newcastle, 1905), 9. Sadler included all private schools, which the Scottish figures do not; and, strictly speaking, the latter relate to a national average of 7.9 (attendance) rather than 8.1 (on the roll). See Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 246.Google Scholar

27. Figures for England (not Wales) given by Lowe, Roy, “The Expansion of Higher Education in England,” in Transformation of Higher Learning, ed. Jarausch, , 45, 52. (Lowe's total for 1911 appears to be incorrectly calculated from his subtotals.) In his introduction, Jarausch misleadingly summarizes these data as for “Britain” (Jarausch, , ed., Transformation of Higher Learning, 13.) The University of Wales had 1,230 full-time students in 1913/14.Google Scholar

28. Ringer gives for France (not covered in Jarausch's book) .3 in 1876, 1.0 in 1911, and for Germany .35 in 1870, 1.02 in 1911 (Ringer, , Education and Society, 291, 335). There are comparable figures, also covering other countries, in Barbagli, Marzio, Disoccupazione intellettuale e sistema scolastico in Italia (1859–1973) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1974), 32, 137, and Ben-David, Joseph, “The Growth of the Professions and the Class System,” in Class, Status, and Power: Social Stratification in Comparative Perspective, 2d ed., ed. Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour M. (London, 1967), 464.Google Scholar

29. Edwards, E. G. and Roberts, I. J., “British Higher Education: Long-Term Trends in Student Enrollment,” Higher Education Review 12, no. 2 (1980):10.Google Scholar

30. In 1911 women were 10 percent in France, under 5 percent in Germany — in Prussia they had only been admitted in 1908 (Ringer, , Education and Society, 295, 337–8).Google Scholar

31. No attempt has been made to relate enrollments to the economic cycle, but the relation appears to be a positive one.Google Scholar

32. Jarausch, , ed., Transformation of Higher Learning, 10.Google Scholar

33. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 45, 48, 346–7. Such fears were common at the time. See O'Boyle, Lenore, “The Problem of an Excess of Educated Men in Western Europe, 1800–1850,” Journal of Modern History 42 (Dec. 1970): 471–95.Google Scholar

34. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 299–301 has data on ages. The changing age of entry, the wide age range, and the varying length of attendance make it impracticable to relate student numbers to a fixed age cohort, though Kaelble does this for ages 20–24 (Kaelble, , “Educational Opportunities,” 247). This notional calculation shows Scotland with the highest rate in Europe in 1861, the third highest in 1911. Note, however, that as the average length of attendance increased, the number of individuals experiencing university education at a given enrollment/population ratio declined.Google Scholar

35. Ringer, , Education and Society, 2–4, 18.Google Scholar

36. Kaelble, , “Educational Opportunities,” 240–4.Google Scholar

37. Ringer, , Education and Society, 2–3.Google Scholar

38. Anderson, , Education and Opportunity, 145.Google Scholar

39. The contrast between general and vocational education was distinct from that between classical and modern curricula, and arguably more significant; Ringer tends to conflate the two. It is also important not to identify “modern” demands purely with industry, for in terms of middle-class careers commerce and the public services were more important manifestations of economic modernization than industry itself.Google Scholar

40. Kaelble, , “Educational Opportunities,” 258–61; Anderson, Robert, “Secondary Education in Mid Nineteenth-Century France: Some Social Aspects,” Past and Present 53 (Nov. 1971): 145–6; Mayeur, Francoise, Histoire générale de l'enseignement et de l'éducation en France , ed. Parias, Louis-Henri, vol. 3, De la Révolution à l'école républicaine (Paris, 1981), 102–4.Google Scholar

41. Müller, Detlef K., “The Qualifications Crisis and School Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Germany,” History of Education 9 (Dec. 1980):315–31.Google Scholar

42. Ringer, , Education and Society, 29–30, 76, 169. See also Day, C. R., review of Education and Society in Modern Europe, by Ringer, Fritz K., History of Education Quarterly, 22 (Fall 1982): 379–85.Google Scholar

43. See Anderson, Robert, “Secondary Schools and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth Century,” Past and Present, forthcoming.Google Scholar

44. Ringer, , Education and Society, 209–10, 232. Overemphasis on the public schools, and the misleading notion of England as an “aristocratic” country perhaps explain Ringer's surprise at the inclusiveness of English education in the twentieth century. (Ringer, , Education and Society, 220, 247).Google Scholar

45. B.P.P., 1875, XXIX, Third Report of Royal Commission on Endowed Schools (Scotland), p.52, C.1123 (1875).Google Scholar

46. Wade, , Post-Primary Education, 120–7; Osborne, G. S., Scottish and English Schools: A Comparative Survey of the Past Fifty Years (Pittsburgh, 1967), 46–8.Google Scholar

47. Education (Scotland). Reports, &c. Issued in 1925–26, General Report, p. 11; … in 1927–28, General Report, p. 14.Google Scholar

48. Wade, , Post-Primary Education, 213; Osborne, , Scottish and English Schools, 172.Google Scholar

49. Osborne, , Scottish and English Schools, 70. The realities of Scottish education are often hard to penetrate because of confusing terminology and because types of school and types of education did not necessarily correspond when attempts were made to apply a common pattern to a geographically diverse country. Specialization went furthest in the cities, but schools in small towns were often multifunctional; between the wars, schools that combined secondary and advanced division teaching came to be called “omnibus” schools.Google Scholar

50. The eventual outcome was a division between senior secondary (five-year) and junior secondary (three-year) schools.Google Scholar

51. Education (Scotland). Reports, &c. Issued in 1921–22, Section G, Circular 44, p. 3.Google Scholar

52. Wade, , Post-Primary Education, 110.Google Scholar

53. The post-1919 figures are for enrollments, the pre-1918 ones cited by Wade for average attendance. Scottish secondary enrollments given in Mitchell, B. R., European Historical Statistics 1750–1975 (London, 1975), 759, 768, show all post-primary pupils after 1919, but “higher class” schools only (including their primary departments) down to 1918; Mitchell therefore underestimates true secondary education before 1918 and overestimates it later. Pupils did not enter the advanced divisions automatically, but (as with the supplementary courses previously) only if they passed a “qualifying” examination. The rest stayed in the elementary classes until ready to leave.Google Scholar

54. Maillet, J. in Chevallier, Pierre, ed., La scolarisation en France depuis un siècle (Paris, 1974), 142, 145–56.Google Scholar

55. Figures for England and Wales are in Simon, Brian, The Politics of Educational Reform, 1920–1940 (London, 1974), 363. As before, one should remember that English statistics exclude the public schools. Sample figures from Ringer are 7.6 per thousand for France in 1936, 11.9 for Germany in 1931. See Ringer, , Education and Society, 272, 316.Google Scholar

56. Ringer, , Education and Society, 272, 316.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., 292, 335 and cf., 229–30. For other countries, see Barbagli, , Disoccupazione intellettuale, 216, and Ben-David, , “Growth of the Professions,” 464.Google Scholar

58. Ringer, , Education and Society, 52–4, 135–44.Google Scholar

59. See Gray, J., McPherson, A. F., and Raffe, D., Reconstructions of Secondary Education: Theory, Myth and Practice since the War (London, 1983). I am grateful to Mr. McPherson for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.Google Scholar