Talk:History of education in Scotland

Removal of most of the article in one edit
I am very concerned by this edit, which has removed approx two thirds of the pre-existing text, namely:

Golden age
By the end of the 17th century a considerable proportion of the population was literate and the education system had been developed to a point considerably in advance of anything known before, well ahead of England or most other European countries. School life began at the age of five, though many did not arrive until they were seven and may at first have attended an unofficial dame-school. It was meant to continue for five years, after which some pupils would go on to a larger burgh school or possibly straight to university, but many poorer parents could not let their child stay beyond the age of eight unless he won a bursary. School was attended six days a week for ten to twelve hours a day, starting at 6 a.m. with one hour breaks for breakfast and lunch. Two or three "play-days" each week allowed for bodily exercise. When in class all subjects incorporated piety, with the Bible as the reading text. All learnt reading and writing, Latin was taught to some older children and arithmetic was taught in the burghs. Discipline was maintained by the tawse. Though the children of the nobility were often educated at home by tutors, "by far the greatest part" of the Scottish gentry sent their sons to the local schools with their tenants' children.

The 18th century brought a golden age of Scottish education, contributing to the intellectual advances of the Scottish enlightenment and the industrial revolution, as well as allowing significant migration elsewhere of professionally trained or commercially talented Scots. The universities also attracted English students, particularly Nonconformists who were excluded from the two universities in England, Oxford and Cambridge, which required their students to sign up to the Anglican faith. The Scottish universities gained a better reputation in fields like medicine, and the University of Edinburgh grew from 400 students at the start of the century to 2,000 by 1815. Many towns vaunted the quality of their schools, for example Crieff in the Scottish Highlands which grew from a village as parents moved to be near its grammar school. In Edinburgh there was a surge in provision around 1760, with numerous private schools opening, the council founding four supplementary "English schools", and in particular the Royal High School doubling in size to be claimed as the largest school in Britain around 1790.

By the end of the century the legal requirement of a school for each parish had largely been met, but was proving inadequate because of the physical extent of some parishes, or because of large and increasing populations. Each parish school usually had one schoolmaster, who would take fifty or sixty pupils. Under these circumstances the kirk-session would bring little pressure for children to attend school for more than four years or even, sometimes, for girls to attend school at all. The gap was increasingly filled by private schools funded entirely by fees per pupil, known as "adventure schools", which could be shut down by the kirk-session for incompetence or doctrinal unorthodoxy. Even in the 1690s such schools were being used to supplement the parish schools, with the kirk paying the fees for poor pupils. An "adventure school" opened in Alloway in 1765 taught Robert Burns to read and write. There was also a contribution from charitable endowments, often from local landowners, some providing cheap schools for girls to learn to read, spin, sew and knit. In the Scottish Highlands as well as problems of distance and physical isolation, most people spoke Gaelic which few teachers and ministers could understand. Here the Kirk's parish schools were supplemented by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, and after 1811 by the Gaelic Societies of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness. Their aim was to teach English language and end Roman Catholicism associated with rebellious Jacobitism. Though the Gaelic Society schools taught the Bible in Gaelic, the overall effect contributed to the erosion of Highland culture.

Many of the teachers in private and charitable schools were female, and the introduction from England of the pupil-teacher system in 1846 also facilitated the entry of women into teaching, but was resented by dominies and in 1847 the Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) was set up to bolster their professional status.

==Compulsory education== Education finally became compulsory for all children aged between 5 and 13 with the Education (Scotland) Act 1872. The Scottish Education Department in London took over from the Church of Scotland. Burgh as well as parish schools now came under School Boards run by local committees, notable examples being the High School of Glasgow and the Hamilton Academy. Many new Board schools were built, and larger School Boards established "higher grade" (secondary) schools as a cheaper alternative to the burgh schools. The Act included the statement that "Every school under the management of the school board of a parish shall be deemed a parish school, and every school under the management of the school board of a burgh shall be deemed a burgh school, and all such schools are hereby declared to be public schools within the meaning of this Act.", a usage of the term "public school" that has continued in Scotland despite awareness of the English usage of the term to mean a kind of private school.

The leaving age was raised to 14 in 1901, and the Scottish Education Department introduced a Leaving Certificate Examination in 1888 to set national standards for secondary education. Until 1890 school fees still had to be paid. In 1885 it became possible to learn Gaelic as a subject in its own right rather than as a means of acquiring English.

Roman Catholic schools were set up funded by charity, remaining outwith the national system. The Education (Scotland) Act 1918 renamed the Scottish Education Department and introduced state funding of Catholic schools which kept their distinct religious education, access to schools by priests and requirement that school staff be acceptable to the Church. The same Act gave Gaelic a statutory place as a "subject", though not as a language on an equal footing.

The Leaving Certificate instituted in 1888 continued in secondary education until it was replaced by the Scottish Certificate of Education Ordinary Grade ('O-Grade') and Higher Grade ('Higher') qualifications in 1962. Discipline by the tawse was outlawed in 1986. In 1999 the new Scottish Executive set up an Education Department and an Enterprise, Transport and Lifelong Learning Department, which together took over the work of the Scottish Education Department.

Unreferenced material should only be removed if the verity of the material is seriously in doubt. I fail to see the big problem with most of this material. Seems fairly straightforward. --Mais oui! (talk) 03:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)


 * WP:BURDEN states that "You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it." However, the speed at which this occurs depends on circumstances in the article. There are in fact two issues here. One is the "Golden Age" problem. Basically mainstream Scottish historians are in agreement that this is a myth, as the new version points out, hopefully in a neutral way. That section, I would argue, should really not go back as it is misleading. The second issue is a large amount of unsourced detail. In fact quite a lot of what is above is still in the article, but now reliably sourced (especially the second paragraph). Unfortunately in a few places what was removed is erroneous. To give one example: Catholic schools were not funded by charity and then suddenly paid for in 1918, but had been supported by the state from the mid-19th century (because they were in the generally in the most deprived districts and could not be independently supported). So some of this is unlikely to be verifiable. Of what remains I have no objection at all to this going back in and if you want to do that there seems to be two ways. One, it can be reinserted around the existing text and tagged for citations so that it can be checked and reliably sourced. Two, we can keep it here and undertake to feed it back in where reliable sources can be found. I am happy with either of those solutions, although my preference would be for the second. There may, of course be other options I have missed.--''' SabreBD  (talk ) 07:24, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

"Largely free" after 1872 is - with respect - a bit of an over simplification, isn't it? When - and for that matter, how - were fees in what we would now call primary education under the 1872 Act abolished?81.153.23.168 (talk) 16:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC)