Educational Administration

Abstract

State intervention in education emerged out of the activities of the Churches across Europe. Scotland was no exception. The parish was the basis for educational organisation and indeed finance. Co-ordination had initially been provided by the Kirk but over time the state at the centre adopted an increasing role in education. The organisation of the state’s involvement, therefore, had its basis in the organisation of the Kirk. In the words of George Elder Davie, the Anglo-Scottish union was a ‘unity of politics combined with a diversity in what may be called social ethics’.1 That was especially true in education with its ‘presbyterian inheritance’. It was this basis that also provided the base of distinctiveness in Scottish educational provision. Early central grants had come about largely as a result of pressure for England with a consequent need to provide something comparable for Scotland. Inevitably, only the rudiments of a national system existed. Anything approaching a national system only emerged after the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act. The central administration of education in Scotland followed the existence of local provision and it was no surprise, therefore, that its role was often ill-defined and even merely symbolic.