Secondary Schools in Twentieth-century Edinburgh: Social Divisions and Intellectual Excellence

Abstract

Schooling in Edinburgh is often seen as a uniquely divisive social issue, reflecting the relatively large size of the selective independent sector that, because it charges fees, caters mainly for the affluent middle class. Yet the actual history of the city’s schools during the twentieth century suggests a more complex account. For reasons relating to the size of inherited endowments, the schools that are now independent of local-authority management constituted a much larger share than elsewhere in Scotland of the selective academic sector in the city before the move to comprehensive schooling in the 1960s and 1970s, but, until that time, most of these independent schools were, in effect, part of the public system. The result throughout the century was that the city did indeed have greater social-class inequality in education than the rest of Scotland, but also that it had higher attainment in all social classes and for both sexes.