ABSTRACT
A Scottish industrial school in the 1870s was a very different institution from an industrial school in the 1840s: few of the children attended the school voluntarily, and fewer still returned to their homes at nights. The 1872 Education (Scotland) Act set up a system of state schooling, with control of parish, church and burgh schools being transferred to local school boards, although Catholic and Episcopalian churches continued to run their own schools. The consequence of the reduction of industrial school provision inside the city areas was a still greater diminution of day scholars. In spite of the Refuge’s diminished field of operation, the assessment of a penny in the pound was still levied in the city for its upkeep. By the 1880s the residential institutions were supplemented by various day industrial schools of the type pioneered in Scottish cities in the 1840s.
