ABSTRACT
With the passing of the Education (Scotland) Act in 1872, the former parish and burgh schools were transferred to a more coherent and centralized system of local government. Under this new system, Scottish schools were to be administered by local elected school boards under the supervision of the Scotch Education Department. As opposed to England, where a large voluntary sector survived the 1870 Education Act, in Scotland, the vast majority of schools decided to join the state system in order to receive rate aid. Most of those who remained outside were Episcopalian and Roman Catholic. The development and growth of Catholic education was a consequence of the massive Irish immigration which followed the Famine years (late 1840s) – the Irish Catholic newcomers mainly settled in industrial towns of the Central Belt. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Irish community formed up to 30 per cent of the population of these Western towns. We shall focus in this paper on the Monklands, a region lying 20 miles east of Glasgow, and in particular on its two main coal-mining and ironworks towns, Airdrie and Coatbridge.
