ABSTRACT
The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 established a state system of compulsory education for ali children between the ages of 5 and 13 and put the administration of it into the hands of popularly elected local school boards. The managers of the denominational schools were allowed two years in which to offer to transfer their schools either by sale, or lease, or by any other form of agreement to the local education authority, and the offer, if made within the time-limit set down, must be accepted by the authority. There is to-day no discernible difference between the public and the ' transferred ' schools, whether primary or secondary, in buildings, staffing, equipment, educational standards and achievement, or status, and as a result the bitterness of religious acrimony is wholly absent from Scottish education. The training of teachers is in Scotland exclusively the function of the Scottish colleges of education; no other body has any share in it.
