Educating the Irish Catholics

Abstract

The historian John McCaffrey wrote that ‘the educational system retained many of its traditional features and continued to mark out Scottish life in significant ways’. Thus it is central to study Irish Catholic activity within this key feature of Scottish national life. This chapter explores the founding of Catholic schools as well as Irish Catholic participation on School Boards — their local electoral strategies, Scotch-Irish disputes on the School Boards and the effectiveness of the maintenance of a separate Catholic schooling system. Paradoxically, although Irish Catholic ratepayers did not allow for the transfer of their schools to the state system before 1918, they nevertheless became deeply involved in the management of Scottish public education for financial reasons.