Notes from the North 8 2024

I am not the first to wonder why it is that Edinburgh has the largest number of private schools of any UK city other than London and therefore the highest proportion of children educated outside the state system. As a point of comparison Edinburgh (population 515,000) has 17 private schools while Glasgow (population 1.7 million) has 8, none of them boarding. Nationally in Scotland about 4% of all children go to an independent school (7% in the UK as a whole) whereas a startling 25% of Edinburgh children attend private schools. 

St Georges School for Girls

The cost of doing so is a significant drain on a family’s finances: annual fees in Edinburgh for day pupils can range from £11,000 to £17,000 and for boarders from £26,000 to a little over £37,500. From January 2025 those fees will go up by 20% to cover VAT that the new government will introduce. 

The Edinburgh fees are high but still don’t come near the current cost of sending a child to Eton College – approximately £53,00 per year. But if we ignore Eton and stay with the Edinburgh puzzle the question remains: why do so many people opt for private education in Edinburgh? There are plenty of good state schools after all, some of them outstanding. Various excuses or reasons are given – smaller classes, better sports and science facilities, impressive exam results – but the one that keeps coming up is 'to belong'.This is borne out by the responses – ‘It’s the done thing’; ‘To keep up with people of similar standing to us’; ‘because that’s where the people we are friends with send their children’. In other words the choice has as much to do with social standing as with any educational advantage, however real those advantages may also turn out to be. To get to the bottom of this you have to understand the importance of the burgher class in Edinburgh society and the power it wielded in city life. 

In the medieval and early modern period a burgess i.e. someone of the burgher class, was simply a freeman, contributing to the running of a town and its taxation. Over time the title came to be reserved to merchants and craftsmen who, by their membership of a Guild or ownership of a company, held the exclusive right to ply their trade in the town. Those rights weren’t abolished until 1846 and the burgess role in Edinburgh was only closed in 1973 when the Local Government Reform Act came into force. This may explain why paying for the perceived exclusivity of independent schools and private clubs still remains an important feature of middle-class Edinburgh society. The words burgher and burgess may have fallen out of use but their legacy endures.

The Mary Erskine School for Girls

Perhaps this is the point at which I should acknowledge that I too was a consumer of independent schooling as a teenager in Edinburgh, although there were no lush playing fields at the school I went to, only a rabbit warren of rooms in a converted town house on Queen Street. In those days there were even more private schools than there are now. Some of them, like Daniel Stewarts and Melville Colleges have since joined forces. Smaller ones closed or were absorbed into another private school. My school, The Mary Erskine School for Girls, was founded by a well-to-do widow in 1694. All the other Merchant Company schools have evolved out of early philanthropic ventures by prominent Edinburgh businessmen. All of them have retained in their fee structures vague echoes of their charitable origins. 

George Heriots School
Out of all of Edinburgh’s private schools possibly the most interesting is George Heriot’s which is still in the same building as when it was first opened in 1659. The man himself, George Heriot, (1563 – 1624) was one of ten children of a well-to-do East Lothian goldsmith and his wife. With money his father gave him Heriot set himself up as a goldsmith in Edinburgh, trading at first in a shop near St Giles and gradually building his reputation until in 1593 he was appointed Deacon (head) of the guild of Edinburgh Goldsmiths. By then he was regularly selling jewellery to Anne of Denmark, the wife of James VI. Heriot was court goldsmith to both Anne and James from 1597 until 1609, during which time he made thousands off the king and his wife whose passion for fine jewellery was legendary. 

George Heriot

Heriot was married twice but neither marriage resulted in children who outlived him. It’s not surprising therefore if as an older man his thoughts turned to ensuring his legacy by other means. The solution was to found a school for the ‘puir, faitherless bairns’ of deceased Edinburgh burgesses. In the 19th century the Heriot Trust also supported one of Scotland’s other great educational institutions, the Heriot-Watt University. 

What is less widely known about the Heriot legacy is that in 1836 the governors of the school were given the power to set up ‘outdoor’ schools for the poor and needy in other parts of the city. As a result the Trust ran 13 juvenile and 8 infant schools from 1838 until 1885 when the public school system took them over. During that time the schools charged no fees at all to the families using them. 

September is drawing to a close. There are still plenty of tourists wandering the streets but they are outnumbered now by students. Sunsets are vivid and the geese are flying south. 





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