Gibraltar, Identity and Empire by E. G. Archer

Author:E. G. Archer [Archer, E. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781136005503
Google: Id8HlV3ad5wC
Goodreads: 17532036
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

The 1830s, therefore, saw the beginning of the trend away from centralised, general community education to separate development on confessional lines which was to be the dominant factor for over a century until after the Second World War.15

The various denominational schools prospered and the Methodists continued to be at the forefront. The Methodist Mission in Gibraltar claimed that it had four day and two evening schools, ‘well-established and, we hope, well-taught’. These schools, notes Traverso, ‘may truly be said to have been the pioneers of education in Gibraltar’.

The Anglicans also gained ground and a girls' school was opened, under the auspices of the SPCK. Catholic education expanded too and schools were opened on various sites. The Loreto Nuns16 were invited to Gibraltar to bolster the Catholic cause and they opened a fee-paying school for girls in 1851. This began a long association which has continued until today in the surviving private Loreto Convent School. In a smaller way the Hebrew community also became involved in formal education. Hitherto it must have depended on the teaching in the synagogues, but in 1855 it opened a school alongside the others, which meant that education, again to use Traverso's words, ‘began to reflect more accurately the composition of the population of Gibraltar’. While this was true, the basis was being laid for control by the dominant religious group, namely the Roman Catholic Church, and what became virtually a mono-integrated system.17

Growth and expansion continued through the later decades of the nineteenth century. More elementary schools were created and provision was extended into the secondary stages. The return of the Christian Brothers in 1878 – they were to remain for a further hundred years exerting a huge influence on many individuals and on the community generally – facilitated this, while the Anglican SPCK18 schools declined. The presence of the Brothers and the Nuns probably kept costs down somewhat although the Catholic authorities continued to press for government aid. This was to be on the basis of the 1880 Education Code, drawn up along British lines. It set out the elementary school curriculum and the regulations for the payment of grants.

The Code caused initial difficulties, especially for the Roman Catholic Church which saw its role as being threatened. Nevertheless, with the appointment of the first Colonial Inspector of Schools, and also a local Inspector of Schools (who had been the Garrison Engineer), the Roman Catholic Bishop eventually accepted the Code and the inspection and the grants which went with it. The regulations in the Code meant the introduction of common standards and, through the application of the ‘conscience clause’, the ‘gradual disappearance of religious rivalry in this field’.19 Although narrow in concept, the Code did have an overall beneficial effect on attendance and basic standards. Later, the Revised Code of 1892 saw the curriculum ‘freed from the constraints imposed upon it by the previous practice and a fair measure of flexibility was introduced in both subjects and standards for the brighter pupils’.20 Thus, British examples were being closely followed.

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