Image: Dr. Bell's School, Great Junction Street

Description: School founded by Dr. Bell, erstwhile Chaplain to the East India Company in Madras in 1787. Given charge of the Madras Male Orphan Asylum and faced with a shortage of teachers, he introduced a new form of tuition known as the 'Madras System'. It involved the teacher explaining the work, which was then passed over to monitors, i.e. older boys who worked with the younger pupils, thus breaking down large classes into smaller working units. By the time of his death, it is estimated that as many as 10,000 schools in the United Kingdom had copied his system, including Christ's Hospital in London and Madras College which Bell also founded in St. Andrews. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. A tablet on the building bears a supercilious inscription by Leith town councillors explaining that Bell's system has been superseded by the new form of education introduced by the State Education Acts of the 1870s (which had the effect of reducing class sizes).
Title: Dr. Bell's School, Great Junction Street
Credit: Own work
Author: Kim Traynor
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
License: CC BY-SA 3.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0
Attribution Required?: Yes