Why Scottish public schools are in a field of their own

In 1919 the literary critic G. Gregory Smith coined the term ‘Caledonian antisyzygy’, by which he meant the ‘zigzag of contradictions’ that so dominated the national literature that it might be reckoned a useful summation of the Scottish character itself. ‘Oxymoron,’ Smith observed, ‘was ever the bravest figure, and we must not forget that disorderly order is order after all.’

Perhaps so. Certainly, the Scottish public schools endure an often ambivalent, even awkward, relationship with their native land. The most prestigious are outposts of England in Scotland, custodians of an idea of Britishness that’s increasingly out of favour north of the border. Schools such as Fettes, Loretto, Glenalmond and Merchiston generally follow the English curriculum, entering their pupils for GCSEs and A-levels. Their students learn more about Tudor England than Stewart Scotland. They play rugby and cricket in a land much more obsessed with football. Above all — and most perniciously — they are unashamedly ‘elitist’.

No wonder they are easy targets for politicians with an axe to grind (a category of politician of which Scotland has no shortage). Their status as educational charities — and the consequent tax advantages conferred by that status — has been a matter of some controversy. Radicals at Holyrood would, if only they could, rather like to go further than stripping the public schools of their charitable status.

The great boarding schools in particular are perceived to be in Scotland but scarcely of Scotland. Real Scots, you see, don’t swank around in tweed jackets and red trousers. Paradoxically, the products of the public schools lie firmly outside the Scottish mainstream even as their alumni also dominate large swathes of Scottish society, most notably the law.

But for many left-wingers, the handful of Scottish boarding schools are bastions of privilege and evidence of what the wilder kind of radical deems a form of ‘internal colonisation’ in which the native elite is taught that Scottishness is unavoidably inferior to Britishness.