“Failing Schools” as Far Back as 1735?
I have temporary access to the newspaper search engine, Newspaperarchive.com. So, I decided to search the term, “failing schools.”
The earliest usage of this term dates back to March 02, 1735, in the Dublin Evening Post.
The context of the term is financial. The 1735 news excerpt concerns “a Voluntary society in Dublin, who associated in the year 1717, for this very Purpose to promote Charity Schools”:
…[The Voluntary Society] assisted some failing Schools by the help of a Collection about once in two Years made in one of the Churches of Dublin….
The second oldest search result for the term, “failing schools,” is in the June 21, 1885, British publication, the Guardian. In this case, the “failing school” is one that does not make efficient usage of its financing. In this extensive article, the author mainly argues for the consolidation of the financing of individual schools and for the establishment of a “slush fund” to assist schools when extenuating fiscal circumstances arise.
The third oldest search result for “failing schools” is from April 29, 1896, also in the Guardian.
The third article is apparently an editorial, written by a man named Jasper Nunn; it concerns an education bill that apparently had two parts: one was an offering of facilities in order to enable the “federation” of individual schools. The other was the offering of a one-time stipend to schools as a substitute for regular, public funding of the schools by “Church rate-payers in school board districts.”
In the context of Nunn’s commentary, it appears that “failing schools” refers to the financial state of the schools:
SIR — It seems desirable that I should reply to the two questions that you are inclined to put to me. The first is whether I contend “that the voluntary schools will be worse off” with an additional grant of 4s. [shillings] per annum, “even though that grant has to be spent upon the improvement of staff and apparatus.” The second is whether the facilities given in the Bill for federation are of no value to poor schools.I may say that I have long endeavoured to understand the alleged benefits of federation, and, though my mind is open to conviction, I have never yet been able to comprehend them. A number of failing schools are not, like a bundle of weak though sound sticks, stronger by being tied together. They are rather“Failing Schools” as Far Back as 1735? | deutsch29:
