Private Educational Institutions in the Caucasus in the Period 1846-1914: A Historical-Statistical Study

This work examines the private education sector in the Caucasus in the prerevolutionary period. Consideration is given to the distinctive characteristics of the development of secondary, lower, and primary private education in the region. The key sources used in putting this work together are the annual Reports on Educational Institutions in the Caucasus Educational District, which provide data on the region's schools run by the Ministry of Public Education in the period 1884-1914, and the 1879 Memorandum Book for the Caucasus Educational District. Given the study's nature, special use was made of the statistical method, with the diverse statistical material classified by level of private educational institutions and the raw data on both the number of educational institutions and the gender and religious composition of the student body summarized. This helped identify some of the key distinctive characteristics of the development of the private education system in the Caucasus in the period 1849-1914. The authors' conclusions are as follows: (1) private educational institutions in the Caucasus were divided into the following three categories: category 1 -- educational institutions with five grades and up (gymnasia and higher primary educational institutions); category 2 -- educational institutions with three-to-four grades (urban schools and four-grade progymnasia); category 3 -- educational institutions with one-to-two grades (primary schools); (2) to be able to compete with ministerial (public) educational institutions, private educational institutions had to continuously keep track of the demand for education in society, take account of new trends, and vouch for the quality of the educational process. Consequently, the region's private education sector was characterized by impermanence. Essentially, it acted as a litmus paper for a reading on what was desired by society in the Caucasus. The sector was undergoing continuous change, with the number of school grades increasing. The number of primary private educational institutions continuously declined in the region over the prerevolutionary period. In 1879, primary schools accounted for 93 % of all private educational institutions in the region, in 1907 -- for 78 %, and in 1914 -- for just 61 %; and (3) in religious composition, the student body across the region's private educational institutions was dominated throughout the period under review by Orthodox Christians (the figure ranging from 57 to 74 %), followed by Armenian Gregorian Christians (18 to 35 %), with members of other faiths accounting for an insignificant portion of the region's student body.