One of the most powerful aspects of Scottish distinctiveness that was emphasised in the press was its education. Scotland, rightly or wrongly, was seen as better educated and more widely educated. The democracy of the parish schools, with much harking back to John Knox's ambition of a ‘school in every parish’, and to the education measures of the late seventeenth century that required the ‘heritors’ of the parish to provide for a schoolmaster, were regularly referred to. Increasingly, however, there was the proviso that the situation was not what it once was and that something urgently must be done to maintain Scotland's educational position. The Disruption and the existence of three Presbyterian churches, of roughly equal size, had exposed the problem of an educational system controlled by a church which could only command the allegiance of a third of the population. Free Church schools appeared in many places, but the costs were prohibitive and, by 1850, there was a strong demand for ensuring that the state would step in to ensure a system of national education that would be acceptable to all sections of the community and would be open to all social classes. It was never going to be easy to achieve and the newspapers of the 1850s, and for more than twenty years after, reflected the range of the debate.

Hugh Miller's Witness showed little enthusiasm for Lord Melgund's attempt at reform with a private member's bill in 1850 and 1852. What was needed in every parish was ‘at least one central school, taught by a superior university-bred teacher, qualified to instruct his pupils in the higher departments of learning and fit them for college’, together with ‘supplementary English schools’ teaching the 3Rs. Miller, in what he called the ‘Battle of Scotland’, argued for the secular and the religious to be separated. In contrast, the John o’Groat Journal sought a system that all the Presbyterian churches could support, but also superintend. The Scotsman was supportive of the proposed measures, but the Established Church was not willing to surrender its control of parish schools.