The System of Public Education in Astrakhan Governorate in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Part 4

This set of articles relies on a set of reference and memorandum books spanning 1873-1917 to explore the development of the system of public education in Astrakhan Governorate, a region in the Russian Empire. This is the fourth, and final, piece in the set. It addresses the period 1908-1916. The principal sources used in this work were the Memorandum Books for Astrakhan Governorate spanning 1908-1918, the Most Faithful Reports of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod spanning 1908-1916, certain legislation of the Russian Empire (the Law of May 3, 1908), and a set of relevant documents from the Russian State Historical Archive. In terms of methodology, use was made of the following research methods: historical-comparative, historical-typological, historical-systematic, historical-genetic, historical-statistical, content analysis, and synthesis. The study’s findings revealed that in the period from 1908 to 1914 the size of the student body in the region grew 1.22 times and the number of educational institutions there increased 1.16 times, which vis-à-vis the other regions of the Russian Empire examined is a fairly modest figure. The boy to girl student ratio was 1.75:1 in 1914 - i.e., female students were outnumbered by nearly twice as many male ones. This can be explained by the significant number of Muslim settlements in the region at the time. In the period under examination, the number of secondary educational institutions in Astrakhan Governorate increased insignificantly and the number of lower educational institutions there declined, while the number of students enrolled in them increased, which indicates the region’s institutions of this kind becoming significantly larger. The dynamics of growth in the number of primary educational institutions in the region in the period from 1908 to 1914 were, likewise, fairly modest (an increase of 1.2 times). However, the number of students in this sector increased more noticeably, which may be explained by the passage of the Law of May 3, 1908 (focused on increasing funding for primary educational institutions). By the end of 1914, the number of Orthodox Christian church schools in the region (not included in the above statistics) was 593, with a combined enrollment of 14,786 students. Most of these educational institutions were one-grade schools. This may be explained by the desire of the governorate’s authorities to reach as wide a portion of the population with education as possible. Overall, by January 1, 1915, of the region’s 116,326 school-age children, school was attended by 58,983 individuals, i.e. roughly half of that group.