Craik was a distinguished civil servant, author, and politician From 1885 to 1904 he served as the first Permanent Secretary of the Scottish Education Department and had a profound influence on the development of secondary education in Scotland. On leaving the civil service, he sought election to Parliament as a Unionist and was elected in 1906 for the Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities. In 1918 he was elected for Combined Scottish Universities and held the seat until his death.
He was born in Glasgow on 18 October 1846, the fifth son and ninth of ten children of the Reverend James Craik DD, who was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1863, and his wife, Margaret, the daughter of William Grieve. He was educated at Glasgow High School and at the age of fourteen entered Glasgow University. In 1865 a Snell exhibition enable him to proceed to Balliol College Oxford, where he took first class honours in Classical Moderations. Two years later he took a second in literae humaniores and a first class in Law and Modern History. At the age of 24 he was appointed an examiner in the Education Department and was transferred to the Scottish Education Department, which was formed as a result of the Education (Scotland) Act of 1872. The grandson of a school master, he knew of what he was speaking when he talked of the good there was in the old parish school, and it made him all the more convincing when he explained the inevitability of the transition to the School Board that had taken place in 1872. New organisation was required to bring educational opportunity to all the children of Scotland.
He married Fanny Esther Duffield, the daughter of Charles Duffield of Manchester, on 17 December 1873. They had three sons, the eldest being George, born in 1874, who served as Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police 1910-14 and succeeded to the Baronetcy, but died in 1929. Henry, (1876-1955) succeeded his brother as the 3rd Baronet and Governor of the Punjab 1938-41. The youngest of the three, Captain John Craik of the Seaforth Highlanders died of a tropical fever at the age of thirty in the Sudan in 1908.
In 1878 he became senior examiner and seven years later when the department was transferred to the control of the new Scottish Office, he was appointed Secretary of the autonomous department. He can be said to have controlled and moulded the educational methods and machinery of Scottish education for almost two decades. As the active head of a small department, serving a minister who necessarily had a wide range of other interests, Craik was able to play a remarkably creative role. Although Treasury constraints meant that Scottish and English educational policy could not diverge to any great extent, Craik's detailed amendments to the annual school code brought about a number of significant changes. While senior examiner, he had written a significant report on highland education, and as secretary he improved its financial condition and gave some recognition to the teaching of Gaelic. In elementary education, he gained much personal credit for ending the discredited system of ‘payment by results', and for the abolition of fees, from 1890 onwards. From the start he was determined to improve the standards of Scottish education and particularly those of secondary education for which the 1972 Act had done little. A committee to investigate the state of Scottish education was appointed in 1886. This revealed a considerable variation in standards. A circular in the same year made clear Craik's determination to proceed with an inspection of all higher class schools and in it was the first mention of what was to be his major innovation, a Scottish leaving certificate.
In his 1886-87 report Craik wrote: “we have given special consideration to the means by which this inspection might give satisfactory evidence as to the state of the schools and might at the same time , without unduly limiting the independence of local management, raise the standards of secondary education throughout the country. With this end we have carefully considered the extent to which a leaving examination might be established in connection with the inspection and how it might best be arranged.” Those who had taken part in the inspection were invited to give their views to the department and the distinguished Scottish mathematician, George Chrystal, was invited to conduct an experimental test in which he balanced the need for a standard sufficient to achieve entry into the university system with the need not to do damage to schools inadequately equipped to achieve that standard. From his work came the concept of establishing two grades, the higher sufficient to achieve university entrance while the lower was set at a standard sufficient to achieve entrance into a course leading to a professional qualification like that of the General Medical Council. Chrystal's work had been confined to mathematics, but Craik next extended the scope of his enquiry to the feasibility of setting up a leaving examination in other subjects. The inspectors consulted saw no obstacle as far as English and languages were concerned. Reinforcing this work, a departmental enquiry, which was chaired by C.S. Parker, issued three reports in 1887-88, the third of which was a comprehensive account of secondary education, and in it reference was made to the creation of a national leaving certificate as a means of raising standards. It was on the basis of all this work that Craik introduced the Scottish leaving certificate in 1888. But he was clever enough to realise the importance of carrying the schools with him. He consulted them about the subjects to be covered, the standard to be achieved, and the classes to which the examination should be open. Even though the schools were not in total agreement about the way in which the examination should be shaped, the fact that they had been drawn into the work helped to make what was by any standards a bold move both welcome and a success. The professional bodies were immediately willing to accept the new examination as an entrance qualification. The Universities were more hesitant. Craik therefore invited them to a conference in Edinburgh in February 1888. Cautiously they sent only unofficial representatives, one of them George Chrystal. The principal issue for debate was whether the certificates should be group or subject based and Craik favoured the latter as being more practicable in the immediate future. The first leaving examination was sat in June 1888, but it was not until the following year that Craik finally secured from the universities support for the new system. The tact and energy with which he had secured his end were widely recognised and it was perhaps the most important achievement in his period of office. The move to grouping was made in 1900 with limited success. Nevertheless it was proceeded with in 1902 with both a full leaving certificate at the age of seventeen and an intermediate certificate for those leaving school at fifteen, and therefore unable to complete the full course of study. Undoubtedly this innovation played a major part in raising the standards of Scottish education and as such played a vital role in its development.
However, Craik's
efforts to centralise secondary school provision were overturned in
1892 by MPs who felt that the “separate development of
secondary education was alien to Scottish democratic tradition”
and while Craik neither forgot nor forgave this victory of localism
over considerations of national efficiency, there was little he could
do about it.1
The department's control of state grants, which were extended to
Scottish secondary education in 1892, was another instrument which
Craik used to the same end. Towards the end of his period of office,
he also did much to encourage scientific, commercial, and technical
education, though his personal preference for the classics remained
evident and his own sons were sent to Eton. He was a strong proponent
of physical education and of military training for young men, and he
served as a member of the royal commission on physical training in
Scotland in 1902. After his retirement, he abstained from direct
criticism of his successors, but he opposed the public provision of
school meals, which he thought undermined family responsibility. He
supported the restriction of secondary provision to an educational
elite that he thought to be around five per cent and certainly no
more than ten per cent2
and his biographer in ODNB claims with some justice that he “remained
attached to a rather narrow version of the Scottish tradition of the
‘lad of parts', seeing educational opportunity as suited
only to particularly able scholars”. But in that he was not
alone. During the First World War, he was asked to chair a committee
on Scottish teachers' salaries, and as a result of its work a
national pay scale was introduced in 1918.
Craik's conspicuous success as a civil servant was not altogether surprising since he combined an aptitude for business with great political sagacity and an uncanny ability to look ahead. He was a master of correspondence. Although by temperament somewhat irascible and not always inclined to see anyone else's point of view, he managed to temper these traits in his relationship with his ministerial chiefs, whom he served with great loyalty and total discretion. He was particularly close to Lord Balfour of Burleigh who was Scottish Secretary from 1895 until 1903. His firm defence of Scottish interest was always appreciated, but towards the end of his time, there were growing complaints about the despotism exercised by the Scottish Education Department. Made a CB in 1884, he became a Knight Commander of the Order in 1897.
Craik managed to combine a literary career with his official life. His brother George Lillie Craik, was a partner in the house of Macmillan, and for them he edited five volumes of English Prose Selections 1893-6. He wrote the introductions to four, a veritable history of English prose. He also edited a series of volumes, the English Citizen, for Macmillan, and that included his The State in its Relation to Education, first published in 1884, but revised as late as 1914. His first major publication as a two volume life of Dean Swift in 1882, again later revised. He also edited a selection from Swift's works, published as Swift. The battle of the books (1892, 1912). A Century of Scottish History first appeared in 1901 and a second edition was published in 1911. Covering the years 1745 to 1843, but frequently ranging more widely, it can be regarded as his most characteristic book and in its dealing with moderation in the Scottish church, he was actually defending his own forefathers. Although hard on the mistakes and excesses of the Tory party , especially after 1815, he does not let “the Whig dogs have the best of it”. Later publications included Impressions of India (1908) and a two volume life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon (1911). He was a frequent contributor to the Quarterly Review and other periodicals...
Although he brought a great deal of experience and a well-stocked mind to politics, and was evidently respected and well-liked in every quarter of the House of Commons, Craik never overcame the disability that must attach to someone embarking on a political career at the age of sixty nor had he any previous experience in the art of public speaking. Although he threw himself into his new life with enthusiasm and came to have a deep knowledge of Parliamentary procedure, he was probably too impatient and too uncompromising in his views to gain the influence he sought, and he remained an unimpressive speaker. Moreover, his party was in opposition until 1915 and by then he was almost seventy. Nevertheless he became a valued member of the Public Accounts Committee and his private counsel, particularly on educational matters was greatly valued. He was a convinced imperialist and added to his experience by visits to South Africa (1903), Egypt and the Sudan (1907), India (1907–8), and Canada (1912).
As a University member, he could operate with considerable independence, but he never lost their support even though he must have tried them by his deep-seated resistance to female suffrage. It is evident that his innate Conservatism deepened with the years. He hated new fangled devices like typewriters and was a trenchant critic of innovations like the Cabinet Secretariat. He was profoundly critical of Lloyd George's methods of government. In July 1922 he protested against the vehemence with which Government ministers referred to the increase in Government business, recommending that they try a little simplicity. “You require minutes, the Leader of the House tells us, because Cabinet Ministers cannot be trusted to remember what they have decided from day to day. It was an almost pitiful picture that the Leader of the House drew of his colleagues in the Cabinet who left the Cabinet and came back to it perfectly uncertain what they had decided”, he said, and he concluded that if their memories were so defective the Prime Minister and the new department would exercise great authority over them. “I think this new movement is one to curtail the independent responsibility of Cabinet Ministers.” Another of his gripes was the increase in the cost of the central administration and the way in which many civil service salaries exceeded those of ministers. He was also critical of increased Treasury control over the civil service and one of his last motions in the House in April 1926 was to provoke debate on Lloyd George's designation of the Permannet Secretary of The Treasury as head of the civil service, a move he described as “constitutional mountebankism”.
In his latter years he was the oldest member in the Commons, but it made little difference to his ability to discharge his parliamentary duties. As the Labour Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, William Graham noted, he loved Parliament and carried out his duties with “extraordinary zeal”. He always enjoyed life thoroughly and to the end never spared himself if there was a friend to be helped or a public duty to perform. He was Treasurer of the Royal Literary Fund and in that capacity did much to help authors in distress. He was a man of exceptionally strong physique and on the outbreak of war in 1914 he was one of the first to volunteer as a special constable. His favourite recreation was hunting, and almost to the last he kept up his custom of taking a morning ride in the Row.
Craik was sworn of the Privy Council in 1918 and created a baronet in January 1926. Fanny had died on 13 December 1923 and Craik died on 16 March 1927 at his London home, 5A Dean's Yard, Westminster, London. He was buried in Highgate cemetery.
1 On this, see R.Anderson: Education and Opportunity in Victorian Scotland: Schools and Universities. Oxford, 1983.
2 ‘The Education Fight and the nation' in National Review April 1926