Uezdnoe Uchilishche

(district school), an advanced elementary school; the second level of education in 19th-century Russia after the prikhodskoe uchilishche (parish school).

According to the Statute of 1804, which dealt with educational institutions, uezdnye uchilishcha were established in guberniia (province) and uezd (district) centers to prepare pupils “of any social status” for admittance to the Gymnasium. The two-year course included religion, biblical history, the study of the book The Duties of a Man and a Citizen, Russian grammar and the grammar of the pupil’s native language, penmanship, Russian and world geography, and Russian and world history. Other subjects studied were arithmetic, elementary geometry, physics, natural history, and drawing.

The Statute of 1828 ended the connection of the uezdnoe uchilishche with the Gymnasium. Three-year district schools, intended mainly for the children of merchants and of middle-class urban dwellers, were instituted. They taught religion, biblical and church history, the Russian language, arithmetic, geometry (including solid geometry without proofs), geography, Russian and world history, penmanship, sketching, and drafting.

With the permission of the Ministry of Public Education, “special supplementary courses” could be introduced in the uezdnyeuchilishcha; these courses provided an elementary vocational education. Although plans were made to establish an uezdnoeuchilishche in every district center, only about 500 of the schools were established. In 1872 the uezdnye uchilishcha became gorodskie uchilishcha (urban schools).