Andrew Bell (educationalist)

Dr Andrew Bell FRSE FRAS (27 March 1753 – 27 January 1832) was a Scottish Episcopalian priest and educationalist who pioneered the Madras System of Education (also known as "mutual instruction" or the monitorial system") in schools and was the founder of Madras College, a secondary school in St. Andrews.

Andrew Bell was born at St. Andrews, in Scotland on 27 March 1753 and attended St. Andrews University where he did well in mathematics and natural philosophy, graduating in 1774.

In 1774 he sailed to Virginia as a private tutor and remained there until 1781 when he left to avoid involvement in the war of independence. He returned to Scotland, surviving a shipwreck on the way, and officiated at the Episcopal Chapel in Leith. He was ordained Deacon in 1784 and Priest in the Church of England in 1785.

In February 1787 he went out to India and went ashore at Madras, where he stayed for 10 years. He became chaplain to a number of British regiments and gave a course of lectures. In 1789 he was appointed superintendent of an orphan asylum for the illegitimate and orphaned sons of officers. He claimed to see some Malabar children teaching others the alphabet by drawing in sand and decided to develop a similar method, putting bright children in charge of those who were less bright. He was opposed to corporal punishment and used a system of rewards.

In Bell's adaption of the Madras, or monitorial system as it later came to be known, a schoolmaster would teach a small group of brighter or older pupils basic lessons, and each of them would then relate the lesson to another group of children.

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