Scotland and provided a basic education, mainly to boys. By the eighteenth century many poorer girls were being taught in dame schools, informally set up by a widow or spinster to teach reading, sewing, and cooking. The Statistical Account of Scotland undertaken parish-by-parish by John Sinclair in the 1790s indicated that all but the oldest inhabitants were expected to be able to read and that many (although fewer girls) could write and count. However, it also indicated that much of the legal provision of schooling had often fallen into decay. In the burghs there were a range or parish schools, burgh schools and grammar schools, most of which provided a preparation for one of the Scottish universities. These were supplemented by boarding establishments, known as "hospitals", most of which had been endowed by charities, such as George Heriot's School and the Merchant Companies Schools in Edinburgh. The Industrial Revolution and rapid urbanisation undermined the effectiveness of the Scottish church school system, creating major gaps in provision and religious divisions would begin to undermine the unity of the system. The publication of George Lewis's Scotland: a Half Educated Nation in 1834 began a major debate on the suitability of the parish school system, particularly in rapidly expanding urban areas. Church schools Aware of the growing shortfall in provision the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland formed an education committee in 1824. The committee had established 214 "assembly schools" by 1865. There were also 120 "sessional schools", mainly established by kirk sessions in towns and aimed at the children of the poor. The Disruption of 1843, which created the breakaway Free Church of Scotland, fragmented the kirk school system. 408 teachers in schools joined the breakaway Free Church. By May 1847 it was claimed that 500 schools had been built, along with two teacher training colleges and a ministerial training college, 513 schoolmasters were being paid direct from a central education fund and over 44,000 children being taught in Free Church schools. The influx of large numbers of Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century led to the establishment of Catholic schools, particularly in the urban west of the country, beginning with Glasgow in 1817. The church schools system was now divided between three major bodies, the established Kirk, the Free Church and the Catholic Church. Supplementary education Attempts to supplement the parish system included Sunday schools. Originally begun in the 1780s