In the given article the author examines the Lancasterian System of Education established in Bessarabia on May 28, 1823 at the proposal of Count I.A. Kapodistrias. Initially, these schools were opened in Chișinău, Bălți and Ismail, and later in Bender and Hotin. Education in them was based on a system of mutual learning.

The founder of the Lancasterian System of Education was an English teacher Joseph Lancaster, who was teaching poor children without payment. The originality of this system is that its methods do not have a purely religious character; we can say that the teaching of religion was limited to reading the Bible without its interpretation. It should be noted that the mutual education system in Bessarabia was introduced at the behest of Alexander I.

The first Lancasterian school was opened in Chisinau on February 7, 1824 (under the leadership of Iacob Hâncu), then in Bălți – on 11 May (under the leadership of Teodor Bobeicu), and in Ismail – on 26 May of the same year (under the leadership of Lavrentiy Kunitsky). In 1824, at the request of the Rector of the Chișinău Theological Seminary V. Purishkevich there have been established two schools: the first one was opened on March 13 in Bender, having as a teacher the graduate of the Theological Seminary Andrei Timoshevsky, and the second – on December 7 in Hotin, having as a teacher the graduate of the same Seminary Ioan Rodostat. In 1833, in these 5 Lancasterian schools there were studying 375 students: in the school from Chișinău - 136 students, from Ismail – 77, from Balti – 40, from Hotin – 73 and from Bender – 49 students. Apart from these fi ve schools, in this period a Lancasterian school was functioning in the Bulgarian colony of Bolgrad in the Ismail County. In 1843 Lancasterian schools were also opened in Orhei, Soroca, Cahul, and on August 14, 1846 the second such a school was established in Chișinău.

To maintain Lancasterian schools in Bessarabia there were spent annually 3780 assignation roubles. But the Lancasterian schools have not received much popularity among the population, and attempts to establish these schools in villages were unsuccessful. At the end of the 1840s some of them, except the Chișinău Lancasterian School, were transformed into preparatory classes of the county gymnasiums, while others merged with the new parochial schools, which started to appear in Bessarabia under the Regulation of parochial schools in 1836.