Early in 1824, at the request of Earl Bathurst, Scott drew up an elaborate plan for providing for churches and schools in Australia.
Scott too was working on the assumption that the control of education would be in the hands of the Church of England, which brought vigorous opposition from the Presbyterians, Wesleyans and Roman Catholics.
Scott's connexion with Bigge and a friendship he had formed with John Macarthur tended to make him unpopular, and though Governor Darling spoke of him as amiable and well-disposed, he quarrelled with several men of the period.
On arriving in England, Scott took charge once again of his parish at Whitfield, where he had installed a curate in his absence, and was later made an honorary canon of Durham.
[1] He could not get on with his own clergy, and when he visited Tasmania in 1826 a report he made on the state of religion and education raised similar antagonism to that he had experienced in Sydney.
His proposed scheme of education in Australia could not be accepted at the time, largely because it assumed the ascendancy of the Church of England, but considered broadly it was a statesmanlike piece of work which must have had much influence on the plans that were later developed.