This paper examines the process of the making and development of parochial schools in Russia in the pre-revolutionary period. An insight is provided into the scale of work carried out in that area, the evolution of parochial schools in Russia, and the regulatory framework for them. The main sources for this paper are reports from the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod--more specifically, annual data from 'Extracts from the Report on the Department of the Orthodox Faith' and 'The Most Faithful Report of the Chief Procurator of the Holy Synod'. The authors employed the following methodological principles: those of historicism, systemicity, and objectivity. It is using a combination of these principles that it was possible to build a coherent picture of the development of said educational system in the Russian Empire in the period 1860-1917. The work employed the chronological principle and utilized a large body of statistical information. The use of the statistical method helped explore dynamics regarding the number of educational institutions under the Ecclesiastical Department and the size of their student body (including their student gender balance) and establish the average number of students per educational institution under the Ecclesiastical Department. The authors' conclusion is that in the period 1860-1917 the system of educational institutions under the Ecclesiastical Department went through two major periods of active development (one subsequent to the abolition of serfdom and the other subsequent to the adoption of The Rules for Parochial Schools) and one major period of stagnation (in the 1870s). Throughout said period, the educational system under the Ecclesiastical Department kept developing, with its schools getting bigger and grammar schools undergoing reorganization and the number of students per school within it growing continually. By 1914, the number of students enrolled in schools under the Ecclesiastical Department surpassed two million, which constituted nearly 25% of all students in the Russian Empire. At the peak of its development, the school system under the Ecclesiastical Department was terminated in 1917, with the schools placed under the purview of the Ministry of Public Education.