Welsh Journals

The Aberdare Committee completed its work with astonishing speed. It began gathering evidence early in October 1880. By February 1881, it had questioned over 250 witnesses. The report was presented to Parliament on 19 August, the whole task having taken just over ten months. The sense of urgency shown by the Committee undoubtedly helped to maintain the momentum of the movement for higher education in Wales. Unfortunately, however, the report itself has all the marks of having been hurriedly put together. Indeed, occasionally it is difficult to determine exactly what the committee is recommending. Most of the Committee's suggestions, however, are clear enough. Despite the difficulties experienced by Aberystwyth, it recommended that two colleges be established, one in the north and one in the south, with a government grant of £ 4,000 a year each. The college at Lampeter should be affiliated to them. The existing system of endowed grammar schools should be re-organized. Accommodation should be improved and isolated schools moved to more populous areas. In the majority of cases, governing bodies should be popularly elected and religious education made non-sectarian. To obtain the funds to improve and enlarge a school, governing bodies should be empowered to obtain a loan from the county rates to meet up to half the expenditure, the remaining amount being met by a grant from the Exchequer. Finanical aid towards building a new school should come entirely out of the county rate. These schools should be maintained by the product of a half-penny rate and a parliamentary grant on a pound for pound basis.6 The recommendation that intermediate education be supported by public funds was quite revolutionary, and justifies the report being called 'the educational charter of Wales'.7 Even so, it would be difficult to agree entirely with the assessment of a recent commentator that the report 'came out boldly in favour of a Welsh education system, more advanced than that of England'. It was not the aim of the Committee to create a 'system', but rather to fill in the gaps in the existing provision. Moreover, its ideal of a stratified educational provision was just that which was beginning to be rejected by more advanced radical opinion. The Committee derived its conception of intermediate education from the Schools Inquiry Commission of 1868 (the Taunton Com- 6 Report of the Committee appointed to inquire into the condition of Intermediate and Higher Education in Wales (1881). ch. V. 7 T. I. Ellis. The Development of Higher Education in Wales (1935). p. 54. 8 Kenneth O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (1963), p. 49.