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THE WELSH NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR EDUCATION, 1903-6* THE claim of Wales for separate administrative recognition at Whitehall and Westminster was one of the main pre-occupations of Welsh members of parliament during the last decades of the Victorian Age and the opening years of the twentieth century. After the 'triumphant elections of 1868, widely acclaimed as symbolizing the awakening of the Welsh nation'1, it was not surprising that one of the main movements for national unity should have expressed itself in the sphere of education. The attempt to establish a Welsh National Council for Education was an integral part of the struggle to secure for Wales a substantial degree of educational autonomy. But this national education movement proved to be abortive. Yet, though the main battle was lost and the Council never materialized, it produced a practical by-product in the form of departmental re-organization within the Board of Education which gave Wales a Welsh Department of the Board and a modest measure of administrative devolution. The Aberdare Report of 1881 initiated a Welsh educational awakening. The implementation of its recommendations resulted in the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, a national university in 1893 and a pseudo-autonomous body, the Central Welsh Board, in 1896 to co-ordinate the new system of Welsh intermediate schools, their inspection and examination. This placed Wales (which 'organized its secondary education at a stroke') well ahead of England which, after the Education Act of 1902, 'began in much more leisurely and hesitating fashion to tackle the same problem'. This clearly in- dicated that Wales could successfully cope with greater educational responsibilities. Moreover, the Board of Education Act of 1899 and the Education Act of 1902 demonstrated that the State recognized its greater participation in education and an inevitable increase in its responsibilities in that field. These two events merely served to accentuate the special Welsh educational problems referred to later on. The creation of the Welsh Department of the Board of Education was the result of the failure to establish a Welsh National Council for Education. In a previous paper, 'The Genesis of the Welsh Department.Board of Education, 1906-07', read at a meeting of the Cymmrodorion Society in London on 14 January 1970, an outline of the story of this Council was necessary. In this paper an attempt is made to describe the whole story in detail except the Parliamentary phase which has been summarized. 1 Kenneth O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (new edition, 1970), p. 28. 2 Leslie Wynne Evans, The Evolution of Welsh Educational Structure and Administration, 1881-1921 (1970), p. 43. 3 Report of the Departmental Committee on the organisation of secondary education in Wales, 1920 (Cmd. 967), pp. 3 ff.