Welsh Journals

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THE WELSH INTERMEDIATE AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION ACT 1889 AND THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS IN November 1889, William Rathbone, Liberal M.P. for Arfon, wrote that It is just and proper that Wales, which has long been left in the background, should be the first part of the United Kingdom in which the importance of Intermediate Education has been recognised by a grant from the Imperial Treasury. In no part of the United Kingdom is the thirst for education stronger. It was prophesied that the Welsh Intermediate and Technical Education Act which came into operation on 1 November 1889 would bring significant benefit to Wales. The long, and often acrimonious, quest for legislation had triumphed. The aspirations of the Welsh people for adequate intermediate and technical education were about to be met. A. H. D. Acland M.P. epitomised a widespread feeling that if Wales loyally and willingly accepts the responsibility now cast upon her, this Act may be the starting point of a new education system, living, vigorous, and stimulating, which will be both honourable to herself and of the utmost benefit to future generations.2 The Welsh people were to respond to the challenge and the demands of the Welsh Intermediate Act with much vigour and enthusiasm. Within a decade, a network of intermediate schools had been established, thereby laying the foundations of the education system of modern Wales. A century later, the legislation of 1889 is justifiably regarded as one of the major achievements of Victorian Wales.3 Contemporaries in 1889 were not unaware of the shortcomings of the Act, particularly the omission of a Welsh Board of Education. In some recent works, other weaknesses of the Act, and of the schools established in the 1890s through the implementation of its terms, are fully discussed.4 Some of the wealthiest educational endowments in Wales, such as Christ College, Brecon, and Llandovery College, were not included in the Act. In the new intermediate schools, there was to be only 1 T. E. Ellis and E. J. Griffith, A Manual to the Intermediate Education (Wales) Act 1889 (1889), p. 5. 2 Ibid., p. 12. 5 T. I. Ellis, The Development of Higher Education in Wales (1935), pp. 70-88; Kenneth O. Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 1868-1922 (1980), pp. 101-2; L. W. Evans, Studies in Welsh Education (1974), P. 25. 4G. E. Jones, Controls and Conflicts in Welsh Secondary Education, 1889-1944 (1982); W. G. Evans, The Establishment of Intermediate Education in Carmarthenshire, 1889-1914' (unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, 1980).