Welsh Journals

ABERYSTWYTH SCHOOL BOARD AND BOARD SCHOOL, 1870-1902 I As a result of the Education Act of 1870 Board Schools became a new and an essential feature of school provision in England and Wales at the same time elected School Boards gave the country a novel type of ad hoc local education authority. Aberystwyth was the first town in Wales to elect such a board, thereby providing the Principality with a lead for giving local practical interpretation to national legislation and to regulations of the central authority. Between 1870 and 1902 the activities and progress of this Board were intimately connected with and influenced by local needs, events, personalities, and public opinion. There is also evidence that Aberystwyth was confronted with the great sectarian controversies which harassed educationists for the greater part of the nineteenth century. In that period, the majority of Welshmen were for the most part in favour of free, secular, and undenominational education, and many Aberystwyth nonconformists strongly supported this view. To discuss the various educational proposals put forward in many quarters in 1869, they held meetings and thoroughly debated the relevant quest- ions. One of the most important was the conference held on January 25 and 26, 1870, to which all ministers of religion, mayors of towns, and other persons interested in education in Wales had been invited. The formation of the Welsh Education Alliance was one result of this meeting. On March 7 the mayor presided over a gathering in the Congregational Chapel, Portland Street, for by this time the Alliance had become the spearhead of the Welsh attack on Forster's Education Bill introduced in February. A further meeting of the townspeople was held in the Town Hall on March 22 it passed resolutions in favour of amalgamating all denominational schools into one national system of unsectarian education. Consequently, when the new Educ- ation Act came into operation on August 9, many nonconformists were still disappointed that Church schools were allowed to retain their independence and separate administration. But the struggle went on. Within a short time and without conducting a survey to ascertain whether another school was really needed in the borough, certain townsmen encouraged the Town Council to exercise the right bestowed on it by the Act by this, a direct appeal could be made 1 An address given at Aberystwyth, 10 March 1951