Welsh Journals

THE WELSH INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION ACT AND CARDIGANSHIRE I have endeavoured to combine the incidental, less serious impli- cations of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act with its more signi- ficant academic and cultural consequences in this general survey of the formative years of intermediate education. There can be no doubt that the passing of the Welsh Intermediate Education Act on the 12th August, 1889 was certainly a remarkable milestone in the history of Welsh education. However, in order that one may fully appreciate the Act's significance, one needs to look back many years-to 1847 and further. The infamous Blue Books' of that year undoubtedly stirred Welshmen to make education a matter of national concern, but from the early years of the nineteenth century strong criticism of the state of secondary education had been expressed by many people. One eminent critic was Matthew Arnold, for 35 years one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools. He put the blame on society that treated secondary education as having primarily social and decorative func- tions V The secondary education that did exist was largely provided by private schools, endowed grammar schools and the large Public Schools. The schools and the education given at them was criticised on grounds of the inadequacy of numbers of schools, the quality of the teaching and the content of the teaching which bore little relation to the needs and occupations of society and in particular, that of the new middle class created by the'age of industrial growth. The schools provided nothing but continuous memorising of classical texts whose contents were rarely expounded or understood The endowed grammar schools received particular criticism because of the way in which endowments were openly misappropriated. Commissions were set up to enquire into secondary education, reports were presented and Acts were passed between 1861 and 1870, but the government was still unprepared to accept the responsibility of establishing a national system of secondary education that was dearly necessary. The state of secondary education in Wales was no exception to the abysmal picture which existed throughout the United Kingdom. A feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction existed for reasons previously mentioned. But the extent of the deficiencies in Wales and the urgency associated with these was not brought home to the people until the University College of WalesJJAberystwyth was opened in 1872. It An Address delivered at the Memorial Hall, Aberaeron, 6th December, 1975.