THE INTERMEDIATE SCHOOLS OF WALES
A land of mountains seems to be a land of ideals. Separated by the
elementary forces of nature from many of the currents of life that flow
beyond it, thrown on itself, its own resources and its past, it
cherishes its individuality with a fervour unknown to the people of a
plain. Even ruthless modernity, with its complex train systems and
mountain-borings, serves but to invade its privacy, not to change its
character. Patriotism is stronger, national feeling more tenacious, the
practical side of life has man less firmly in its grip. The Welsh
people, with their proud claim to represent the original inhabitants of
the island, their long roll of story and legend, their ‘estranging’
language, incomprehensible a few miles across the border, are still a
race apart. Neither Saxon nor Norman, legislation nor intercourse, has
ever been able to degrade them into a mere appanage of the English
nation.
Among the ideals long cherished here in vain by all classes, was that of
a national system of education. It would not be fair to describe the
country which produced the sweetest and best-trained singers in the
United Kingdom, and could organise and carry out such elaborate musical
and artistic competitions as those of the Eisteddfodd, as wholly
uneducated, and yet until very recently it was undoubtedly lacking in
schools and colleges. Like England, it benefited by the Education Act of
1870, which brought instruction to the children of the wage-earners, but
it was the class above these, the professional and commercial, whose
means or whose patriotism forbade their sending their sons and daughters
to England, that felt the deficiency most keenly. Drawn into the stir,
which in England followed on 1870, Wales began to move on her own lines;
numerous educational societies were started, conferences held, and every
effort made to fan the feeble spark till it should have strength enough
to kindle public opinion as well as private enthusiasm. The country was
too poor to supply its own needs by voluntary effort. For that very
reason it offered a useful field for experiment. Vested interests were
not numerous; there were a few grammar schools for boys; but for girls
only three endowed schools, and one proprietary, belonging to the Girls’
Public Day-School Company. Private schools, mostly inefficient, filled
some of the gaps, the rest remained empty.
The last five years have wrought a transformation. Throughout the length
and breadth of Wales, whether in large towns or small, there may be seen
in a conspicuous spot, looking down on the place from some hill-top hard
by, a grey stone building, which a large board informs us is the local
County School. The pride with which the inhabitants point it out recalls
American enthusiasm; to many it is the chief sight of the place. Here is
the goal on which their hopes have been set for years; these school
buildings testify to attainment. ‘_O fortunati quorum jam mœnia
surgunt_,’ we are tempted to exclaim.
This transformation has been brought about by the Welsh Intermediate
Education Act of 1889, itself the outcome of that same departmental
committee which recommended the establishment of a Welsh university. Its
financial contribution, a half-penny rate, and a Treasury grant of
corresponding amount, would in itself have been too meagre to produce
much result, but when in the following year the Local Customs and Excise
Act was passed, it contained a clause permitting Wales to use its share
of the money for purposes of Intermediate as well as Technical
instruction. In this way the public resources, _i.e._ the rate, the
Treasury grant, and the technical money, could be administered in one
fund, and for the general purpose of education, with no express
exclusion of literature or culture. The tiresome restrictions, the
overlapping of authorities, from which we are still suffering in
England, were never to be introduced into Wales; its very poverty proved
its salvation; there was a _tabula rasa_ on which no characters had been
as yet inscribed. Both on account of its own needs, and as an untried
field for operation, Wales was chosen as suitable ground for an
experiment in secondary education, at the very moment when the
institution of a fresh educational authority in England came to
complicate existing conditions yet further.
It is an accusation often brought against English education, that we
have no system which looks well on paper. This cannot be said of Wales.
The system there is perfectly simple. It applies to the whole country,
and to girls and boys alike. The money is raised from three sources:—
1. A half-penny rate—the County contribution.
2. A Treasury grant, equal to the amount produced by the rate—the
Treasury contribution.
3. The local share of the money from the Customs and Excise Act—the
Exchequer contribution.
The educational unit is the county, and the governing body consists
partly of members of the county council, representing the separate
school districts, partly of members chosen by school boards, university
colleges, etc. A very few are co-opted. Each school also has its own
body of managers, chosen in somewhat similar fashion from local bodies,
while the county council appoints one of the members sent up to it from
each district to be its own representative on that particular governing
body. The duties of the managers are chiefly confined to carrying out
the provisions of schemes, and promoting healthy local interest in the
school, for they have little power of initiative, and not always even
the choice of a headmaster. All matters of essential importance, _e.g._
whether the schools shall be separate for boys and girls, or mixed, the
subjects of instruction, the salary of the headmaster, the limits within
which fees may be charged, and the proportion of scholarships to be
awarded, are laid down in advance in the county scheme, which can only
be altered by appeal to the Charity Commissioners. The action of both
county and district bodies is therefore confined within very narrow
limits, too narrow, in fact, considering the experimental stage of the
schools, and the unwisdom of crystallising initial mistakes into
permanent form.
These schemes were drawn up, subject to the approval of the Charity
Commissioners, by the Joint Education Committees, which received their
authority directly from the Act. They consisted in each case of five
persons, three nominees of the county council, and two persons ‘well
acquainted with the condition of Wales and the wants of the people.’
Though the interests of girls as well as boys had to be considered, few
if any women seem to have been on these committees, and it is difficult
not to connect this omission with the injustice with which they have, in
many cases, been treated. This was hardly intentional, but it should
have been possible to negative at the outset every proposal for making a
girls’ school a mere subordinate department of the boys.’ These
committees were only temporary, to exist until the schemes could be
floated, and the control handed over to the county governing bodies. But
they led to the formation of a permanent board, not contemplated by the
Act. Frequent meetings between groups of these committees, with a view
to promoting uniformity of action, led to a series of general
conferences at Shrewsbury, which, though not in Wales, is the most
conveniently accessible point from north and south. At a series of
meetings held here, it was decided to establish a central body, and call
upon the Treasury to acknowledge it as the central authority for
inspection and examination, and for the payment of the Government grant
to the various counties. After the usual negotiations and delays, a
scheme establishing the Board was approved by the Charity Commissioners,
and became law in 1895. In this informal manner originated what has
practically become the secondary education authority for Wales.
The Board consists of eighty members, representative of various local
and educational bodies: the Principals of the three Welsh colleges,
twenty-one representatives of county councils, twenty-six of county
governing bodies, five of headmasters and mistresses of intermediate
schools, five of certificated teachers in public elementary schools,
three of councils of university colleges, three of the senates, two of
Jesus College, Oxford, six of the court of the University of Wales, and
six co-optative members, three of whom must be women. The bulk of the
work devolves on the executive committee of fifteen.
The establishment of this Central Board marks the completion of the
Welsh secondary system. It furnishes a link between all the counties and
schools, and exercises over these that general supervision which, in the
initial stages, had devolved on the Charity Commissioners. Since the
subjects to be taught had been prescribed by the Act generally, and by
the schemes specially, the duties of the Central Board were not so much
to lay down a scheme of studies, as to see that the course already
prescribed was duly followed, that each school was in a state of general
and educational efficiency, and that the provisions of the schemes were
observed. For these purposes they arranged a system of inspection and
examination. The Act had defined intermediate education as ‘a course of
education which does not consist chiefly of elementary instruction in
reading, writing, and arithmetic, but which includes instruction in
Latin, Greek, the Welsh and English language and literature, modern
languages, mathematics, natural and applied science, or in some of such
studies, and generally in the higher branches of knowledge,’ and the
schemes fixed more precisely which of these were to be in each case
compulsory. The Glamorgan scheme, which is in many respects typical,
prescribes geography, history, English grammar, composition, and
literature, drawing, mathematics, Latin, at least one modern language,
natural science, vocal music, drill or other physical exercise, and such
other scientific or technical subjects, including shorthand, as the
school managers may determine. Scripture is not obligatory, but if
included, it must be taught by a member of the staff. Some manual
instruction must also be offered the boys, and a little cookery to the
girls, but, as is inevitable, where the programme is already overloaded,
this side of the work takes a very subordinate place. In all schools
Welsh must be taught as an optional subject; in a stated few Greek may
be introduced. But even without these additions, the compulsory
curriculum is a very heavy one, when it is borne in mind that a large
proportion of pupils come from the elementary schools, where the girls,
at any rate, have been hitherto confined to reading, writing,
arithmetic, and needlework, with possibly a little French and domestic
economy. Even English history and geography are unfamiliar ground.
The aim of the Welsh Intermediate, as of the English High Schools, is to
give a liberal education cheaply in day-schools; but there is one
essential difference between them. While the high school is an organised
whole, leading the pupils by gentle gradations from the primary
department to the lower school, and thence on to the upper, the
intermediate school receives no pupils below the age of ten. Since the
majority are between twelve and sixteen, they break up naturally into
two classes, according as they have received their preliminary training
at a public elementary school or elsewhere. This division is by no means
so sharply defined in Wales as in England. Wales is both poor and
democratic, and inclines to the doctrine, familiar in the United States,
that no stigma should attach to attendance at a school supported out of
the rates, since the parents do in fact contribute towards the expenses,
though indirectly. Hence we find a mixture of class in both elementary
and intermediate schools, which in England would be neither possible nor
desirable. The omission of the primary department in the new schools is
in fact deliberate. There is already one kind of school assisted out of
public funds and accessible to all, and it is therefore not thought
necessary to subsidise primary instruction in another set of
institutions. The intermediate school is so constituted as to fit
straight on to the elementary, and in each school a certain proportion
of scholarships must fall to elementary pupils. In accordance with the
opinion of many authorities that the transplanting from an elementary to
a secondary school, always a difficult process, should not take place
too late, the admission age and requirements are put low, and the
intermediate school is supposed to branch off from the elementary at
about the fifth standard. In Wales, where poverty and dearth of
educational opportunities have induced many persons of middle rank to
make use of the free public schools, the difference between the two sets
of pupils is by no means so strongly marked as it would be in England,
but even here schools have two different characters, according as one or
the other of these elements predominates. In a district where the
population is largely industrial, the lowest possible tuition fee is
chosen, and the largest possible amount of scholarships given to
elementary pupils. Thus one scheme requires that not less than ten per
cent. and not more than thirty per cent. of the pupils in each school,
shall hold scholarships, and at least half of the number awarded shall
go to pupils from public elementary schools, but there is nothing to
prevent the whole number from being so given. In fact, several schools
have more scholarships than candidates for them. According, therefore,
to the interpretation of the clause adopted, the elementary scholars in
a school of a hundred may vary from five—the minimum, to thirty—the
maximum. In the latter class of school, the fees are usually low enough
to attract paying pupils from the elementary schools; hence these
furnish a majority of the pupils, and the school becomes a continuation,
often a finishing-school for elementary pupils, many of whom stay one
year, sometimes only a term or two, to get what prestige they can from
attendance at a school of a higher grade than the one to which they have
been accustomed. Those that remain for two years or longer usually do
well, if their health is strong enough to bear the severe strain.
The other classification into separate and mixed schools is apt to
coincide with this distinction. Of the eighty-four schools now in
existence, there are twenty for boys and twenty for girls, while the
remaining forty-four are mixed. This wholesale adoption of a principle
popular in the United States, but regarded hitherto askance by England,
in common with other European countries, is due, as in Scotland, to the
force of necessity. It is not as a counsel of perfection, but as a means
of economy, that the plan has been adopted in Wales. In a country
intersected by mountains, and inadequately supplied with means of
locomotion, where distances should, as in Switzerland, be counted by
hours and not by miles, access to places that look near enough on the
map is often exceedingly difficult; and it is useless to plant a large
school-building in a central district in the hope of drawing in pupils
from a radius of a few miles. The alternative lay between frequent small
day-schools and a liberal sprinkling of boarding-schools. The former
carried the day, on the ground that they were more equitable to
ratepayers, and more democratic. In almost every county, the committee
adopted the more expensive and troublesome plan of establishing and
maintaining a large number of small schools, and most of the
difficulties with which Welsh intermediate education has to contend are
due to that decision. In some places there are schools of forty, or even
less, difficult to finance and to organise. These might work for a year
or two, but as pupils stayed on and began to range from the Fifth
Standard scholar at one end to the Matriculation student at the other,
with all the varying intermediate grades, failure became inevitable. One
remedy in the case of those small schools which were not rich enough to
provide a liberal staff for small classes, was to arrange from the first
to mix the boys and girls, thus facilitating the grading by increasing
the numbers in each class. In this way better results could be obtained
with small means, at any rate as far as class lists and examination
statistics were concerned.
Owing to the difficulties of grading, this system is being gradually
introduced in many places where it was not originally contemplated; but
the typical Welsh school, according to the first plan, was the dual.
This was to consist of two distinct schools, one for boys and one for
girls, built side by side, in such a way that they might have assembly
hall, gymnasium, laboratory, etc., in common, and by the economy thus
effected in site, buildings, apparatus, etc., it was hoped that the
efficiency of small schools would be maintained. Unfortunately, the
advocates of this system went a step further, and arranged to complete
their economies by appointing a single head for both schools, to take
the superintendence of both boys and girls. Obviously this head must be
a man. Though some schemes contain the words ‘headmaster or
head-mistress,’ it is at once explained to feminine applicants that the
words are a mere matter of form. Indeed, it would be far better to omit
them. The most ardent advocates of women’s equality would hardly propose
to give a mistress full authority over boys of twelve to seventeen.
However excellent feminine influence may be in a boys’ school, no one
wants to see it supreme there. Though paramount masculine influence in a
girls’ school is anything but desirable, it seemed the lesser of two
evils; and both custom and convenience pointed to the selection of a
master. This initial injustice paved the way for many others. Though
most schools appoint a senior mistress, who is supposed to have a
general control over the girls, it is out of the managers’ power, when
once they have made the headmaster supreme, to make her position one of
any authority. Like all the rest, she is appointed by the headmaster;
she has no place in the scheme, nor status in the school, except what
may be given her by courtesy. She has no voice in choosing her
assistants, nor in making the time-table; her position is often inferior
to that of a second mistress in an English high school. This kind of
dual school was a new experiment, and it cannot be pronounced a
successful one. Where the two departments were kept distinct, except for
an occasional interchange of teachers, the real difficulties of
classification were not obviated; and one set of managers after another
took the final step, availing themselves of the permission accorded in
most schemes, to ‘make arrangements for boys and girls being taught
together in all or any of the classes.’ The forms are then mixed
throughout, and assigned in turn to men and women teachers. Here the
senior mistress loses even her semblance of authority, and the school is
under the supreme and undisturbed sway of the headmaster. What number of
schools have already taken this final step is nowhere definitely stated,
but, as far as can be ascertained, it appears to be a majority. It is in
fact the logical outcome of the dual plan, and since the tendency of the
change is to diminish the proportion of girls, we may look upon these
schools as organised for boys, but admitting girls as well.
The whole question of co-education is so exceedingly difficult that it
is unfortunate that Welsh educationalists should have been compelled to
add it to the number of complex problems with which they had already to
deal. The small schools have necessitated this among other problems. Its
warmest advocates do not deny that it makes discipline more difficult:
constant supervision becomes necessary; boys and girls have to be kept
apart out of class, and an attempt, usually doomed to failure, is made
in some schools to control the walk home. The freer intercourse, the
element of trust, and the bright out-of-school life, which in England
have come to be considered as important a part of a secondary school as
the Mathematics or Latin taught there, have little chance of development
in the mixed school. That valuable moral impetus given by the direct and
constant intercourse between the master and boys, mistress and girls, is
missing. Thus they lose what is often the best effect of school life
upon our boys and girls: the schools become places of mere instruction,
not education; they are but elementary schools with advanced subjects in
the curriculum; rivals, and not always successful ones, of the higher
grade. Of course this is not solely due to the co-education scheme, but
it has tended further to emphasise the social difference between the two
classes of schools, and also to put women at a disadvantage in Welsh
education, which could hardly have been contemplated by the original
promoters. Yet now that this arrangement has been fixed by scheme and
made fast by yards of red-tape, it must remain as it is, until some
energetic band of reformers shall arise determined to end it. But that
cannot be as yet.
The second class, the distinct schools for boys and girls, resemble our
English high schools; in fact Swansea, one of the most successful, was
actually founded by the Girls’ Public Day-School Company, and taken over
by the Intermediate Board. The money supplied by the county grant makes
up for the diminution of the fees, and the work proceeds with little
change. Cardiff is also organised on the lines of a high school, with
the chief intellectual work in the morning, considerable attention to
games and physical training, and a liberal allowance of teachers. In
these separate schools the fees range from about £5 to £9, being
slightly lower than those of the corresponding schools in England. The
allowance of mistresses to pupils is adequate, the elementary scholars
are a small proportion, not enough to set the whole tone of the school.
In the mixed or dual school the fees are usually low, sometimes even as
little as £2 per annum, scholarships are more numerous, and the
sprinkling of scholars from other than elementary schools is very small.
Both kinds of schools doubtless have their use, though their aims are
very different.
With all these varieties of organisation and character, the schools have
a unifying influence in the general control of the Central Board, since
all are subject to its examination and inspection. The latter is
undertaken by the Chief Inspector, who visits each school in the course
of the year, and reports specially on the following heads—
1. Character, suitability, and capacity of school premises.
2. School furniture and apparatus.
3. Facilities for recreation and physical training.
4. The relation between the administration of schools and the schemes
under which they are established.
5. The organisation of classes.
6. The school discipline.
7. Courses of instruction.
If a school prove deficient in any of these respects, the managers
receive a warning from the Board that future negligence will entail a
diminution of the grant. This is a useful check, and a form of payment
by result which can only do good, for it counteracts that uneconomical
form of economy, which declines to spend on proper building and
apparatus and salaries. An element of control which requires more
careful exercise is the threat of a diminished grant, should a school
fail to do well in the annual examination. This, which is conducted by
the Central Board, was in the first place inspectional, and was meant to
give the schools the necessary outside impulse. In order to carry out
the principle of letting the examination follow the teaching instead of
the teaching the examination, each school was invited to send up its own
syllabus of work done, but this led to so much needless expense, since
there were as many as fifty-three Latin papers set in one year, that
some kind of uniformity became indispensable. The present regulations
prescribe that only pupils who have been a full year in a school shall
be presented for the written examination, and in at least five subjects.
Forms which do not take papers are examined orally in one or other of
the subjects studied during the school year. The scheme bears some
resemblance to the school examinations of the Joint Board, but a new
feature is the test in languages of ‘ability to read fluently,
intelligently, and correctly, passages chosen from prepared and
unprepared texts.’ The papers set are of varying grades of difficulty,
and the schools choose which they will take. Thus in Latin there were
seven papers set in 1898, of which the fourth is supposed to be
equivalent to the standard of the Welsh Matriculation. Not many pupils
are likely to go beyond this, since the schools are distinctly
preparatory to the university colleges, which a matriculated pupil can
enter. If this standard should in a few years be reached by a fair
proportion of pupils in each school, the intermediate system can claim
to be successful, for it will be accomplishing its avowed purpose, to
carry its pupils from the Fifth Standard to the Constituent College of
the University of Wales. For pupils who aim at the Welsh Matriculation
these annual tests should be sufficient, but experience shows that there
is a tendency to aim at results earlier in the school career; and the
chaos of external examinations, from which many English schools are not
yet completely emancipated, should be a warning to Wales to be wise in
time, and from the beginning concentrate efforts on the same lines. This
seems to be best effected by following the example of the Joint Board,
and combining school examinations with the awarding of certificates. A
scheme on these lines is now in course of preparation, and will probably
come into operation in 1899. The subjects of the general examination are
to be arranged in groups: _A._ Scripture and English; _B._ Mathematics;
_C._ Languages; _D._ Science; _E._ Practical subjects. Within certain
limits a choice is allowed from these five groups. Junior and senior
certificates are to be awarded on papers of different grades of
difficulty. The senior standard is to be carefully approximated to that
of Welsh Matriculation, in the hope that the University may be willing
to accept it as an equivalent. There should not be much difficulty about
this, since the University Court is represented on the Central Board,
and the Board in its turn on the Court, so that very close and
sympathetic relations are maintained between the two bodies that have
charge of the educational interests of the country. The next step would
be to win acknowledgment for it as a substitute for the Medical and
other preliminaries, and a further stage would be an Honours grade that
might replace the higher certificate of the Joint Board as an admission
examination to English colleges, and a substitute for the Previous and
Responsions. Even this might in time be attained, and the Welsh Board
would then have fulfilled its mission of making one school stage lead
harmoniously and naturally to the next.
Such is the scheme as it presents itself to the minds of the promoters,
who look far away beyond the present troubles of small schools,
irregular attendance, and inadequate funds, and see in the distant
future the glorious fabric of their dreams: one system of schools for
both boys and girls, leading them on step by step till they are ready to
enter their own colleges, and thence, if more adventurously inclined,
cross the border and ask the hospitality of the ancient English
universities. The ladder in its widest acceptation is to be set up in
Wales, so close to the home of every boy and girl that none may plead
inaccessibility as an excuse for the failure to mount. And this system
is to be worked by popular bodies, touching at one end the local
schoolboard, at the other the university colleges, so that its
foundations may be firm and lasting, ‘broad-based upon the people’s
will.’
Such is the ideal; how far is it reflected by the reality? Of actual
results it is too soon to speak, since the oldest school is not yet five
years old, and the numbers in them are so small that the whole
eighty-four now in existence, including boys and girls, have not
together as many pupils as the thirty-four schools of the Girls’ Public
Day-School Company. There were many difficulties to be met. The ground
was new and unbroken, the meaning of secondary education, except in so
far as it was expressed by a higher grade school, was hardly understood
by the mass of the people. Some schools won a too hasty popularity,
owing to the impression that they were ‘finishing’ institutions for
elementary scholars, hence the one-year or one-term pupils of whom so
much has been heard. This mistaken notion will be but slowly dispelled,
and it is not impossible that in a few years’ time, should the Central
Board prove successful in its attempts to ‘level up,’ the number of
schools may prove too large for the demand. Many boys and girls who must
begin to prepare for their life work at fourteen or fifteen would be
better off in a higher grade school than struggling to find their depth
in these new waters. The elimination of these would prove no serious
loss, and it would clear the ground for a fairer treatment of those
pupils, whether from elementary or other schools, who are really able to
profit by secondary education. The Welsh system cannot be considered
complete while so many of the well-to-do and educated classes hold
aloof, helping, it is true, with money and sympathy, but sending their
children to be educated across the border. Who shall blame them for not
offering up their own boys and girls as _corpora vilia_? Yet, until the
schools can offer something to such pupils as well, they must remain
one-sided.
Still, with all its flaws, and they are not a few, the system has
something to teach England. The love of knowledge, noted even in the
days of darkness, the willingness to make sacrifices, evinced by gifts
of land and money to new schools, the keen interest in their welfare
felt by all grades of the community, and the absence of that class
jealousy which tends to check the spread of popular education in
England—all these we should do well to note, and copy if we can. Then we
may be prepared to thank Wales for teaching us both what to do and what
to avoid.