CHAPTER XI

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.