Welsh Journals

SOCIAL MOBILITY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION IN GLAMORGAN, 1870-1914. by Professor Gordon Roderick, PhD On 21 May 1894 a great crowd assembled in a field on the outskirts of Bridgend. The object of their attention was a 'muddy building site surrounded by farm land and a large white marble stone as yet hidden from sight' Arthur Williams, Liberal MP for South Glamorgan, made a speech after which the earl of Dunraven, the local magnate and landowner, formally laid the stone on which was inscribed 'Bridgend Intermediate School'. The Band of the Rifle Volunteers then led a large procession through streets thronged with excited crowds to the Town Hall where lunch was laid on for a gathering of local notables. Lord Dunraven, who contributed an acre of land for the school site, was to say on a later occasion that he hoped that 'under Providence, this school may be of inestimable benefit to the people of this locality, of this country, and of this Principality'2. His words were prophetic, for the establishment of schools such as that of Bridgend, initially known as intermediate schools and later as county schools, was not only a turning point in the educational development of Wales, but was also instrumental in bringing about far- reaching changes in Welsh society. Scenes such as those witnessed at Bridgend were repeated throughout Wales following the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889. This measure empowered county councils and county borough councils to set up joint education committees with a responsibility to promote secondary education by establishing intermediate schools financed from rates and matching Treasury grants. To appreciate fully the beneficial impact of the Act it is helpful to look back to the investigations carried out by the Schools Inquiry Commission (the Taunton Commission) in the mid- 1860s3. The Commission found that the supply of schools throughout England and Wales was woefully inadequate, the schools being unevenly distributed with regard to the population. It concluded that: in at least two-thirds of the places in England named as towns there W.D.A. Rowland and Cary Archard, From a Far Hill: the History ofBrynteg Comprehensive School (Bridgend, 1987), 7. 2 Ibid., 25. The Commission under baron Taunton was given the wide remit of studying all the schools not examined by previous commissions, namely, the Clarendon Commission which had looked at the 'nine great public schools' of England, and the Newcastle Commission which had exam- ined the elementary schools.