Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

EDUCATION IN INDUSTRIAL WALES, 1700-1900: A STUDY OF THE WORKS SCHOOLS SYSTEM. By Leslie Wynne Evans. Avalon Books, Cardiff, 1971. Pp. viii, 362. £ 3.75. The earliest works schools in Wales, the Tintern Wireworks school of the 1630s and the Mine Adventurers' schools at Esgair Hir and Neath in the 1700s, were products of Puritan zeal and prefigured the Charity School movement. But the real heyday of the works schools came later, between about 1810 and 1870. Their rise, of course, coincided with the industrial expansion of south Wales; their decline, with the development of a state system of elementary education-although in a majority of cases this meant simply the transfer of buildings, teachers, and pupils to the new school boards. Dr. Wynne Evans has charted the fortunes of these schools with meticulous care and with the aid of many tables and maps. He has amassed a great deal of valuable information (although his mode of reference to Parliamentary Papers does not always make it easy to locate a source, while he has a worrying reluctance to indicate his omissions in direct quotations). Unfortunately, his preoccupation with the detailed underpinning of his statistics and the mode of presentation he has chosen make it difficult to form a general picture of educational activity at different points in time; while his comments about the functioning of the schools in the community at large are tantalisingly infrequent. His material throws up a number of interesting points which he does not develop. The bulk of the book is devoted to chronological accounts of schools grouped by industry-colliery schools, ironworks schools and so on. This is justifiable to the extent that these industries and the schools associated with them developed at somewhat different times: ironworks schools were among the earliest, and colliery schools were among the latest, to be founded. But, beyond this, there appear no special characteristics of the schools which were functions of association with particular industries. The main distinctions are to be made between the works schools and other elementary schools, as Dr. Wynne Evans himself points out in chapter XI. Works schools tended to be better built, equipped, and staffed, with wider curricula and especially well-organised infant and evening classes. The main reason for this was finance. In a number of places the works proprietors actually provided the buildings; and the income of most of the schools came from a levy made by the company on all workmen's wages, whether or not they had children. Many of the schools, therefore, had no need to apply for government grants, although a number of them chose to do so. Although works schools began to proliferate from 1810 onwards, there was a sharp crescendo in the years immediately after 1840. Dr. Wynne Evans is hesitant about the reasons for this; but it does seem plausible, on the evidence he offers, to interpret it as a direct response to the troubles of the preceding decades, the industrial disputes of the early years of the century and the political disturbances of the 1830s. As one of the early biographers of Sir Thomas Phillips put it, Sir Thomas was conscious of 'a great and pressing need for an elementary system of popular education as exhibited by the recent outrages' and around his colliery at Court-y-bella he built not only a school but also a church, a lending library, and a