Wales

Ok, who still makes Welsh cakes and still eats .bara brith ? Not forgetting cawl

Daphne, this is an enjoyable thread for those who love Wales, live or have lived in Wales, enjoy discussing it's customs, it's beauty , it's ups and downs, it is not a political thread with googled statistics

Sparkly Grandma Please could you give me some links to evidence of your claim. I did some research yesterday and it seemed that Wales was funded in exactly the same way as England - in other words, according to a formula. Money was handed over to authorities, who made their own decisions over education.

As I explained, this accounts for the reason that there are so many differences between English authorities, even to this day. It wasn't until the 1988 Education Act and then Blair that decisions were made by central government and, even then, it was very limited compared with what Gove did.

The Welsh Assembly has been responsible for education and allocation of money in Wales since devolution.

Wales receives a block grant from Westminster for all of its devolved responsibilities, just as Scotland does. You can argue until the cows come home whether the block grant and formula are fair. The fact is that applies to many authoritoes in England too.

annie Thank you for yet another spiteful comment. Shame, really, because I was going to argue the case that the formula isn't fair. I won't bother now, because apparently I know nothing.

I have a photo of the school I attended dated 1901, but I'm not sure what that proves.

Brecon grammer school - very rural area - was certaintly up and running in 1922

I have a photograph of Quakers Yard grammer school , 1924

I agree Daphne, you are no expert on Wales, it's education system over several centuries, it's health service , it's politics

We will have to agree to disagree daphnedill, prior to WWII, the UK govt did control funding and decisions about secondary education in Wales.

I am no expert on funding for Wales nor on decisions made by local authorities.

AFAIK Welsh authorities have been free to make local decisions within budget constraints as English ones have. That's why, even today, there are huge differences between different local authorities.

The Westminster government has never been able to make decisions about the organisation of schools and how authorities spent their money, apart from certain statutory responsibilities. That's why all the governments over the last couple of decades have sought to undermine local authorities.

Most of the existing grammar schools in England and Wales were founded before 1944, often by private individuals. My guess is that there were few individuals who wanted to set up grammar schools in Wales. The fact that Wales is so rural meant that selection wouldn't make sense.

Schools are funded by a complicated formula, based on the age and number of pupils. Authorities are then given the money in the form of a block grant, which they can spend as they wish. The per pupil funding gap between schools in Wales and England in 2010 stood at £604. However, that's an average. There are many English authorities which receive less than the Welsh average.

It is nothing to do with the UK government deciding that the Welsh didn't need secondary education. The Welsh authorities decided that for themselves.

daphnedill It could be that the UK govt decided that the Welsh did not 'need' secondary education paid for by the state.

In Northern Ireland for example, Roman Catholics could not access state paid for secondary education until 1947.

The UK govt decided that.

And the money from Westminster

The Welsh counties have been the local education authorities since 1902, the same as England.

Welsh education certainly was run by Westminster until the end of the nineteenth century and the effects possibly took some time to wear off.

Until 1870 it wasn't compulsory to go to school. Nearly all primary schools were founded by one of the churches and became National Schools (Anglican) or British Schools (Non-conformist). Education became compulsory in 1870, but wasn't strictly enforced and the leaving age was 10 (that's not a typo).

The School Board for England and Wales was dominated by Anglicans. Apparently, there were three times more Anglican schools in Wales than Non-conformist. Understandably, some non-conformists refused to send their children to their local school, if it wasn't a British school.

Even in 1947, I think I remember reading that there was a lower percentage of post-elementary schools in Wales than there was in England. By that time schools were run by local authorities, so the Welsh local authorities must have decided (for whatever reason) that they didn't need more higher elementary or grammar schools.

So there was no South Glamorgan/Caerphilly etc? I can hardly believe the whole of Wales was one local authority. There have always been local councils all over Britain and they had the purse strings for employing and paying teachers. Westminster was the overall Govt for Britain but for instance when I was first looking for a job I applied to local County Councils - in my case London and Middlesex. I taught first in SW Middx Education area and that authority paid me.

There was only one uk authority for Wales, England

I think that is very unlikely as that sort of thing did not happen in other UK authorities. I think there were far too many Welsh girls training as teachers and most wanted to go back to teach. My friend told me that they only wanted teachers with some experience and in the 60s there was a great shortage of teachers across the UK but too many in Wales.

Education was run from Westminster , another example of English oppression of Wales , they ordered we had to jump.

I have no idea Annie but from what I understood it was commonplace and she knew a number of friends in the same position.
Even when I moved to Wales in the early 90s it was not easy to get jobs and they had a bit of a difficult way of recruiting - LA had general interviews from which they selected teachers to go on the 'list' and head teachers needing staff had to choose someone from the list!

No, teaching and nursing weren't considered menial occupations. They were the pinnacle to which girls (in England and Wales)could aspire. Another route was working for the GPO. There was a career path for employees. They took exams, which were published in the London Gazette. Girls in big cities could become secretaries, but few of them became doctors, senior managers, accountants,lawyers,etc.

JessM Before the 1944 Education Act was enacted in 1947, there were grammar schools, which had exam entrance, but they weren't free, unless the pupil won a scholarship. Both my parents passed the entrance exam. My Mum won a scholarship, but my father didn't, so his parents had to pay. Wealthier parents of bright but not outstanding children objected to the 1944 Act, because their children were pushed out of grammar school places. The choice was a secondary modern or private school. It was these parents, who later pushed for comprehensive schools. One of the very first comprehensives was in Anglesey.

The reason that my family ended up in Hertfordshire was that my Dad became a teacher and could only get a job in England. This was 1954. He was offered several. All in the new towns around London. Although they always wanted to, my parents never got back to Wales. We have and partly for them.

Welshwife, was this an order from Westminster?

Later in the sixties Welsh teachers could not get a job in Wales unless they had taught in England a few years. My friend was caught with that but as it happened when her boyfriend finished Uni he got a job in England too so they married and lived all their working lives in England.

Jalima, in the 1960s Welsh was routinely spoken in the Teachers' Centre in Birmingham. Welsh teachers couldn't immediately find jobs back home so taught for at least a few years in a city finding it hard to recruit. Some stayed and ended up in headships and other senior posts. Meanwhile Education staff in Warley (later Sandwell) had annual trips to Ireland to recruit teachers.

My mother won a scholarship and went to a girls grammar school in London in 1918. She did a school leaving Cert. although she left before she was 15 - she was the eldest of 7 so needed to go to work rather than train as a couture dressmaker or train for the Post Office as the school suggested. She had a couple of jobs and always ended up in a supervisory role. She didn't get married till she was almost 30 so worked for about 15 years. She and my father knew each other all their lives and went to school with each other's siblings. They moved out of London to what was then the country before they had me! They were the first of either family to buy their own house during the war. My father was in a reserved occupation and worked at least twelve hours a day. They managed to save more than half the cost of a house in a couple of years and so bought one. Needless to say the younger siblings had a bit of an easier life when they were growing up.

So teaching and nursing were menial occupations ? What did English girls do?

The 1944 Butler Act introduced free, universal, secondary education and the tripartite system with grammar, technical and sec modern.
There were some girls high schools before then, but they would not have been available to all.
My MIL who was born in the Midlands in 1930s passed the 11+ nut was not told, or sent to the grammar in the 1940s. Possibly because the uniform was judged too expensive. (or because she was a girl, and what was the point)
She eventually became a ward sister in a London teaching hospital, despite a very poor sec mod education staffed by teachers brought out of retirement, due to the shortage of younger ones who were doing war work.
My mother - just a few years older and born into a Welsh family where education was more highly valued - went to the girls High School in Swansea and on to Swansea Training College to become a primary teacher. Her exceptionally bright female cousin became a highly regarded professor in a London university.
I remember my mother saying that during the war she only had one thing to wear, which was her school gym slip, which was worn every day of the year.