Wales Feed

My Search for an A*

2016-02-09T16:15:12+00:00

Walking into a classroom to film the show made me feel physically sick - it was like I had school PTSD. My school days were a miserable blur spent in the desolate no man's land between being a cool kid and being a geek. I wasn't anywhere near slick enough to be one of the cool kids, but got too many Bs and Cs to be initiated into the secret society of the geek illuminati, which convened in the far corner of the library every lunchtime. Now I've made a career out of trying to be funny and clever - a professionally geeky cool kid.

I was smart enough to get better grades but it takes a lot to keep me interested in something and not many of the teachers could. There's one exception I remember: my Geography teacher, Mr Freem, was so passionate about his subject that you couldn't ignore him. He lived and breathed it - he was always turning up with climbing gear and hiking boots. Mr Freem didn't teach Geography, he was Geography. I don't envy a man whose job it is to make a teenage me interested in soil erosion, but he somehow managed to pull it off. So at school when I could choose between doing Geography or History at GCSE, it was no contest.

I got a second chance last year to give GCSE History a go. I was lucky that History seems to be less boring than when I was at school. All I remember is loads of stories about Kings, Queens and Empire - basically the talking points for the Dad’s Army lot. When this is what we're taught, is it any surprise we treat it like an Internet browser and 'delete history'?

The History GCSE I did was less monarchist and more internationalist: the revision notes I looked at (for about an hour in total) were on China, Russia and the US. It's almost as if they were trying to teach me about the modern world and Britain's place in it.

Living and breathing something - like Mr Freem did with Geography - is the only way I've ever known to learn. It's difficult to live and breathe Queen Victoria invading half the world because, well, she could. But I used to work in Shanghai, I studied in Boston and I went to Moscow during the filming of the show - so I knew a bit about the history syllabus. How many kids who hate school would love it if there were fewer dusty textbooks and more exotic school trips? This is the 'cultural capital' they're talking about when working out why some kids have such an easy time absorbing education, getting a career, winning at life.

Teachers realise how tough it is - I was shocked (in a good way) at how militant the teachers are now in predicting pupils' grades, planning their learning and making sure they do the best they can. The session we had with the deputy head teacher, Mrs Ford, was like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan. Part of me thought, 'this is school, not the SAS', but she reminded me that GCSEs are 'gateway qualifications'. If the gate is locked shut, it's not easy to sneak through the gaps in the bars.

I wish I'd given up trying to be one of the cool kids at school and committed to geekery. The less fun you have at school, the more fun you have after you leave. Bill Gates might have been bullied at break time, but if anyone tries to steal his (billions of) lunch money now, he can probably call an airstrike - from his limo.

See how Omar gets on in Search for A*, tonight at 10.40pm BBC One Wales.

Can't Read, Can't Do My Sums!

2015-03-17T13:28:37+00:00

A question for you… Is it possible for someone who’s gone through the Welsh education system to be unable to tell the time?

It’s a skill I’m working on with my 6 year old. We’ve not got to grips with the concept of how many minutes ‘to the hour’, but he can read an analogue clock and write down the numerical representation. I am playing quite an active role as a parent and am fortunate to consider myself confident when it comes to numbers. But even for those children without pro-active family members to help-out, surely after 10 plus years at school they should be able to tell the time?

WIWO presenter Rachel Treadaway-Williams helps her 6 year old with his homework

Not so for Nick Bush from New Tredegar. 23 years old and totally dependent on his friends to decipher a train timetable. Nick attended school, but when it comes to his mathematical ability he’s not the exception. More than half of the Welsh adult population have maths skills of an average 11 year old or lower.

It’s this void in basic skills that’s been Wales’ undoing in the educational PISA tests and rather than improve, we’ve slipped down the rankings following successive assessments. It was this political bombshell that prompted amongst other changes the introduction of the Literacy & Numeracy Framework (LNF). This was hailed as THE solution to our literacy & numeracy woes but on talking to those who are actually responsible for delivering it - teachers - the way it was implemented does not appear to have been A*. Rather it was landed on an already overloaded workforce without enough support, a viewpoint reflected by Estyn following their early evaluation of the LNF published in January 2015. Also a viewpoint neatly illustrated by Clair Sweet, the Maths lead, at Tylorstown Primary School who told me that the Welsh Government had only just posted examples on their Learning Wales website of how teachers might make it work in practice. This was in February 2015. The Literacy & Numeracy was made statutory for schools in September 2013. You do the maths.

Interestingly when I questioned the Minister for Education, Huw Lewis AM, about this very fact, he claimed to know nothing of it, instead wanting to flag up the NEW online work that his department were engaged in.

Clair Sweet at Tylorstown Primary also made another interesting point. She felt that the principle of embedding literacy and numeracy skills in all teaching was a good one, but didn’t feel the need for yet another formal initiative with all its red tape and paperwork. Instead, she felt it was something that good teachers would have been doing anyway. Which raises another point: are we fussy enough about who is teaching our children? I have to be careful what I say here as the daughter of two teachers; so let me re-phrase that. Is the teaching profession regarded highly enough that it attracts the best calibre candidates? In the educational powerhouse of China the President recently urged that teaching become the most respected job in the country.

It’s clearly a topic that’s been on the Education Minister’s mind and he’s welcomed the various expert reports recently published calling for a boost in the status, autonomy, qualifications and professional development of teachers. He’s recently raised the GCSE entry requirement in Maths & English for Primary School teachers from 2C’s to 2B’s. He told me we can’t just magic up mathematics specialists but on the other hand, I wonder, could he not be moving further and faster to raise this particular bar and send out a message that we now want the best to be our teachers?

Week In Week Out: Can't Read, Can't Do My Sums! is on BBC One Wales, Tuesday 17 March at 10.40pm.

The School of hard rocks

2013-11-27T15:54:39+00:00

Education had always been vitally important to Wales and the Welsh. In the 19^thand early 20th century, when mining was a major employer in the country, it was the ambition of almost every collier who ever went underground to give their sons a better way of life, away from the mines.

The key to what the miners regarded as a better life was education. Education could provide them with a decent job, above ground with white collars and clean finger nails. It was part of the dream, part of the Welsh cultural identity.

Welsh miners at Tylorstown Pit, Rhondda in 1943

Education was also provided within the mining industry, designed for those men in the industry who wanted to get on and succeed in their chosen career. The means to achieve this was through the School of Mines.

The School of Mines was opened in 1913 in what had been the home of mine owner Francis Crawshay at Trefforest just outside Pontypridd.

The School of Mines was the brainchild of some of the largest coal owners in the region and was funded by the levy of one tenth of a penny on every ton of coal that was produced from the coalfield.

The first intake of students consisted of 17 miners who were studying for a diploma and also included three men from China.

The school grew rapidly from that humble beginning but with the onset of the Depression and the decline in world trade, its future was looking rather bleak until it was taken over by the old Glamorgan County Council.

In 1949, after the nationalisation of the coal mines, the school became Glamorgan Technical College, developing and changing again in 1958 when it became the Glamorgan College of Technology.

By this time it was offering a wide range of full and part-time courses in science and technology. In 1967 the college made history by offering the first-ever Welsh for adults course.

In 1970 the college became Glamorgan Polytechnic, merging with the old teacher training college at Barry, and five years later was designated as the Polytechnic of Wales.

It was awarded university status in 1992 and, despite having no links with the University of Wales, was finally able to award its own degrees.

The first decade of the 21^st century saw steady growth and development at the college which, in 2006, formed what was called a ‘strategic alliance’ with the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.

The arts began to be increasingly important to the college which soon became one of the main centres in Wales for the study of creative writing.

The University of South Wales

Rated as one of the top Welsh institutions for higher education, in 2013 the Polytechnic of Wales merged with University of Wales, Newport, into the University of South Wales.

A year before, it had been awarded the Times Higher Education Award for outstanding student support.

The new university currently offers courses for over 20,000 students, both full and part-time. Notable alumni include the writer Rachel Trezise and politician Kevin Brennan.

Although mining is no longer part of the curriculum, it continues to offer courses that fill a need which is what the place is all about, that and having the ability and the vision to change with the times.

I think the pragmatists and entrepreneurs who created the old School of Mines would be delighted with how their child has grown and developed.

The Welsh Intermediate Education Act, 1889

2013-08-12T14:22:21+00:00

Throughout the 20th century Wales and the Welsh were justifiably proud of the standards of education within the country. And the basis of those high standards was rooted in one piece of legislation that was both startling and seminal: the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889.

The story, however, starts some time before. Compulsory elementary education in Britain had arrived after the passing of John Forster's Education Act in 1870.

This was a revolutionary piece of legislation where, for the first time in British history, education was to be offered to all children, regardless of their economic status or ability.

Of course, it took years to fully implement the terms of the Act – simply getting children, particularly less well-off children, to attend school, when they and their parents had been used to them roaming the streets or providing extra income, was a major problem.

School boards were set up, each of them with the responsibility of first or primary level education for all children. The school leaving age was set at 10 and no-one was to be exempt from school attendance. Truant schools were even established in some areas to cater for those children who had clearly not learned that particular lesson.

By the early 1880s the problems around the provision of elementary education had been, largely, overcome and now it was time for reformers and educationalists to look to the next stage of educating the country.

Pre-dating similar legislation in England by a dozen years, the Welsh Intermediate Education Act was passed on 12 August 1889.

The intention was simple. As the opening paragraph of the Act read: "The purpose of the Act is to make further provision for the intermediate and technical education of the inhabitants of Wales and the county of Monmouth."

The school boards were swept away and joint education committees were established in every Welsh county. It now became their duty to submit to the charity commissioners a scheme for the implementation of intermediate (between primary and further education) and technical education for the people of their areas.

These intermediate schools were designed to cater, mainly, for children of the middle classes who, because of their financial situation and social status, had little or no prospect of moving on to one of the independent public schools.

While the original intention had been to emphasise the technical aspects of education – these were, after all, children who would become the engineers, surveyors, clerks and technicians, not the rulers, of the empire - it did not always quite work out that way.

While many of the intermediate schools did offer good quality technical education, particularly in the mining valleys of east Wales and in places such as Pembroke Dock, where the presence of the admiralty dockyard was an attractive draw, many of them quickly took to copying the curriculum of the long-established public schools. Being able to decline Latin verbs or understand the intricacies of iambic pentameters may have been interesting but it did not guarantee a job when school days were over.

Nevertheless, it was a broad based education that benefited many – and it did help provide Britain with a huge pool of prospective teachers. For large parts of the 20th century no English secondary school was complete without its squad of Welsh teachers, a clear product of the Welsh intermediate school system.

Attendance at the new schools was, of course, voluntary and depended to a large extent on parents being able to afford their contribution or fee. That was a major factor and, unfortunately, many children who would have benefited from attending one of the new intermediate schools was unable to do so simply because their parents could not afford it.

For those children who chose not to move on to intermediate school, the leaving age was raised to 11 (in 1899 it was raised again to 12), pupils remaining at their elementary schools where the curriculum was, supposedly, adapted to cater for their needs. By 1891 such education was being provided free of charge.

Although initially called intermediate schools, due to the emphasis on county-wide provision the new schools soon became known as county schools. Caernarvonshire was the first area to establish such a school, royal assent being given in 1893 and the first intermediate or county school opening in the Caernarvon itself in February 1894.

The new schools were to be funded by a variety of different means. They were partly financed from the rates, partly from fees collected from the pupils and partly from the reorganisation of old endowments that had been given, sometimes centuries before, by wealthy benefactors for the creation of educational establishments.

Some of the long established endowed schools, places such as Brecon, chose not to become part of the new system and were allowed to remain outside the county provision, thus creating the basis of the Welsh public school network. Most, however, chose inclusion.

The county schools continued to offer a valuable service until the 1944 Education Act created the tripartite system of grammar, secondary modern and technical schools. Then the county schools were subsumed into the new range of provision, most of them becoming town grammar schools. Names, however, take a long time to either grow or fade and for many, many years the Welsh grammar schools continued to be known as "county schools".

The Welsh Intermediate Education Act may not have been perfect but it undoubtedly laid the foundation of a revolutionary system of education. It enabled many boys and girls to gain access to an educational experience they would otherwise never have imagined possible. As such, it is something well worth celebrating.

The Treason of the Blue Books

2011-01-21T13:02:02+00:00

In the year 1847 the British government commissioned a report into the state of education in Wales.

Not, in itself, such a momentous event, but when the remit of the report was widened to include a study of the morals of the Welsh people it resulted in a furore that still rumbles on to this very day.

Never can a civil service document have excited such passion as the 1847 Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry into the State of Education in Wales (780kb pdf file).

Blue books

The report, known throughout Wales as the Treason of the Blue Books (all government reports being bound in blue covers), was the result of a motion put forward a year earlier by William Williams, the Welsh MP for Coventry.

He was particularly concerned about the lack of opportunity for poor children in his homeland to gain knowledge of the English language.

Kay-Shuttleworth, secretary to the Council on Education, wrote the terms of reference for the Enquiry in October 1846 and it is clear, right from the beginning, that education was only one of the government's concerns. From the 1820s to the late 1840s Wales had appeared to be the centre of major discontentment.

In the 1820s there had been serious disturbances in Tredegar and Merthyr while in Ceridigion there had been a virtual war over the issue of land enclosures.

From 1839 to the mid 1840s the the Rebecca Riots caused mayhem across mid and south Wales while in 1939 the Chartist march on Newport provoked huge worry and concerns in government circles. Clearly Wales needed to be looked at in some detail and to English officials and civil servants it seemed highly likely that, in the far west, sedition was being planned - in the Welsh language.

There is no doubt that education for poor children in Wales was inadequate - it was also inadequate in England!

There was desperate requirement for quality education for all, education that would, the government felt - long before the commissioners reported back - be predominantly in the English language. And central to this was the need to provide trained teachers.

The trouble came when the extra clause was slipped into the terms of reference, to look at the morals and behaviour of the Welsh people. Quite why this was inserted is not clear - certainly it could have little impact on the educational element of the report who could and would educate their charges efficiently.

Since the predominance of Welsh was one of the main reasons for the report it would have been reasonable to expect the commissioners appointed to oversee the inspections to have a knowledge of the Welsh tongue. Not so. Commissioners Lingen, Simons and Vaughan Johnson spoke no Welsh, were not even educationalists and, importantly, had no experience of the type of fervent non-conformity to be found in Wales.

A number of assistant commissioners were appointed and, by and large, these were the men who toured the schools, towns and villages. The questions they asked, the passages of literature (usually the Bible) they required children to read and the problems that were meant to worked out in the head of each child were framed in English - many of the school teachers had difficulty understanding them, let alone their pupils.

While the non-conformist Sunday Schools - where education was offered in Welsh - were, in the main, praised in the report, the ordinary day schools were certainly not. It was hardly surprising when pupils were expected to work out subtraction problems such as "Take 1799 from 2471," in their heads, with an answer expected within a few seconds. And the condition of the schools themselves was under equal scrutiny:

"The school is held in the mistresses house. I shall never forget the hot sickening smell which struck me on opening the door of that low, dark room in which 30 girls and 20 boys were huddled together."

But there were other issues of concern for the commissioners. They had also been charged with making a study of the moral state of the country and it was a task they were happy to carry out.

When looking at the morals of the nation the Anglican vicars, many of whom felt isolated and apart from the parish in which they lived, were quite content to help out with comments that were little more than a little condemnatory:

It is difficult... to describe in proper terms the state of the common people of Wales in the intercourse of the sexes. I believe the proportion of illegitimate children to the population in Anglesey, with only one exception, and that is also in Wales, exceeds that in any other county in the kingdom."

When the report was published it was scathing and sweeping in its findings. Welsh children were poorly educated, poorly taught and had little or no understanding of the English language. They were ignorant, dirty and badly motivated.

Welsh women were not just lax in their morals - many of them being late home from chapel meetings! - they were also non-conformist lax. To reinforce the power of the established church and to make English the required mode of teaching and expression in schools is the main thrust of the report.

Howls of protest were to be expected - and they duly came. Yet the sobriquet "Treason of the Blue Books" did not come into popular usage until seven years later when Robert Jones Derfel wrote a play called Brad y Llyfrau Gleision, or, in English, The Treason of the Blue Books. Derfel's play opens in Hell where the Devil decides that the Welsh people are too good and are becoming more godly by the hour thanks to the influence of non-conformity. He promptly hatches a plan to bring down this pure and godly people.

The play has shaped the opinions of many, even at this late stage. Many people believe the findings of the enquiry had been more or less decided before the commissioners even began their work. One thing is clear, however. The report gives us a fascinating snapshot of life in the 1840s and for a brief while, at least, it did manage to put education high on the political agenda.

Ultimately, however, the Treason of the Blue Books helped to create a view, a rather smirking and disrespectful view, of Welsh morals that has lasted until the 21st century. Publication of The Report of the Commissioners of Enquiry remains one of the most important moments in Welsh history, and it is questionable whether or not the Welsh language has yet managed to break free from the disapproval of the commissioners.

Phil Carradice investigates how Victorian Wales was scandalised by a government report into its schools and sexual morals in Blue Books and Red Faces on this week's episode of Past Master on Sunday 23 January at 5.30pm.

People's Collection Wales

2010-08-02T08:30:33+00:00

Do you have a story about life in Wales that you want to share with the world?

A new bilingual website, People's Collection Wales launches today and promises new ways to explore, share and engage with Welsh history and culture.

This is an exciting online project that is truly groundbreaking, both in terms of the scope of content and in terms of the ambitious new technologies that it uses.

Welsh museums currently hold around three million artefacts, many of which never see the light of day. It is very early days for People's Collection Wales but already there over 24,000 objects and images online that can be explored by theme, location, date, places and events.

However this is not just a showcase for museum collections - ordinary people's stories and objects are key to the success of the project.

If you register with the People's Collection Wales you can add your own objects to the online collections, curate your own exhibitions, set up groups and map out and share walks in Wales that are rich with cultural and historical references,

People's Collection Wales is has a whole host of new digital technologies. The Labs section allows people to explore Welsh history in both 2D and 3D.

If genealogy is your passion you can create your own family tree with the People's Collection Family Story tool.

On the Historic Maps section of the site you can peel back time and explore the changing landscapes of Wales.

Funded by the Welsh Assembly Government, and developed over two years, the collection has been created with the close involvement of the National Museum Wales, the Welsh Museums Archives and Libraries association (CyMAL), and the National Library of Wales.

Other organisations such as Visit Wales and the Ramblers Association have also been involved - as well as BBC Cymru Wales.

People's Collection Wales will be launched today, Monday 2 August, 2010 at the National Eisteddfod of Wales in Ebbw Vale by Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones.

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Griffith Jones and the Circulating Schools

2010-07-19T07:41:39+00:00

Most people who drive west from Carmarthen on the road to Pembroke pass through the village of Llanddowror, blithely unaware that this quiet backwater spot was, in the early 18th century, the centre of an educational movement that was taking Wales - perhaps even the world - by storm. For this was the base of Griffith Jones and his famous Circulating Schools.

In an age when there was no compulsory education, when the vast majority of working class people could neither read nor write, Griffith Jones created a system of schooling that by the time of his death in 1761 had taught almost 200,000 people to read.

Jones, arguably more than anyone else, helped to make Wales into a literate and literary nation.

Griffith Jones was born in Carmarthenshire in 1683. He was educated at Carmarthen Grammar School and was ordained into the Church of England in 1708. After early curacies in places like Penbryn (Cardiganshire) and Penrieth (Pembrokeshire), he became curate and master of the the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge School in Laugharne.

At one stage he did consider going to India to carry out missionary work for the SPCK, but decided against it and in 1716 became rector at Llanddowror, a post he held for the rest of his life.

As an active member of the SPCK Jones was concerned about the illiteracy of his parishioners and when he began his Circulating Schools in about 1731 he was clear that one of his main aims was salvation. He wanted people to read but only so that they could read the Bible and the catechism of the Church of England.

What Griffith Jones created was a series of schools that would rotate or circulate around the rural parishes of Wales, mainly in the winter months when farm work was relatively slack. The schools would stay in one place for approximately three months and then move on to another location. Dozens of men, women and children flocked to the schools where they used the Bible both as a means of instruction and as a training manual or reading book.

The Bible was used as a means of instruction and as a training manual or reading book

By 1737, just six years after they began, there were 37 such schools in existence with over 2500 pupils or scholars attending the classes. For those who had to work during the day, evening classes were set up and Jones himself, from his base in Llanddowror, was instrumental in training the teachers. He had powerful support from wealthy land owners like Madam Bevan, the woman who continued to run and oversee the schools after his death in April 1761.

The system attracted the interest of reformers and educationalists from all over Britain - and from further afield as well. In 1764 Catherine II of Russia commissioned a report on the activities of the schools, with a view to creating a similar system in her own country.

Griffith Jones was not without critics, however. Many people disagreed with teaching ordinary working men and women to read, particularly reactionary clergymen who felt that their position at the centre of the community was being undermined. Jones was a powerful preacher, someone who would hold the attention of mass gatherings, whether they were in the church or in the open air.

He was called to account on several occasions by his Bishop for ignoring church rules and customs and, particularly, for things like preaching on the weekday! It did not stop Griffith Jones who was determined to proceed with what he felt to be his mission in life.

Although not a reformer himself he can be seen to be something of a forerunner to the Methodist revival that was soon to hit Wales and all of the United Kingdom. By creating a literate and educated populace, men and women with a deep and focussed interest in the gospels and all scriptures, he had certainly paved the way for ministers like John Wesley.

More significantly, Griffith Jones and his Circulating Schools had created a people for whom education was crucially important, not just as a way to better oneself but as an aim and an end in itself. That is a stance that has never left the Welsh people.

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