Cylchgronau Cymru

NARBERTH COUNTY INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL: 1895-1924 ONE evening early in March, 1890, a public meeting was held at Narberth Board School. The chair was occupied by Mr. R. Ward, J.P. of Sodstone, the local County Councillor, and a number of gentlemen prominent in public life were present, including the Rev. Sirhowy Jones, an Independent minister, the Rev. Ben Thomas, a Baptist minister, the Rev. A. N. F. Keogh, Rector of Ludchurch, Mr. R. H. Buckley, J.P., Chairman of the Board of Guardians, Dr. H. P. Price, and Mr. R. G. Lewis of Llawhaden. All spoke in favour of a motion which was carried unanimously, viz., That this meeting of the inhabitants of the town and district of Narberth rejoice in the recent legislation on the intermediate question and respectfully calls the attention of the Pembrokeshire Joint Committee to the facilities offered by the town of Narberth as the centre of a large, influential and important district, for the establishment of one of the county intermediate schools.1 The 'recent legislation' referred to in this resolution was the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889 and it was not without significance for Narberth that the Chairman of the Joint Education Committee was the Rev. Lewis James of Brynbank, Lampeter Velfrey. When the foundation stone of the Narberth County Intermediate School was laid in September, 1895, the Rev. Lewis James presided, and pointed out that the new school would give instruction in English, Mathematics, Modern Languages, Classics, Elementary Science, and Scripture, and that it would be largely technical in character and would give prominence to agricultural education. Mr. Ward, one of the school's earliest benefactors, underlined the need for something more than elementary education so that the country could compete more effectively in dairy and agricultural production as well as in heavy industry against the competing nations of Western Europe and America.2 Underlying the establishment of the new Intermediate schools was, indeed, something more than a belated attempt to provide improved educational opportunity for middle-class children; there was also involved a deliberate strategy to offset increasing foreign competition in industry and commerce. Not that the new schools were ventured upon without long and painstaking discussion and thought. In planning and development they raised issues which exercised the Victorians in their day no less than many of precisely the same issues remain a matter of debate in ours. Let us turn for a moment to some of these background questions. For example, what should secondary schools teach? For whom should they be provided? Which would be preferable, a relatively small number of large schools or a large number of small schools? Until the middle of the nineteenth century both the major English public schools and the endowed day and boarding grammar schools in England and Wales had confined their teaching essentially to the classics and mathematics. A boy at Haverfordwest Grammar School a little over a century ago would have spent an