from school while it was being given. Soon after 1870, therefore, hundreds of Board Schools were built in Wales. Previously, the state had been content to assist voluntary bodies to build schools; now it took the initiative to have schools built itself.
The Act of 1870 also gave the School Boards the power to make bye-laws making attendance at school compulsory between the ages of five and thirteen. Some of them took advantage of this but many did not, and those who did allowed so many exceptions that very little improvement occurred. In 1880, however, another Act was passed which made it necessary for all children to attend school until they were thirteen, and Attendance Officers were appointed to see that it was enforced.
Eleven years later, school fees were abolished. All this time, pupils attending school, whether National, British or Board Schools, had been obliged to pay fees, usually 2d. or 3d. a week, and in addition they had to buy their own books and often pay for the school fires. In the middle of the last century, when wages were so low, this was a great burden on parents, and explains in part why the attendance of their children was so irregular and so short. In 1891, however, all this was changed; elementary education was now free, and this, together with the activities of the "Boardman" or the "whipper-in" (the Atten- dance Officer), led to more regular attendance on the part of the pupils, and to a greater readiness on the part of the parents to send their children to school.
Wales was now provided with a system of elementary schools which covered the whole country. But though these schools did much to instruct their pupils, they nearly killed the native language, for Lowe's Code was still in force and most Welshmen still sent their children to school to learn English; the language, the literature, the history and the geography of Wales were almost completely ignored. "A rule made that no Welsh is allowed to be spoken during school hours," wrote the Head Teacher of Llanfrothen in 1870, and a little earlier he recorded that "the fines for speaking Welsh in the evening school for the winter session amount to 1s. 2d., d. being paid by the scholar who had the Welsh Not at dismission each evening."
A number of persons challenged this state of affairs. One of them was Professor Thomas Powell of Cardiff, who argued that Welsh should be used as a medium of instruction in Welsh schools, that it should be taught for its own sake, and that it should be recognised as a "specific subject"; another was Dan Isaac Davies; and a third was O. M. Edwards, later Sir Owen Edwards. Dan Isaac Davies and "O.M." were ardent Welshmen, both were Inspectors of Schools at different times, and both did much for the Welsh language and for Welsh culture in general, the former by his work as an Inspector of Schools in South Wales, the latter by his delightful books and by his later work as Chief Inspector. Reference should also be made to Thomas Darlington, an Englishman who had learnt Welsh, who did similar work as an Inspector of Schools in North Wales.
