Wales. By this time there were four Training Colleges in existence, as well as the University College at Aberystwyth, which had been opened in 1872, and which was supported entirely by voluntary subscriptions. This Committee suggested that two additional Colleges should be opened, one in North Wales and the other in South. In this way Cardiff University College was opened in 1883 and Bangor in 1884, and each of the two (and eventually Aberystwyth as well) received a Government grant of £4,000 per annum. These three Colleges at first prepared their students for the examinations of London University, but very largely as a result of the labours of Principal John Viriamu Jones of Cardiff, they were united by royal charter in 1893 to form the University of Wales, with powers to confer its own degrees. When Swansea University College was opened in 1920, it naturally took its place within the University with the other three.
The main problem in the early years, however, was to find the necessary students for these Colleges. Obviously pupils could not in general enter them direct from the elementary schools; some form of intermediate" education was necessary, between the elementary schools and the Colleges. Lord Aberdare's Committee realised this, and recommended that Intermediate Schools should be built through- out the country, supported in the main out of the local rates and by Government grants. This proposal was very novel at that time, for though the state had supported elementary education since 1833, it had done nothing for secondary education. The recommendation was nevertheless accepted, and the Welsh Intermediate and Technical Education Act was passed in 1889. The newly-created County Councils and County Borough Councils were given the right to levy a halfpenny rate, and the Government promised to help at the rate of a pound for every pound raised in this way and through voluntary subscriptions. The result was that in a very short time, many Intermediate Schools or County Schools (as they were usually known) were built in most of the market towns of Wales; the first was opened in Caernarvon in 1894.
The need was soon felt of a common standard by which their work could be tested, some organisation which would examine the work of the pupils and inspect the life of the schools. For this reason, the Central Welsh Board was created in 1896 to be responsible for examining and inspecting the County Schools of Wales established under the Act of 1889, and later for examining most of the Secondary Schools set up under the Act of 1902. By the end of the nineteenth century, therefore, Wales had its own system of secondary education, and it had in the Central Welsh Board a body which sought to set a common standard for these young schools.
