WALES.
Of the four quarters of the United Kingdom, Wales has made the most rapid progress. In the middle of the 19th cen tury her elementary education had probably the worst equipment; her secondary schools were inadequate and inefficient ; while in higher edu cation she possessed only the recent foundation of Lampeter, which was then little more than a theological college.
The Welsh elementary schools have always been under the administra tion of the English Board, and, considering the inaccessibility of the wilder parts of the coun try, have made at least a proportionate progress. Nowhere has more difficulty arisen in the ad ministration of the Education Act of 1902, and a section in the Bill of 1906 provided for the es tablishment of a separate Education Department for Wales. Teachers and schools probably suffered to some extent, but the future progress of Welsh education is in any case assured. Wales has the educational advantage of being a bilingual country to a greater extent even than Ireland, and this has long been fully recognized in her schools.
Wales, while sharing in the educational tnquiries and reforms of England, made in 1889 an enormous step in advance. In that year she obtained the Welsh Intermediate Education Act, under which small joint educa tion committees were established in all the coun ties and county boroughs, and by this means an admirable system of county secondary schools for boys and girls was established. In
1897 a Central Welsh Board was created to provide for examination and inspection of the different schools which had been created and organized out of the rates and grants placed at the disposal of the joint education committees.
In university teaching Wales in a single generation has rivaled the provision of Scotland. A training college was founded in 1862, and the first university, college at Aberystwyth in 1872. In 1883-84 university col leges were established at Cardiff and Bangor, and the annual grant they received from gov ernment was before long extended to Aberyst wyth. In 1893 they were incorporated in the University of Wales, which has since been ex tended so as to include Lampeter, which, how ever, has the power of giving separate degrees. Women have been admitted from the beginning to the Welsh university colleges and the uni versity.