Abstract
Throughout the centuries, a sense of national identity in Wales has manifested itself in a variety of ways - aspirations to statehood, a unique language, cultural distinctiveness, religious affiliation, sporting achievement and, most recently, political devolution. Educational institutions in myriad forms have reflected aspects of these manifestations and themselves shed some light on their nature. In turn, the historiography of education in Wales is itself a product of national, educational, social and scholarly preoccupations which both reflect the ideas and priorities of the time and shed some light on their nature and significance. It is the purpose of this article to make a preliminary exploration into some of these interactions and, in so doing, provide an introduction to some of the major secondary sources of information on Welsh education. To this end, the article outlines in very general terms outstanding landmarks in those elements of Welsh education since the early modern period which might be claimed to be distinctive and the way in which the historiography reflects and reinforces such claims. Although the article sketches the picture in the centuries from the Tudors to industrialisation, its main thrust, reflecting the historiography, is on the period since the nineteenth century when the England/Wales state took over the financing of the education of its citizens to an ever increasing extent. Within this period, there is particular emphasis on such episodes as the 'Treason of the Blue Books' in 1847, the Welsh Intermediate Education Act of 1889, the 'Welsh Revolt' following the Education Act of 1902 and the more subtle but steady devolutionary episodes evident in the twentieth century, culminating in the creation of the National Assembly for Wales in 1999. All have generated a range of secondary works which itself reflects the priorities of historians in a scholarly environment which, since the 1960s, has seen changes in approach to the study of history which have allowed historians of Welsh education to take their place in the mainstream of historical studies.