Éducation au pays de Galles

This article provides an overview of education in Wales from early childhood to university and adult skills. Largely state funded and free-at-the-point-of-use at a primary and secondary level, education is compulsory for children in Wales aged five to sixteen years old. It differs to some extent in structure and content to other parts of the United Kingdom, in the later case particularly in relation to the teaching of the Welsh language. State funded nursery education is typically offered from age three. Children usually enter fulltime primary school at age four, enter secondary school at age eleven and take their GCSEs at age 16. After that, young people have the option of staying at school to study A-levels or enrolling in further education. From the age of 18, they might enroll at university. The development of education in Wales was historically closely linked to its development in England. Previously an elite concern, schooling became accessible to a growing segment of the population between the 16th and 19th centuries. In the late 1800s, compulsory education was introduced for young children before being expanded into adolescence over the following decades. At the end of the 20th century, education was mostly placed under the control of the devolved Welsh Government. Very few people in England and Wales received any formal education in the Middle Ages with only a small number of schools catering largely for boys from landowning families. Various new grammar schools were established in the 16th century to educate boys of the growing merchant classes. In the 17th century, the short-lived republican Commonwealth of England attempted to spread access to education through "free schools", sixty of which were set up in Wales. Though little information remains about these institutions and they disappeared after the Stuart Restoration, they represent an early experiment in providing education to a larger proportion of the population. In the early 1670s, clergyman Thomas Gouge began to preach in Wales, by 1675 he had established 87 schools which were attended by a total of 2225 children.