Circulating Schools
Griffith Jones of Penboyr in
Dyfed founded the Circulating School movement in Wales as a way
of reaching a greater number of children. While curate at Laugharne
he became a teacher at the SPCK school there and continued his
involvement in education when made rector of Llanddowror. He
established a school in the village in 1731, and then began to
develop his ideas of establishing further small village schools
to be run by itinerant teachers who would spend three months
establishing the school, and then move on.
The idea proved hugely successful and
it has been estimated that around 3,500 schools had been set
up by the time of Griffith Jones' death in 1761. Again, teaching
was mainly basic literacy through religious texts provided by
the SPCK and charitable funds were spent on the teaching and
not on buildings. Schools were run in barns and storehouses and,
in one case, a windmill. By the end of the century problems with
securing adequate charitable funding caused the movement to peter
out, but not before an appetite for learning had been created.
Sunday Schools
Despite the success of these
measures, many parts of Wales were not reached by them or were
visited by a circulating school which lasted only only a few
months before the teacher moved on..
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