Llanfyllin and district
Victorian school days
  The five who turned up for every lesson !  
 

As you can see from many other pages on this website, getting children to come to school regularly was a big problem in the Victorian years.
Nowadays prizes are often given to children who do well at school, but some schools used to have to offer prizes just for turning up for lessons ! The Log Book entry shown below is from Llangynog School in 1897...

  
12th February
1897
 School diary entry "On Monday evening the School Concert was held. The Rev.W.L.Evans, Chairman of the Board presided. Prizes were distributed to 22 boys and 20 girls who made more than 370 attendances during the last year. Extra prizes were awarded to 5 scholars who were present each time the school was opened".
  The number of attendances were always counted separately for the morning and afternoon classes, because many children living near the school would go home for dinner and not come back in the afternoon !
Another diary entry from Llangynog School in 1896 is a good reminder of how the early schools had to make do with very poorly equipped classrooms. This tells of an official visitor to the school who thought that using broken pieces of slate for writing on was not a good idea...		  
6th November
1896
 School diary entry
 

This Log Book entry reads -
"He recommended that only framed slates be used and that only whole ones be used, all pieces to be discarded."...
Broken slates with sharp edges were definitely not a good idea for children. Schools have come a long way since then !

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