Victorian Llanfyllin - a bad school report,1895

Llanfyllin and district
Victorian school days

	This little school is backward !
Drawing by Rob Davies	Almost all of the early schools had a lot of problems to deal with, and small schools in the hills had more than most. The problems included poor attendance, bad weather, illness, and shortage of money for equipment. But most schools still did the best they could, and usually got quite good reports from the School Inspectors. Hirnant School wasn't doing very well in 1895, though. Part of the Inspector's official report from the Log Book is shown here...

1st July
1895

"This little school, I regret to have to report, is in a backward condition. The Reading in the first and second standards and the Spelling in the second standard were weak; the Arithmetic in the first standard was practically a failure: some of the children in it could not take the sums down, and others attempted to do the sums by means of strokes on their slates. Out of 19 examined in the whole school in Arithmetic only two passed well, seven just barely passed, and ten failed, and out of these ten, six had no sums right".

At least the Inspector was able to check on 19 children at the school. In 1891 the report said "This school, always small, is now so reduced in numbers by measles and influenza that there are hardly any children to examine".
It might have been better if there were fewer children in school when the Inspector visited Hirnant in 1895 !

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