Catalogue description Records of the Welsh Department and successors

After the records dealing with Wales were passed to the Welsh Office, some were incorporated into its records, while others were neither incorporated nor added to by the Welsh Office. In almost all cases they have been placed in the departmental series in which they originated.

For most of the nineteenth century England and Wales were treated as a single unit for administrative purposes. The pattern had been set by the Wales and Berwick Act 1746 which had enacted that references in Acts of Parliament to England were to include Wales and Berwick. The first purely Welsh agency, the Central Welsh Board, was established in 1896 to inspect the grammar schools set up under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889.

The Welsh Department of the Board of Education was established in 1907 in response to demands for a separate Welsh educational establishment arising from opposition to the Education Act 1902 and from the return of a Liberal government with strong Welsh support in 1905. The new department formed part of the Board of Education, but had its own Permanent Secretary and was responsible for all aspects of elementary and secondary education in Wales. Education at other levels remained the responsibility of specialised branches of the Board. In 1907 a Welsh Inspectorate was formed to inspect Welsh elementary and secondary schools. In addition, under the Welsh Intermediate Education Act 1889, the Central Welsh Board was charged with inspection of secondary schools established under the Act. In 1944 a Central Advisory Council for Education (Wales) was established to advise the Minister of Education on matters pertaining to Welsh education. From 1956 there was a Welsh Department office in Cardiff.

In 1970, following the reorganisation of central government announced in October 1970, responsibilities for primary and secondary education in Wales were transferred to the Welsh Office from the Department of Education and Science in November 1970, with the exception of questions relating to training, qualifications, supply, remuneration and superannuation of teachers which continued to be administered by the Department of Education and Science's Welsh Education Office in London. From April 1978 the Welsh Office took over these functions in relation to further education and to the training and supply of teachers for primary and secondary education in Wales.