Transcript from The Aberdare Leader, June 23, 1934.
Scholarship Results, 1934
This is the school entrance examination list for 1934 transcribed from The Aberdare Leader. The names are in rank order of marks obtained in the examination; the maximum mark was 300. The school took in two Forms of about 30 pupils each, so approximately the first sixty boys would have been offered a place at the school.
This list probably does not tell us exactly who started at the County School that year. Account should be taken of the reluctance of a small number of parents to allow their sons to move up to the County School, as fees would be payable* — unless a full fee exemption scholarship was awarded. Also, some families would prefer their sons to enter employment so that an additional wage for the home was acquired. Added to which some families moved away over the summer, or in rare cases a boy might wish to join a sibling at a Secondary Modern School. There would also be a small number of transfers to the school from other districts.
Consequently, this results page provides a good, but not definitive, list of the boys entering the school in September 1934.
One anomaly in the list is the small number of boys coming from the Town Church (National) School—just two. However, there are six boys in this list, of the top eighty, coming from the Mardy House (Church) Secondary School. Presumably most of these pupils would have attended the Town Church School previously.
Some of these boys can be seen in a Form 3 class photograph here.
*See the 1933 Scholarship Results page for details of the means-tested
fees.