Aberdare Boys Grammar School

Exemption from the Matriculation examination required a university applicant to pass a specified number of subjects, at specified levels of The School Certificate (later GCE, later still GCSE and GCE), and to include certain named subjects, e.g. mathematics, English and a modern foreign language. During, or before, registration the university applicant would have to furnish evidence that he or she had these qualifications. For many years the University of Wales organised the matriculation for all of its constituent colleges: Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea. The school at Aberdare prepared pupils for examinations of the Central Welsh Board (CWB), and after 1951 for the Welsh Joint Education Committee, (WJEC). (In the early days of the school’s existence there is evidence that a few students sat examinations of other examination boards.) Nowadays the matriculation procedure is less prominent as information about examination passes is transmitted electronically to universities in advance of the results day.

The certificate shown above turned up on the Internet auction site, eBay. It belonged to John Trevor Jones, of Clive Street, Trecynon. He attended Park School, and transferred to the County School in 1926, leaving in 1932. After school he went to U.C.W. Aberystwyth.

The signatory, D. Brynmor Anthony (born Kidwelly, 1886) was, from February 1921, Registrar of the University of Wales. In 1931 he added to his responsibilities the post of acting secretary of the new Welsh National School of Medicine, which evolved in that year from the original Medical School, founded in 1893, but which offered only preclinical studies to its students. Brynmor Anthony was a distinguished linguist and was honoured by the French Government on several occasions for services to France and the French Government. In 1946, he moved from the University of Wales Registry to the CWB as Chief Inspector. There is a comprehensive biography of D.B. Anthony in the Welsh Biography Online here.