ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the number and range of types of schools in Wales, and introducing some of the characteristics of education which are peculiar to the region. It provides further justification for the research by producing some evidence of a specifically “Welsh” education culture, and shows how the fee-paying sector is very different not only from that in England, but also from popular understanding of private schooling. The one type of state-funded school peculiar to Wales - the Ysgol Cymraeg or Welsh-medium school - has continued to grow in numbers in almost inverse proportion to the number of Welsh speakers. The chapter utilizes the fee-paying school sector as an example of a localised, but long-established market, and examines the choices and justifications of the sector’s users, and the responses of its schools. Some studies of school choice have emphasised the importance of local factors, even in a supposedly national market for schools, leading to the existence of regional micro-markets.
