Plans to make all 16-year-olds speak Welsh ‘lack details’

Plans to increase the number of Welsh speakers in schools need more detail, teaching unions and a Senedd committee have said.

As part of the Welsh Language and Education Bill, ministers want by 2050 every 16-year-old to leave school with the ability to speak Welsh “with confidence”.

Critics say these goals, while welcome, will require significant investment given ongoing staffing problems.

The Welsh Government said it would give more details of its plans when the bill returns to the Senedd this week.

These plans are part of the Welsh Government’s efforts to have one million Welsh speakers by 2050.

At Olchfa School in Swansea, only Welsh lessons are taught in Welsh, and the headteacher, Julian Kennedy, estimated that the proportion of time required to study Welsh to the required level would represent around 10% of the student’s employment. time.

“It gives us problems in terms of recruiting,” he said, adding that while he supports the policy, “something else must be lost.”

Mr Kennedy also said the standard of Welsh expected by ministers is not in line with what is currently taught.

“All of our young people leaving at the age of 16 have learned Welsh to GCSE level, but this is not the level of proficiency that the Welsh Government is looking for,” he said.

The Senedd’s cross-party education committee has assessed the bill and, while it is happy to move forward, it wants to see more detail.

This includes a workforce plan with recruitment and retention targets, an explanation of how Welsh language teaching and teaching would be used to achieve the targets, and what school activities would be supported. counts towards the minimum language offer of 10%.

The NAHT, the main union of school principals, supports these projects but questions how they will work.

Laura Doel, national secretary of the NAHT, said 10% seems like an “achievable number on paper” but that it depends on the school context.

“You may have English-medium schools where you have teachers who speak Welsh fluently. You may have some who don’t speak Welsh at all, apart from conversational Welsh.

“Then you start to get into the details of what counts as delivering a course in Welsh? Is it entirely in Welsh? Is it a mixture? Do things like Welsh lessons count ?Is that 10%?” she said.

Elin Maher, national director of RhAG, known in English as Parents for Welsh Medium Education, said the plan should have been put in place years ago.

“We’ve been talking about this for 10 years and counting. We’d be halfway there if we had some sort of strategy. The target of increasing the average Welsh workforce needs to be at the top of the agenda.

“If we really want a bilingual country, if we really want a million speakers, then we need to invest the resources in strategies to get there.”

The Welsh Government said the bill aims for all children in Wales to become “independent and confident Welsh speakers” by 2050, when they reach the end of compulsory school age.

“This objective is independent of their origin and the linguistic category they attend,” they said, adding that having “sufficient educational staff” is essential to implement the bill.

Mark Drakeford, Welsh Finance and Welsh Language Secretary, is expected to respond to the committee’s recommendations in a debate in the Senedd on Tuesday.