, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I don't believe, in the way that I think the final part of Cefin's question suggested, that schools will be out just to game the system. My own experience of the education system is that it is full of people who want to do the right thing. Sometimes they are…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, as I explained in response to Vaughan Gething and Tom Giffard, it's important to have those exemption periods in order to give confidence to those who aren't confident at the moment that they can deliver the objectives of the Bill. But I don't want to…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I believe that I have shared with the committee the timetable that we currently have, and in that document it states that the regulations will be in place by July 2027. So, that's the timetable that we have. And of course, we have—. As with any power in the…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, as I said, Chair, I do acknowledge and recognise those concerns, and I understand why people are raising them, but I don’t think that that will be the impact of the Bill at all. Just to re-emphasise, the Government is entirely supportive of Welsh-medium…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, Chair, the Bill is about more than just the language. It places obligations on schools to create a Welsh ethos. So, when I was talking about morning assemblies, for me, that is part of the broad ambition of the Bill to increase the use of the Welsh…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
—the 10 per cent is an obligation on the school, not on the individual student.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Yes, and just to be clear—
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I hope it will be a mixture of both. I think there will be other things in it as well. An assembly once a week conducted in the Welsh language will count towards the 10 per cent. So, there are things that will happen during the compulsory school day that will…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, the only evidence we have is that evidence that was collected during the consultation on the non-statutory target of 10 per cent. There were schools that reported as low as 5 per cent, but I don't think anybody said they had less than that, and it's…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
No, which is why the Bill provides two three-year extension periods. I would not expect many schools in Carmarthenshire to need that. I probably do expect that more schools in Blaenau Gwent would. But I am more ambitious than some of the witnesses you may…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I myself don't believe that there is confusion now. Those schools exist. They already advertise what they do. They are already understood by parents who use them. I don't think the Bill adds any degree of confusion in that way, and, as I say, there will be…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, I think, myself, if I could say, Tom, I would have put the question the other way around. The remarkable thing is not that we do not have figures for the other two categories on the face of the Bill, but we do have a figure for primarily English…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, as I say, we're not doing away with that; we will capture it through the regulation-making process.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I think it is a point of view that does not take properly into account the fact that there is a regulation-making power in the Bill that Ministers will use to set out the range in dual language schools and primarily Welsh-medium schools as well. The only…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
The Bill is designed to harness the effort that is made across the whole of the education spectrum to that goal of a million Welsh speakers by 2050. Where is the ground that we most need to make up if we are to do that? And I think that is in primarily…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, I've seen that evidence coming to the committee. I don't want to say that I don't understand it. The ground that has been won for Welsh-medium education has been hard won, and, as I say, it's been hugely successful in the last 30 years. It's been a…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, Chair, it's an important point just to say that many schools are already doing this. We have focused this morning, and we have focused in other committees, on how we can help schools that aren't at that 10 per cent threshold already to get to that…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I'll try and deal with all of them, other than the interface between CEFR, WJEC and Qualifications Wales, which I'll ask Bethan to do. Does CEFR have a place in Welsh-medium education—people who are first-language Welsh speakers? We believe that it does. It…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I thank Vaughan for the questions.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Certainly to a Basque—you've got to try to understand its structure.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Chair, I can offer some answers to the last points that Vaughan raised. When it comes to the interface and the interplay between the CEFR levels, other descriptors that are used in the curriculum space, qualifications and how those—. I'm probably going to ask…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Yes. Well, I agree. I've met them too, and I agree. It's a point of view that I, myself, completely reject.
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
In 2021, then these pre-A1 descriptors were added, but they weren't added into the global scale. They were made available, but the scale itself remains that simple A1, B1, C1, and that's what we've reflected in the documentation. But the code will provide…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
Well, I thank Vaughan for that question, Chair. I want to repeat what I said in front of the committee last time: in my view, there are not very many people in Wales who do not speak some Welsh, and I'm very much opposed to the point of view that there are…
, Children, Young People, and Education Committee
Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill - evidence session 16
I agree that the biggest weight of responsibility sits with Government in terms of doing that. Now, after that, there are a number of individuals and agencies that we could ask to help us to do that: the Welsh Language Commissioner, I'm sure that she would…
