, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, if things go wrong, then you'll have to make a greater effort because you won't have captured the contribution that we think is there to be captured. Now, in those circumstances, I don't think that you can say confidently that the way a Government would…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, the three scenarios, Chair: scenario 1 is business as usual, and our assessment is, and the reason why we have a Bill is, that if we just let things continue as they are, then we would not be extracting the maximum impact we can from the education…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Yes, it is. It’s people's confidence to use the language they already have in the context of the classroom. Last year’s figures from the annual survey of the workforce said that there was over 6 per cent of teachers already in Wales—over 1,500—who reported…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, the workforce pressure at the school level, Chair—we assume, as I said, that all the help that is currently available within the system will continue. And there are a whole series of programmes that the Welsh Government already provides, primarily…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
£23,500 a year, and it's what Estyn itself tells us that they would need. Peter Fox asked a very good question about the middle tier, as it's sometimes called, and, of course, the Government is concluding its review of those middle-tier services. So, the RIA…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
So, Chair, there is a cost for Estyn, which is identified in the RIA. These are costs that Estyn itself produced. It assumes that they will have to review, in a thoroughgoing way, one of the WESPs each year, and that they will be able to continue to, in a…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, Chair, the Bill does introduce a new system in which there will, for the first time, be a national framework, which will set targets. The WESPs will have to respond to those targets and show how they are to be delivered. And schools will, for the first…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
—Fitzalan High School in my constituency serves seven different primary schools. They have lots of things in common because of the nature of the communities that they serve. Therefore, the sorts of challenges that you may need to address in a school-level…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
I think that is potentially an advantage financially. To give an example that I'm more familiar with—
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, the Bill does provide for schools to come together in that way. I myself believe that the case for doing that is pretty strong, particularly, maybe, in the south-east of Wales, where this Bill is concerned. We don't cost it for the Bill, because that is…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
I think the calculation that the Welsh Government made in making that choice was less about cost and more about effectiveness of the policy. So, yes, there would have been other ways in which the policy could have been taken forward, including non-legislative…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Indeed.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
These are opportunity costs.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
I think the thing that maybe I was most struck by was just the sheer variety of experience at that individual school level. Schools reported very different things, in all sorts of different ways. Now, I don't say that was a surprise, but I think it was even…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Yes. We commissioned Arad Research to carry out this work for the Welsh Government because of their expertise and their independence. The information that could be derived from the 23 schools did cover a very wide range of the waterfront of schools in Wales…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
—insight into, not just figures, but how the system works and how it looks to people who are at the chalk face of it all.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, it does give a flavour of what people think, and the challenges that they face, what they think will come to them in the future. Of course, they can provide some figures about what's going on in that specific school, and that helps in terms of gaining…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
In that element of the research and the evidence for the Bill, there were 23 schools: 11 primary schools, 11 secondary schools, one all-through school; there were six Welsh-medium schools, seven dual language schools, and 10 English-medium schools. To be…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Yes.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Yes, absolutely.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
The Bill assumes that that level of investment continues into the future. Given that those are decisions that will be made by future Governments, in that sense, they will be additional, but then, they—. The Bill assumes that those investments will need to…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
It's £3.8 million, I beg your pardon—£3.8 million. And the figures that you see in the RIA of investment that is required to continue through all the period include that figure.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Those costs are reflected in the RIA, but it is assumed—it's £3.3 million for the sabbatical.
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
No, it isn't a midpoint in a range. It is taking the specific costs and giving you the actual figures that we think best reflect the current state of play. Now, to give you just one example, we provide a cost that we say a local authority will incur in…
, Finance Committee
Financial implications of the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill: Evidence session
Well, essentially Ministers do rely on the advice that you're given, because we have an analytical knowledge services unit in the Welsh Government who do this all the time, and whose job is to make an assessment of the best method that can be used to give the…
