Call for more children to be taught Welsh in schools

Powys County Council, prompted by its committed contingent of Plaid Cymru councillors, deserve credit for driving this progress. In 2022, Ysgol Bro Hyddgen in Machynlleth began the process of transitioning to teach through the medium of Welsh. Ysgol Calon Cymru in Builth and Llandrindod will begin the same process in 2029, becoming the first Welsh-medium school in the south of the county, while similar plans were approved last year for Ysgol Bro Caereinion in the north.

Despite this growth, however, given that 16% of Powys’ population speak Welsh, current education provision remains insufficient to maintain current numbers of speakers in the county, never mind the increase needed to meet the Welsh Government’s target of one million speakers by 2050.

Indeed, a quarter of a century after the opening of our Senedd, the vast majority of children and young people throughout Wales continue to be denied the opportunity to learn Welsh through our education system and the chance to use the language in their everyday lives. However, despite admirable progress by individual councils, there is only so much that can be done without central government direction and funding.

This underlines the need for a transformation of the current system to achieve significant growth in the number of pupils receiving Welsh-medium education, along with a fundamental change in the way that Welsh is taught in English-medium schools.

The opportunity for change presented itself with the introduction of the Welsh Language and Education Bill, committed to as part of the Cooperation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government signed back in late 2021, and which passed its final hurdles in the Senedd this month with unanimous support from every party. In the coming months, it is expected to receive Royal Assent and become enshrined in law.

In the years since signing up to the original Bill, we have seen tremendous efforts from people who’ve worked on it: the stakeholders who submitted evidence, members of the education committee, the clerks and officials, the lawyers and the researchers. As someone who has worked in language planning for almost all my professional life it was a privilege to see the legislation receiving support.