Sustainability through Integrated Planning: Reflections on the future of Welsh in education policy in Wales

Dr Catrin RedknapWelsh Language Board, Cardiff, Walescatrin.redknap@byig-wlb.org.uk

Aim: To consolidate the status and role of Welsh-medium education within a national education policy framework

Involves:Shift from inconsistent and fragmented development to holistic and strategic long-term planning

Challenges:

• Managing the mainstreaming of the lesser used language in the context of structural and capacity constraints

• Balance between (i) the institutionalisation of language planning and (ii) collective responsibility for language promotion

Juxtaposition:

Aim of normalising Welsh-medium education within a national, official framework

vNeed for a dedicated, specialist framework and collective involvement

One Wales: A Progressive Agenda for the Government of Wales (June 2007):

‘We will create a national Welsh-medium Education Strategy to develop effective provision from nursery through to further and higher education, backed up by an implementation programme.’

• Successful growth of Welsh-medium education in Wales

But ...

• Piecemeal and ad hoc despite strategic planning by individual local authorities and providers

• Recognised need for improved planning on the basis of linguistic continuity, to respond to demand from parents; understanding of relationship between availability and demand

Protagonists:

• Expected role of Welsh Assembly Government in providing central strategic direction

• Collective catalysts for growth: parents, contribution of early years Welsh-medium provision (Mudiad Ysgolion Meithrin)

• Promotion of the language as an expression of cultural identification (Urdd Gobaith Cymru)

• Growth of the sector through language legislation as opposed to education legislation

• 1993 Welsh Language Act; Welsh Language Board. Strategic overview of Welsh-medium education and training

• Promoting Welsh-medium education (i) through partnerships and (ii) within the language’s wider social context

• Potential reconfiguration of roles

• Normalisation v Neutralisation

• ‘Institutionalisation of Linguistic Recovery’ (Benjamín Tejerina Montaña)

• Anonymity v Specificity (K. Woolard)