Welsh teenagers 2 years of education behind English teenagers

Tragic. There are between 1500 and 5000 Welsh speakers in Patagonia.

Well not my teenagers, they were educated in England . Unselfishly I think that other people's teenagers shouldn't be disvantaged. And absolutely anyone could choose to learn Welsh out of school hours.

As per Ireland, they don’t chose to do it outside of hours. Don’t you think society has an obligation to preserve culture?

Don’t you think there is more to education than getting a job?

Well my (grown up) children would find living on benefits rather limiting, so I think they are happy that their education led to a job.

What do you suggest those cultured ones do in the absence of getting a job?

But why is it mutually exclusive? Why have you extrapolated learning Welsh to not being able to get a job?

I do think there’s far more to education than getting a job. After all my education in history, French, re, art, did bugger all to “get me a job” but thank god I have that learning

I doubt it's even 18%. I'd like to know the criterion for "speaking Welsh". If I can say bore da, does that make me a Welsh speaker? And why does all paperwork come in English and Welsh? Just let people choose which language is their preference. Such a horrendous waste and burden for businesses.

Sorry haven't read all the comments but yes personal experience moving from england-wales and back to England has proven this. It's shocking. Although I also think that early years education in England is too pushy so 🤷

I am an English person living in North Wales.

I live in a very Welsh village where approx 60% of the people speak welsh as a first language. When we go into shops, a huge amount of the conversation is in Welsh but all speak English too.

I LOVE that my children are learning to speak welsh. Three out of four of them were born in england. Youngest is very proud to say she was born in wales.

I hate that my welsh is so very basic and if I had more time I would absolutely learn Welsh. It woukd be an absolute shame if the language was allowed to die out, which it will if not pushed in schools. Many of my friends here who were born and lived in wales do not speak anymore welsh than I can because for years, the language was not pushed or taught in schools. Now they cant teach their own children, so if schools dont, the language will die. My children go to an English medium school because they had already started school before we had moved here. Had we been here before that or they had been born in Wales, I absolutely would have chosen welsh schools. Fortunately, my children's school do use as much welsh as possible in the school day - the teachers greet them in welsh in the mornings, they answer the dinner register in welsh. They write the dates in their books in welsh so they have picked it up really quickly b3cause they sre quite immersed in it

I make an effort to use the very basic welsh that I do know whenever I can.

Yes.

I am very much in favour of the Welsh language being taught and I am happy that my family have become bilingual. I don’t think for a minute that it’s a waste of time but I do think we need to take a good look at how it’s actually being implemented and make sure children in Wales particularly in areas like North West Wales where I live get the same type of teaching of the English language as children in England do. Same goes for science .

If GCSE Science is down to just 1 GCSE

I'm still yet to see evidence that Welsh schools are only offering Single Award Science.

I moved from Wales to England this year with my 2 children who have been Welsh speaking from birth. They have BOTH had to drop back a year at their English school as they are so woefully behind.

The teaching in their Welsh school was just terrible. The Welsh language and anti-English teachings came above all. Estyn, which is Ofsted in Wales, doesn’t rate schools so it’s very easy for bad schools to hide.

In my children’s Welsh school, TWO members of teaching staff were not qualified for their positions, but as they were the only Welsh speakers who applied they were recruited with some kind of learning plan in place for them to gain qualifications (which didn’t happen).

I am absolutely not surprised by these results. Children in Wales are being massively failed, and I say this as a Welsh speaker.

The one that hasn't actually been introduced yet?

Well it’s not going to help when it is introduced is it?

Are you hinting they might backtrack now that the PISA scores for Wales are out?

Maybe, though I doubt that the claims on here that all Welsh kids will end up doing a single GCSE will turn out to be true.

It's a bit premature to blame the current results on something that hasn't actually been introduced yet.

I do think you have a point about recruitment of teachers. High level of fluency in Welsh is prioritised in some areas over everything else. There needs to be balance

To add, I don't actually think the Welsh language is to blame for poor results. I'm a non Welsh speaking Welsh person. I don't think Welsh should be dropped although I'd like to see it taken off as a compulsory GCSE subject. In my experience having taught in England and Wales is that having Welsh from day 1 at school made their confidence with other languages at secondary better.

Bit of both I think.
My DDs are 11 & 15 and couldn’t really complain about their education so far so I guess we’re lucky, but I do worry about my youngest going through all of secondary on the new curriculum.
There is a lot of poverty and social issues in Wales too compared to England as a whole so that has to be a factor.
Fewer private schools in Wales too so more children in England will have a private school advantage.
Would be interesting to compare Wales with more deprived areas of England.

In my area of Wales, the Welsh language is very widely spoken so it doesn’t feel like it’s “learning Welsh” taking time from other subjects, most of the kids speak at least some Welsh anyway when they start school. Learning to read in Welsh first has been a positive for my DC, it really helps with English reading.

There doesn’t seem to be any evidence of this just people on the thread saying what they think

The statistics are showing that children doing their GCSEs through the medium of Welsh are achieving less well than those doing them in the English language, even though they tend to be more socially advantaged. I think we need to research why. I do want Welsh to be taught but I think we need to dig into the factors in the poorer results in Wales .
suspect there are several factors and it’s more complicated than the OP suggests.

There are complex reasons why I would have thought, and certainly can't all be explained with "Labour are shit" and "Welsh is useless". South Wales in particularly has some dirt poor former industrial towns where there have been generations of low aspiration. Also you can't just say "England" as a homogenised entity - there are massive areas of England in the same boat as Wales economically and socially, and presumably educationally.

There's the immigration factor too - I imagine certain immigrant communities in England pull the whole country up, given that parents of these children are focussed on and dedicated to educational achievement, and these communities are way smaller in Wales.

I really dislike the tone of some posters with reference to the Welsh language. It's not the nineteenth century any more. Do they still moan that they are being excluded when they go in a pub or shop and hear Welsh?

@WestwardHo1 perhaps the 'generations of low aspiration ' are because they are so poorly educated?

This is only my lived experience but I would say that in South Wales, the middle classes go down the Welsh school route. So that would explain the social advantage.
As for the bad GSCES I think it's because the teaching staff in Welsh medium secondaries are chosen for their language ability not their teaching ability. Plus they're struggling to recruit Welsh language teachers so they're not as picky when appointing. Again this is just my opinion based on our small town 🙂

Some people do have a bad attitude to the Welsh language but not people who deliberately choose to send their children to Welsh medium secondary schools and it seems from the statistics that these children aren’t achieving as expected. I am most definitely all for promoting the Welsh language but I think we need to take an unflinching look at all factors which may be influencing the achievement levels and identify what the education system can modify and what is a result of wider social issues. It’s too simple to blame a Labour administration and say that this will spread to Westminster as OP suggested.