To ask if, given the opportunity, you would opt to have your child(ren) educated from 3-18 through the medium of another language that neither you, DP or wider family speak?

[whynogutfeeling]

I'm struggling with a decision re: Welsh medium education here in Wales at the moment. Neither DP or I, or our families, speak Welsh.

So many supporters of Welsh medium education are encouraging us to go for it and cite many advantages that such an education offers, but they are a) either Welsh speakers themselves b) have partners who are Welsh speakers if they are not or c) are totally on-board with and committed to 'project Welsh language' and / or are learning Welsh as adults.

I find myself wondering if they, if they had the option, would choose to send their child(ren) to a Mandarin / German / Spanish medium school if they had the option and also whether imagining such a scenario can help them understand our concerns?

Am I a bad parent for not choosing education through the medium of another language (in this case Welsh) for my child, when I have the option? Will I limit their opportunities by not taking the option up?

Why on earth would you have them educated in welsh? Another more useful language spiked in economically thriving counties, yes. Welsh, no.

whois because a growing number of parents in Wales choose to do so. While I may or may not agree with the extent to which the language is being protected / promoted / advantaged, the reality is that it is and so Welsh speakers do enjoy certain advantages within Wales. And there are the general benefits of bilingualism that are mentioned upthread. That said, I have lived in Wales all my life and done pretty well just speaking English. Hence feeling so torn on all this.

OK so let's get this straight OP. You live in Cardiff so presumably you have a wide choice of different schools. It's clear from your.various posts that the Welsh culture is not important to you. You appear to despise the Welsh language, and I could tell straight away from your very first post that you had already decided against sending your children to a Welsh medium school, so why did you start this thread?

I'm Welsh, from a non welsh speaking family, and moved away in my 20s and am now back in the Cardiff area along with an English DH. Several reasons why WL education is popular especially in Cardiff - more spent per pupil and it also is less ethnically diverse (though nobody ever admits this is a reason, they just like talking about "culture"). If you need to work in the public sector some Councils such as Gwynedd and Anglesey require it, but the downside is that they are severely limiting their potential pool of job applicants and it eventually builds a very monocultural organisation that both looks and sounds very homogenous. An old school friend is now a Dr at ysbytty Gwynedd in Bangor and not speaking Welsh has not prevented her from getting on - if they insisted on that, they wouldn't be able to get any Drs for the hospital. I previously worked for Cardiff Council and the vast majority of the staff (like the local residents) don't speak it, and it in no way hindered my ability to do my job. We had a hugely expensive translation unit for the occasional person who wrote in in Welsh and they spent a lot of time translating leaflets, signs etc. for individual departments. A dear friend went to live in Carmarthenshire and her DC were raised going to a Welsh language nursery, primary and secondary - although all 3 can understand and speak it to a basic level, their written Welsh isn't much good and to be honest, they don't use it on a day to day basis. If your DC are living and working in anywhere other than the extreme west and north, and especially if they study or live in England/the rest of the world, then it's really not important. My DH has encountered regular racism but not anything concrete based around his not speaking Welsh and he has also worked extensively in the public sector here.

scuttle where I am both the Welsh medium and English medium schools are about as equally un-diverse as each other and that's really not a factor in my thinking anyway. I have heard anecdotally that in other, more ethnically diverse parts of many Cardiff parents choose Welsh medium for the reasons you give though. (Personally I have always wondered what the impact on the growing calls for Welsh language skills has on BAME employment prospects in Wales, but that's a different issue...)

I too know many people here, Welsh and non-Welsh, who have successful working lives without speaking Welsh.

My OH is English too but hasn't experienced the 'racism' you describe that yours has, as far as I know.

[ Tamzin in what way have any of my posts conveyed that I 'despise' the Welsh language?! Is a Welsh person, or anyone living in Wales, not allowed to ask questions of Welsh medium education anymore? I assume you are of the unfortunate school of thought that you're not properly Welsh unless you're Welsh-speaking or a Welsh language afficionado? ]

You're in Wales so, why not? You'll speak English at home so I don't see an issue. Children educated in Welsh aren't lagging behind are they, unless there's been a report on that and I've missed it? It may be lovely for her to learn Welsh and you could learn it too. Nice to be multi-lingual it does not have to be all about which is the "best" modern language really, thats quite a narrow way to view indigenous languages really (not suggesting you think that, but Ive heard such views expressed before ie if its not Latin or Germanic, don't bother) . She isn't going to "forget" English.

3 languages in my household and we manage. I like a mix of languages but understand not everybody would

Still don't really see the advantage. Seems like it's an advantage if you aspire to work in Welsh local government, but will be time and effort spent that could be directed towards potentially more useful things.

I wouldn't if it's for secondary and I teach modern languages so am generally pretty keen. For primary though I would.

I grew up in England and moved to Wales as a teenager, so I did Welsh as a 2nd language along with a couple of others for GCSE and then stuck to languages through uni and career. I wasn't held back by not being bilingual - actually I guess I now am bilingual though not in Welsh! As a fairly able linguist I did GCSE early then extension papers in yr11 - this could be an option for your dc if he/she turns out to be a linguist.

My brother was born after we moved and went to a Welsh medium primary then to the bilingual stream at secondary. He was soon moved out though as my parents couldn't help him with his homework at all. He has now forgotten all of / most of his Welsh and is none the poorer for it. Indeed I don't think any of my Welsh/English bilingual have overtly benefited from being bilingual other than through the obvious fact that they are bilingual. I don't think it's brought any additional benefits as such.

In my year at school the only Welsh Maths teacher left half way through our GCSE course and the class in the Welsh section had to continue with the English course. You'd think with Maths it wouldn't make a difference, but everyone did badly in the final exams as they hadn't got their heads around the English terminology. I hate to think what would have happened it had been in Chemistry or something.

It sounds awful, but if it were an option of learning through a more widely used language (French, German, Mandarin etc) I'd go for it, but not for Welsh.

I'd go for it, even for a niche language. I went from speaking Hebrew to full immersion in an Afrikaans school my poor parents. Came out very good at languages!

I'm off to Google Welsh nationalism after two threads in two days about this stuff.

I would.

There are huge advantages to being bilingual (or more) especially in languages such as Cantonese/mandarin, Polish and Spanish.

I live in Ireland and my children attend a gaelscoil(an irish speaking school). I have very poor Irish and my dh has none.

My dc are 8 and 6 now and so far I have had no problems doing their homework with them that Google translate can't fix but I do get a bit worried that as they get older I won't be able to help them as much as I would like. They will continue on with the gaelscoil until they are 12 and then we will decide whether or not to go for an Irish speaking secondary.

Over here there are benefits to being fluent in Irish, if you do your Leaving Cert(irish equivalent to A levels) through Irish you get extra points. You also get access to extra grants. There are certain jobs like teaching where a certain level of Irish is needed and as far as I am aware if you teach in a gaelscoil you get paid more than in an english speaking school.

Right now we are more than happy with their school, it is far better than the other options in my town, which is why we chose it in the first place. The pros out weigh the cons. I have a feeling though that secondary may be a different kettle of fish.

Why does everyone think the Welsh language is in decline? There are now more children enrolling in WM schools than there has been in previous generations Counties like Bridgend are struggling to accommodate the request for Welsh Schools!!

At the endiof the day it's your choice, you can either give it a go and see if your children and you can "get on" with Welsh medium education and if not swap to English, or just go for English.

It's harder to swap English to Welshb after the foundation phase of education then. Their little brains have pretty much wired themselves up by then for language pathways but it's not impossible otherwise adults would never learn second languages! It just gets harder to soak it up.

Jizzy by no other languages available I meant there aren't any state spanish/french/mandarin schools in Wales, so welsh is a chance to learn another language and reap the benefits of bilingualism for free, I didn't mean to the OP might not have other ways of introducing a second language, apologies.
Andrewofgg I'm not aware of any schools that make welsh language GCSE compulsory personally. The local schools here offer it as a short course (like RE and PE) if they decide against it at GCSE level.
whois if you read the thread, you can see lots of reasons why welsh/bilingualism has advantages.

I moved from Wales last year & if we had stayed or if we move back my child would be going to a Welsh medium school, not just to learn Welsh but because they are better schools.

They have smaller classes, they do extremely well academically & have very good results.

I speak a smattering of Welsh & I did begin relearning vocab & grammar, there are a lot of courses available & Welsh speaking baby & toddler groups available who welcome English speakers.

There would be a small difficulty with homework but the child could translate the gist of it & then translate back into Welsh. I wouldn't just dismiss because of language. People move all the time into areas where their native tongue isn't spoken & kids manage fine.

You couldn't have got me more wrong why. I am a Welsh woman with an English DH, currently living in England. I didn't have the opportunity to learn my language when I was a child as easily as your child could do today, so my spoken Welsh is not good. Nevertheless I have always regarded myself as properly Welsh because I was born and brought up in Wales, and that is where my ancestors come from.

I said that you come across as someone who appears to despise the Welsh language. Maybe that isn't the case, but it is how you sound to me, having read your posts.

Your AIBU is about whether your child should go to a Welsh medium school. I think that you already know the answer.

I would consider Wm for primary if I was a long-termer in Wales.

BUT if I were to do this, then I would have to be prepared to get really serious about supporting my child's English education outside of school.

I live in a non-English-speaking country, and because international schools are expensive, most of us English-speaking mums educate our children in the local vernacular.

However, you really do need to be organized about teaching and practising reading and ESPECIALLY writing skills. Tutoring at some point may be a good supplement.

And you need to work really hard to shower your kids in English vocab. I read three books to my daughter a day, have maps and educational posters around the house, point out new things and new words all the time, and am very proactive about doing lots of visits to science museums, planetariums, aquariums, botanical gardens and all that. They need to get a strong vocabulary in the home language from their parents if they are not getting it at school. Don't kid yourself that they are going to get a full vocabulary just from everyday "have you finished breakfast?" "it's time for a bath" and so on.

And don't kid yourself that they will get good fluent writing skills just from speaking the home language casually on a day-to-day basis.

Kids at WM schools in Wales seem to do no worse than those in EM, but I suspect that that is largely because the intake at WM is more middle class, and because... I'm sorry to have to say this, but educational standards in Wales are generally considered to be pretty poor, so the standard that kids from WM need to achieve to be considered normal/typical, is not very high.

I'd probably prefer EM from secondary school onwards.

In short, school-based bilingualism can be great, but it works best when parents are organized and motivated about actively teaching the home language.

I live in Wales and my children attend an English medium school with mandatory Welsh lessons included as part of the curriculum. They enjoy Welsh and teach me the bits they know.

In our area of Wales, hardly anyone speaks Welsh and we don't speak any, apart from the odd phrases that I grew up knowing.

I would not send my child to a Welsh medium school because none of our family or my sons' friends or my friends or anyone we know speaks Welsh as a first language.

They are getting on brilliantly at school and can speak some Welsh. In your shoes OP I would send them to an English medium school where they will be taught in English and still have Welsh lessons. When they reach secondary, they will be offered French or German too if they wish. Unless you're in a largely Welsh speaking area I wouldn't send them to Welsh Medium.

It's unlikely my sons will ever be held back by not being bilingual in Welsh. I never have been and nor has anyone in my direct circle of family and friends.

I would agree that you need to be engaged in your Childs education to see the most benefit from it.

Personally I wouldn't send my child to a Welsh medium school unless I could speak it fluently myself. Despite being Welsh, I can't, so I won't.

There is a lot is snobbery around speaking Welsh and parents who send their children to Welsh medium schools without being able to do so themselves are looked down on by those who can.

"Several reasons why WL education is popular especially in Cardiff - more spent per pupil and it also is less ethnically diverse (though nobody ever admits this is a reason, they just like talking about "culture")."

That is very interesting. I have to say, as a family that is bilingual already I would not choose WM if we were to move to Wales, simply because balancing three languages would feel like too much hard work and I would worry that my kid would end up with weak skills in all of them.

The popularity of WM schools is very much aided by certain areas. Particularly in Cardiff where you see school intakes where 94% have English as a second language.

There is a lot is snobbery around speaking Welsh and parents who send their children to Welsh medium schools without being able to do so themselves are looked down on by those who can.

this couldn't be further from my experience, the welsh speaking parents at my children's school tend to either not be in the least bit concerned if you can speak welsh as a parent or are very pleased that you are making that choice as they seem it as a good thing to expand the number of people speaking welsh.

"Several reasons why WL education is popular especially in Cardiff - more spent per pupil and it also is less ethnically diverse (though nobody ever admits this is a reason, they just like talking about "culture")."

Again, this is not my experience, however i dont live in Cardiff so can't speak for what happens there or the motivations of parents there. I live in a small village that is very predominantly white, its unusual to see a non-white face locally at all, but our school has 3 black families, a couple of polish families and a persian family. which for my area is as ethnically diverse as it gets!

I would send them to an English medium school where they will be taught in English and still have Welsh lessons. When they reach secondary, they will be offered French or German too if they wish.

WM educated children also are offered languages other than welsh! My children do french, spanish and mandarin. even in primary our children are learning mandarin phrases. the only difference is their work books are translated from mandarin to welsh.

books.google.co.jp/books?id=iWR_AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA108&lpg=PA108&dq=%22welsh+medium%22+ethnic+%22white%22&source=bl&ots=TMPAB0f8BP&sig=8sApB4sRMRAPrfJzXIQW5t-HbiQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjS3Y2M4N_KAhWFXaYKHYOYCiEQ6AEIMzAD#v=onepage&q=%22welsh%20medium%22%20ethnic%20%22white%22&f=false

Interesting (on WM vs EM and ethnicity). Although I gather this is not really relevant to the OP's situation.