The only English medium schools in county being converted to Welsh

[EnglishWelsh]

I live in a particularly Welsh county, that have now put plans in place to turn the one English medium primary school into a Welsh one, despite how many Welsh ones already exist. I obviously understand the motive to keep the Welsh language alive however removing the only choice is appalling to me and the kids already in the school who are not fluent and live in households that are fully English speaking. It's a wide timescale of when they hope it'll be in place, so hopefully my first born won't be affected but my second born will likely be affected and any other kids we have, unless we move out the area. In a Welsh medium school you learn no English until you are 7 years old. Should it really be acceptable to fully remove the choice? For an entire county? I'm really angry, to be honest.

@ftw163532 the difference is that Welsh is a minority language which needs to be protected in a way that English does not. By far the best way to achieve this is through education at primary school. It's very easy for kids to learn in the medium of Welsh. Kids are good at picking up second languages and by and large benefit from being bilingual. It is much harder for adults.

At secondary school you can switch. I can totally see why a English speaking child might not want to access A Level Engineering in Welsh, for example. But the primary school kids do well with it, and it keeps the language alive.

I am a big supporter of minority language education, but I wonder if this goes too far.

The 1993 Welsh Language Act gave effect to the principle that in the conduct of public business and the administration of justice in Wales the English and Welsh languages should be treated on a basis of equality

I am not sure that only providing a Welsh Language education to 5 -7 year olds conforms to that principle. You could argue that it does if viewed together with a bilingual 7+ education, but I think ithat would be open to legal challenge.

My own interest is in an Irish language act for NI - and I fear that this kind of initiative in Wales will impact badly on support for that - particularly among those in the middle who are quite happy to see Irish language schools established but would never choose to send their own children to Irish medium schools.

Having spent the last weekend going over and over the gas laws with my eldest for his physics GCSE, I'm glad we didn't have to translate all the past paper questions into English before I could help. That's because we had the choice of English medium education.

I think the OP is only talking about primary school. I would agree with her if she was including secondary, but I don't think she is

My niece and nephew go to an Irish speaking school and I'm so jealous. I know the odd Gaelic word but they can have full conversations with each other. My sister has to rely on Google a lot for checking homework but otherwise it's been fine. My sister chose the school because numerous studies have shown that bilingual children can learn an additional language more easily than monolingual children. They still have English lessons like any other school.

Presuming you live on Anglesey and the one school begins with a c?

You are being hugely unreasonable. All schools in the county are Bilingual, not totally Welsh medium. Some are far more English than others, there are plenty of choices where they will mainly hear English if that’s what you want.

They won’t do English literacy until year 2. All start in y2. But it’s impossible not to learn English as it’s everywhere. The only way to learn fluent, decent Welsh and have the advantages of being bilingual is total immersion in Welsh. Actually harder to come by than it seems locally.

Your dc will be fine in English and have better Welsh. I went to Welsh medium primary and went to Oxbridge. It’s not going to hold anybody back and it’s fairly offensive to suggest that it might. Move if you don’t like it!

You carry on in English at home
They will be bilingual
It's a great advantage

I don't think OP is coming back as everyone disagrees.

I spoke one language at home, and another two local (co-official) languages at school. They’re all fine and I speak them all to native level.

The more languages a child is immersed in, the more their brain will develop, especially at an early age.

Your children’s English won’t get worse simply because their schooling is in Welsh. Immigrant parents don’t often have the option to have their children’s schooling in their mother tongue.

Funnily enough, my highest grade in the local equivalent of the A-level exams was in the language I was least exposed to at school - a community language. My main language, and the one most of my schooling was in, was the lowest grade of the 3 languages I had to sit.

Let your kids become fully fluent in Welsh, it won’t do them any harm. Where I currently live there’s only one language for the whole country and I hope I’ve moved somewhere else before any kids start school. 2-3 languages when they’re little is the absolute best. I speak and write to a high proficiency level in 7 now, and it’s thanks to so much exposure when I was little.