Moving yr7 son due to too much welsh

[Mandy1999]

My yr 7 son is struggling in his school due to the fact that they have chosen to educate him in every subject in welsh, including French!!! Welsh is his second language. The school just doesn't seem to understand they are making school much harder than it needs to be. It claims in it's perspectus that it is bilingual,rubbish!!! Maths and the sciences should be in English so they can study one of these in higher education. The policies of this school are awful. I have applied for an English school 25 miles away, it is terrible that you can't get the education you wish for your child without moving them miles away!! I am so disgusted in this system!! What do think!!

Well, I know this isn't an AIBU, but I think you are being U to object to the policies of the school - its unfortunate that your nearest secondary is Welsh medium, but not surprising if you're in a predominantly welsh speaking area.

But, I totally understand you wanting to move your DS to an English medium school. I know a few parents whose children have started in Welsh medium secondary (following Welsh medium primary) who have either moved them, or found that it was much harder than expected. I know a friend's ds (who is super academic) says that it makes subjects like history just that bit harder work and less interesting because he's always working in his second language.

We're lucky, in that we're mid way between a Welsh medium & a bilingual secondary with both Welsh & English streams - we're not quite at that stage yet, but I think that it is most likely that dd will be going to the latter in the English stream.

I think it does vary by child a lot, though - my dd will always choose to write in English given the choice (despite the fact that it is more difficult to spell & she's only been doing school reading/writing in English for 1.5 years, not 4.5 years). Others I know don't feel like that at all (from English speaking homes).

I think that - certainly for our local Welsh medium secondary - there is also a massive change of emphasis as compared to Welsh medium primary. In primary (certainly ours) the children are allowed to speak whatever language they like between themselves in playtime/at lunch. Speaking Welsh outside of lessons is encouraged (housepoints etc) but not enforced.

Once they get to the secondary, speaking English (even in the corridors) is forbidden - one parent I know moved their ds from the school largely because he was given detention on more than one occasion for speaking English.

Detention for speaking English? That's horrendous! What if their first language was Spanish/ mandarin/ Urdu? Would they be allowed to speak that in the corridor??

Well, I may be being dim but I have to admit that I would expect a school advertising itself as 'bilingual' to educate in 2 languages. This school sounds more accurately to be 'welsh-speaking' and nowt wrong with that except it is clearly not what the OP was expecting.

That's a good point, BarbarianMum. OP, have you talked to the school about your problems? Is there any possibility that they have separate streams, and some classes have a higher proportion of their teaching in English? If your ds went to a welsh medium primary, might he automatically have been put into a 100% welsh stream?

I think some of the posts on this thread are unreasonably aggressive towards the OP. She may not have realised the degree to which Welsh was the main language (or how her DC would react to it). Have a bit of sympathy!

Takver - That's awful!! I experienced the opposite. My primary school was extremely Welsh(and judged Outstanding by inspections) and you weren't supposed to speak English at all. In early years, about 50% came from English homes so the teachers would say things in Welsh and then again in English. Everyone learnt really quickly. Then later on in the school the teachers would reprimand anyone speaking English, and it was socially frowned upon by most of my peers to speak English when you could speak Welsh. I think this was quite a rare situation though. All the other primaries here seem much more English.

In my secondary school, the rule is "Speak Welsh to the BEST OF YOUR ABILITY". It's 'cooler' to speak English and only the Welsh teachers and a few of the really strict ones ever bothered to tell anyone not to speak English. A detention for it is just ridiculous!!

OP, I really think you should talk to the school. Surely they must have some stream or classes through English?

Forbidding someone to speak another language out of lessons seems very poor practice to me- and has very unpleasant connotations; any school that does this deserves to have their wrists slapped. But for the school to choose to use one language in lesson time is a different matter.

Imo the OP would have got a more sympathetic response if she had not seemed so hostile to the school in the first place. If she had posted "what can I do, my ds is really struggling?" people would have focused on trying to help with a problem. What she did post was "The policies of this school are awful", "Maths and the sciences should be in English so they can study one of these in higher education"- inviting us to consider how dreadful it must be to have to learn something in your second language. Which, considering more than half the world is bilingual and most not from choice, is not going to be as self-evident as she thinks.

It is hard not to suspect that the OP feels her situation is dreadful in some special way that doesn't apply to your ordinary bilingual situation - e.g. speaker of minority language in Indian school having to learn in English or Hindi, Dutch students having part of the course delivered in English, Basque child having to learn Spanish, child of Polish immigrants having to learn an entirely new language on starting school- and sense of specialness sets people wondering why. Is it because in her case the language is Welsh (which is seen as useless) and/or the ds' first language is English (which is often seen as a get-out-clause for not having to use other languages)?

The whole detention thing makes me confused too, on the one hand it feels like going back to the days of the 'Welsh not' and it seems regressive in the least. Buuut, the argument in the school here is that if you are to be the best you can in Welsh language education you need to be immersed in the language, which will help with your studies and exams. This does make perfect sense and the (very rare) occasion I heard of one child being given detention it was more for his willful use of English as a means to annoy his teacher rather that just the use of the language in a normal situation.

(IYSWIM he could have used little swear words to get a rise in an English medium school to the same effect, not that English is like swearing, gaaaaah it's really an impossible situation, too many emotions wound around the issue for a true discussion to be held).

I think that there are arguments on the both sides of the question of enforcing Welsh out of lesson times - tbh I don't think it is necessarily that dreadful, and probably quite important for reinforcement of vocabulary and general fluency given that a lot of children will be speaking mainly English out of school. It was a problem for my friend & his child, but as a symptom of the school being wrong for that child, I think, IYSWIM.

I notice the OP hasn't returned to the thread, so perhaps just needing to vent and again the school overall being wrong for her and her child?

Cory, I think that the issue of Welsh medium education is equivalent to Dutch students in Holland being taught in English, but generally not equivalent to Polish children who are living in the UK having to study in English - simply because those children would generally be experiencing English as their main language in which they operated in the wider world outside of their immediate family circle. Its very easy in Wales never to speak Welsh outside of school, despite much encouragement from your parents (voice of experience here).

Yes, Takver, I realise that I presented a very mixed bunch of possible bilingual situations and that some were not very well chosen. But there are plenty of children in other parts of the world who have to learn and read in a language which is not the one of their local community; it's not such an unusual situation as the OP seems to imagine.

I think you are probably right about this particular school not being right for the OP; there does seem to be a hint of general bitterness.

I feel for you. I wouldn't like it either. My dcs are bilinual english/french, but lets face it, french is spoken by millions of people worldwide. It seems a shame to be learning welsh if your dc doesn't want to and is struggling. What's the point? He'll forget it all when he leaves school as hardly anyone uses the language anyway.

If you can send him at an english school, do so.You'll probably all be happier

Phew just reading this does my head in, I'm so glad I could just go to my nearest school do my lessons in English (which is clearly the Language 99%) of Welsh children are going to use to earn a living.
The present system seems unbelievably complicated, wasteful and verging on racially discriminatory.
It is certainly bad for the environment because I have friends who commute to work in Wales but live in Chester to avoid this whole business.

I genuinely can't believe some of the attitudes on this thread. The "hardly anyone speaks it anyway so we should all just forget about it" mindset is very strange.

If you're going to live in Wales, then you should try to help our children learn Welsh, even if you don't speak it yourself yet. And if nothing else, it's a fact that Welsh-speakers are more employable here, so it's putting them at a disadvantage of they can't speak it.

I am wondering if the sort of people that think this are the sort of people that move to France/Spain, not bothering to learn the language and living in a bubble with other English people sending their children to English schools.

I am Welsh speaking and live in a rural area with not much choice for secondary schools. I want my children educated through the medium of Welsh. Should they not be allowed this because some people think it will make things more difficult? (which I disagree with in principle, incidentally.)

I wonder where you live, Takver? Am shocked with the detention for speaking English story. I went to a Welsh school and was never even told off for speaking English.

As far as this whole "less than half the people in Wales speak Welsh" argument, well, yes. Sad isn't it. Thank goodness things are changing and that more parents than ever are requesting education through the medium of Welsh.

I've never really understood the argument for not being taught in what might be called a minority language. (I've lived in Catalonia so I'm not particularly singling out British languages for this). You're never going to not speak the majority language because you're going to hear it all the time but you can still maintain the other language. As far as I know from Irish friends, this isn't even an issue in the Irish republic, everyone learns Irish?

Having said that, during my year abroad attempting to learn Spanish (Castillian) - in Barcelona I was constantly asked 'why aren't you learning Catalan?' (which I accept as a perfectly reasonable question). When I moved to Mexico to complete my year almost literally the first question was 'why aren't you learning Nahuatl? I don't dispute the question was equally reasonable in both countries but people eventually I just have to learn the language that my degree is in!

I think its an interesting question. I have to say I was far more of an enthusiast for Welsh medium education in the past. Now that dd is in yr 4, although I still absolutely support Welsh medium schools, and agree that it is vital that they exist, I am somewhat less positive in the situation we are in - where the vast majority of children going into the school speak no Welsh outside of the classroom. As I've mentioned above, I think that dd will probably go into English medium secondary education.

I also think that some of the problems that she has had in school have been linked to the fact that she's always working in a second language that she uses only in school. Its quite different to when we lived in Spain, where - although we talked English at home - as soon as we were out in the wider world we were all talking Spanish all the time.

I would say, though, that we are probably something of anomaly, although we are in a strongly Welsh speaking area, our particular small town is (and historically has been for c700 years) quite largely English speaking.

TBH, I think the current situation where we are in Wales is about right - children are taught Welsh medium or English medium depending on the predominant language of the area at primary level, then have the option to choose between the languages at secondary level.

I have no experience of the Welsh situation- but very interesting to compare it to other situations: e.g. that of early Hebrew speakers before the language took off, or of pretty well anyone who got an education in Western Europe in the Middle Ages- Latin had to be spoken in school and all the books were in Latin, but it hadn't been anybody's mother tongue for 1000 years. I suppose one difference with the MA was that the system was very selective; even if you got into a monastery you wouldn't be expected to advance very far in your studies unless you actually showed some aptitude for this whole bilingual business; otherwise, they'd flog you until you learnt the liturgy and Psalms by heart and leave it at that.

Perhaps the other difference was that Latin wasn't anyone's mother tongue. I know that dd's friend's big brother - who has chosen the Welsh medium school (its more academic, and he's very much that way inclined) has said on occasion that he feels like a second class citizen as a mother tongue English speaker.

I guess there's a whole lot of politics wrapped up in the English/Welsh situation that affect children (also know another very lovely girl, now studying Law, who said she breathed a sigh of relief when she left, having been called a 'f*ing English hippy' every day of her school career). I should say I do know other children and adult ex-pupils from English speaking homes who love/d the school!!!

I am just reading this thread and feeling very of all those of you who have a chance to educate your children bilingually (in whatever language) in the state system. I don't see that as anything except an advantage, no matter whether your DC go on to use the language in their day to day life or not.

Its true Bramshott, there are lots of advantages. I guess until I was in the system, I didn't see that there are also down sides.

Yes Bramshott, we are very lucky. I thank my lucky stars that my parents chose to raise me bilingually, and to instill in me the importance of preserving minority languages.

We don't live a particularly Welsh speaking area of Wales but what you find here is that the Welsh medium schools are quite often perceived as 'better' than some of the English language schools. Ours has fantastic facilities, the school is new and it's actually very difficult now to get your children into Welsh medium education. It's a very middle class option where I live and there are more people wanting their children to have a Welsh medium education than there are places available.

I'm not a Welsh speaker, although I can understand some. My dh is a Welsh speaker and that's why we chose to have our children education via Welsh. Until junior age everything is done through Welsh - all the lessons. When they get to KS2 then English is introduced and education is more bilingual. But because a lot of children don't come from Welsh speaking homes they try, as much as possible, to completely immerse the children into the Welsh language and that does include encouraging the children to use Welsh at play times etc.

At home my three still choose to use English. But certainly where I live having a Welsh as a second language is helpful, particularly for the public sector because the language is asked for a lot.

And, of course, if children can learn a second language from a young enough age then it's easier for them to go on and learn other languages - without embarrassment or fear of failure.