Transcript Templed PowerPoint Bwrdd yr Iaith Gymraeg

Sustainability through Integrated
Planning: Reflections on the future
of Welsh in education policy in
Wales
Dr Catrin Redknap
Welsh Language Board, Cardiff, Wales
[email protected]
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
v
Need 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 Welshmedium 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)