Issue - meetings

Cabinet Member – Councillor Beca Brown

To consider a report on the above.

To accept the report and to note the observations and ask the Education Department to provide language medium data on provision in the secondary schools to the members of the committee.

The Cabinet Member for Education and officers from the Education Department were welcomed to the meeting.

Submitted – the report of the Cabinet Member for Education detailing the action plans in response to the recommendations of the Category 3 Secondary Schools Scrutiny Investigation report.

The Cabinet Member set out the context noting that:-

·         She wished to thank the members of the Investigation for their work on the report and for bringing the recommendations forward.

·         Meirion Prys Jones was commissioned to collaborate with the Department to revisit the Gwynedd Language Policy and national changes would also drive this field, such as the effort towards a million speakers, the new curriculum, the new categorisation arrangement, and whether that would become statutory or not, and also The Welsh Language Bill, which still needed to complete its journey through the Senedd.

·         She had complete faith in Meirion Prys Jones and his desire to convene a wide range of stakeholders to feed into the work, and wished to see the scrutinisers putting their ideas into the mix when the opportunity came.

·         Important work needed to be done surrounding bilingualism, bilingual learning and our expectations of that learning in Gwynedd. That would, in its turn, make our standpoint as a county, very clear to parents, and hopefully addressed what was noted in Recommendation 5.

·         There had been a lot of good collaboration with Gwynedd Language Initiative, Say Something in Welsh, Coleg Cymraeg and individuals such as Anni Llŷn and Tara Bandito to create community events and also in schools.

·         Progress in two specific fields had been difficult for the time being, namely the recommendations that dealt specifically with GwE, because the supporting schools landscape was being re-imagined, and the transitional schools, due to the challenging and unprecedented situation that had been, and continued, in one transitional school.

The Chair of the Investigation, Councillor Paul Rowlinson, thanked the Cabinet Member for her response to each of the Investigation's recommendation, noting some observations, as follows:-

Recommendation 1 - It was important that schools' language medium data was reconciled and checked when the Department was in a situation to do so as there was uncertainty at the moment whether it was collected on a regular basis between the different schools.

Recommendation 2 - It was very important to implement this recommendation when the new Education Language Policy was operational and they looked forward to seeing the outcome of Meirion Prys Jones' work on this. Everyone knew that Gwynedd was the foremost county in terms of Welsh-medium education, but because there was always a risk of being self-satisfied and of slipping back, it was important that this was implemented.

Recommendation 3 - They wished to thank the Department for writing to the WJEC and it was enquired whether any responses had been received to their letter.

Recommendation 4 - This was the key recommendation, and the Department was thanked for commissioning Meirion Prys Jones to collaborate with them.

Recommendation 5 - It was accepted that schools' arrangements must be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6