Cabinet Member
– Councillor Beca Brown
To consider
a report on the above.
Additional documents:
Decision:
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.
Minutes:
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