Unequivocal about independence

Leanne Wood's interview on Sharp End last night was music to my ears. She said exactly the right things. In particular, I liked what she had to say in answer to the question about whether Wales can afford to be independent in economic terms.

     

All in all it was a very assured performance which demonstrates her growing political stature. This is why we elected her as leader.

Leanne's IWA interview, and article on poverty

For any who haven't seen it, this is the video of a discussion between Leanne Wood and Lee Waters of the IWA hosted by Prifysgol Glyndwr last week. The audience was quite small, but the quality of the questions they asked at the end more than made up for it ... and the answers weren't too shabby either.

     

Lee mentioned an article Leanne had recently written for Prospect magazine on poverty. That was news to me, but just click the image below to download and read it.

     

Leanne's article is entitled Plaid Cymru, independence and closing the wealth gap. It's always good to see the argument for independence put into the context of what we need independence for.

As Scotland's Future highlights, under the Westminster system we are locked into one of the most unequal economic models in the developed world. Since 1975 income inequality among working-age people has increased faster in the UK than in any other country in the OECD. The increasing geographical imbalance concentrates jobs, population growth and investment in London and the south east of England, but no action has been taken to address this by successive Westminster governments. The only way to change this is to take responsibility for ourselves.

No sense of urgency ... and the WG doesn't care

Last weekend RhAG, Parents for Welsh-medium Education, held their annual conference in Cardiff. The event was reported by the BBC in Welsh, but not in English ... another example of the BBC continuing its policy of not bothering to report things that are of equal, if not greater, concern to those who don't speak Welsh than to those who do.

So I thought it would be a good idea to translate it for others to read:

RhAG: Growth in Welsh-medium education "too slow"

     

Parents for Welsh-medium Education (RhAG) have called on the Welsh Government to set more specific targets for local authorities to increase the number of Welsh-medium schools. During the organization's conference in Cardiff at the weekend, members said that "progress in expanding the Welsh-medium sector is far too slow".

According to RhAG, more needs to be done to ensure that the targets contained in the government's Welsh-medium Education Strategy [the BBC link is to Welsh in Education Strategic Plans] are met.

The government has acknowledged that they are likely to miss the targets, but said that it is the responsibility of local authorities to plan the provision of education in their areas.
 

Targets

RhAG claimed that the strategy is currently failing to facilitate the provision of new Welsh-medium schools, and that there was "a disconnect between central government strategy and what is happening locally".

The conference was held at the new Ysgol Treganna in the capital, which is not far from the Grangetown area. There has been considerable debate and protest in these areas of Cardiff, as in many other areas in Wales over the years, because of concerns about the provision of Welsh-medium education.

Lynne Davies, national chair of RhAG said, "We note that some counties have been proactive but others are still dragging their feet. As a result, progress in expanding the Welsh-medium sector is far too slow. There is still a gap between the aspirations of the Welsh Government in relation to Welsh-medium education and the progress needed to achieve the targets set out in the Welsh-medium Education Strategy.

"The Welsh Government has set a target that 25% of 7 year olds in Wales are educated through the medium of Welsh by 2015, increasing to 30% by 2020. At the moment, the strategy fails to facilitate the provision of a new Welsh-medium schools. The Welsh Government should set specific targets for local authorities to expand the number of Welsh-medium schools. There is very little hope of reaching this goal unless the Government issues clear instructions to ensure that local authorities take action."
 

"Responsibility of individual authorities"

In response to RhAG's comments, the Welsh Government has acknowledged that they are unlikely to meet these targets, but said it was the responsibility of individual authorities to plan Welsh-medium education.

A Welsh Government spokesman said, "We are increasing our support for Welsh-medium education and last week a campaign to provide information to parents was launched. However, we have to be honest in saying that we are not likely to reach the ambitious targets that were set in our Welsh-medium Education Strategy. These will be re-assessed in 2015 as part of the review of the Strategy and Action Plan.

"Earlier this year, the School Standards (Wales) Act 2013 was passed, which makes it a statutory requirement for local authorities to prepare Welsh in Education Strategic Plans. Subject to certain conditions, some authorities will need to measure the parental demand for Welsh-medium education and produce plans showing how they will respond to it. It is up to local authorities in Wales, not the Welsh Government, to plan the provision of education in their areas."

BBC Newyddion, 25 November 2013

There are two halves to this story. The first is to look at the targets in the Welsh-medium Education Strategy to see how much progress has actually been made. Very helpfully, though perhaps they regret it now, the Welsh Government publishes annual progress reports which can be downloaded from this page. After three reports, these are the figures showing progress to date on the first two key outcomes:

Outcome 1
More seven-year-old learners being taught through the medium of Welsh

Baseline (2009) ... 21%
Target for 2015 ... 25%
Target for 2020 ... 30%

Actual percentages
2009 ... 21.0%
2010 ... 21.8%
2011 ... 21.9%
2012 ... 21.9%

Progress to date ... 0.9% ... still 3.1% short of 2015 target

Outcome 2
More learners continuing to improve their language skills on transfer from primary to secondary school

Baseline (2009) ... 16%
Target for 2015 ... 19%
Target for 2020 ... 23%

Actual percentages
2009 ... 15.9%
2010 ... 16.0%
2011 ... 16.3%
2012 ... 16.8%

Progress to date ... 0.9% ... still 2.2% short of 2015 target

To save you from having to read a thousand words, I'll say it all with a picture instead.

  

But the second, and more damning, half of the story is the Government's response to this failure. This is their strategy, and it is totally unacceptable for them to wash their hands of it and try to put all the blame on local authorities instead.

Nor is it acceptable for them to say that they will wait until 2015 before taking any action. If the targets are not going to be met—which is perfectly obvious from the progress so far—ministers need to start banging a few heads together to make sure that things are addressed with a greater sense of urgency. Both Huw Lewis, as Education Minister, and Carwyn Jones, as Minister responsible for Welsh, need to act now. New interim targets need to be set prior to the 2015 review, and local authorities need to face some sort of sanction (probably financial) if they fail to meet them.

The opposition parties in the Assembly must also take their share of blame for not holding the Welsh Government to account when the annual progress reports were published. If we just sit on our hands and stay quiet when we should be standing up and speaking out, we let the Welsh Government get away with it.

The story beneath another anti-Welsh headline

The Western Mail and its sister paper Wales on Sunday have a sorry record when it comes to reporting about the Welsh language, and they have made it yet worse with this story today:

     Autistic children banned from school canteen - because they
     do not speak Welsh

To start, some background information would probably be helpful. Brynglas Primary School was closed in July because it had an unsustainably large number of surplus places. The building was then taken over in September this year by Ysgol Bro Teyrnon, Newport's third Welsh-medium school, which had been temporarily housed at Maindee Primary School. I wrote about it here. It was probably not an ideal site for Ysgol Bro Teyrnon because it is to the north of the city and very close to Ysgol Ifor Hael in Bettws, but Welsh-medium education is growing so quickly that there was little choice but to locate it in the first building that became available.

However there is a small unit for children with Autistic Spectrum Disorders on the same site. It is the newer building with the pitched roof to the left of the main building in the aerial image below, and the second image shows it as seen from street level. Rather than making it part of Ysgol Bro Teyrnon, Newport Council made the decision that the ASD unit would be run as a satellite of Maes Ebbw School, the existing special needs school in south west Newport.

     

     

Underneath Wales on Sunday's damning headline about autistic children being "banned" from the canteen, the facts of the story are rather different:

First, the children at the ASD unit were not banned from using the canteen by Ysgol Bro Teyrnon. That was a decision taken by the teaching staff of the ASD unit and Maes Ebbw School. Apparently they thought it would be confusing for children with ASD if the children they were mixing with were speaking a language they didn't understand.

Second, even though teachers at the ASD unit decided it was better for the children not to mix, there is nothing to stop the ASD unit pupils from using the Ysgol Bro Teyrnon's canteen at a different time. That proposal was made in the very first week of term.

Third, it seems that the head of Maes Ebbw School has written to the parents of children at the ASD unit asking them what they would prefer to do. If they disagree with the teachers' initial decision and want the children to mix with children speaking Welsh, there's no reason why they can't. If they want them to use the canteen at another time, there's no reason why they can't. If they want them to eat in the classroom there's no reason why they can't. The only proviso is that there needs to be agreement between parents and teachers at the ASD as to which of these three options is best, as it obviously wouldn't be practical to have some mixing, some using the canteen at another time, and some eating in class. Lack of agreement is what seems to have triggered this story.

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It seems clear that the parents of seven children at the ASD unit are not happy, and nobody can blame them for that. But it would appear that their unhappiness is due to rather more than just their children's eating arrangements. Despite what the head of Maes Ebbw says, it is very hard to see how "being part of the Maes Ebbw family" is of any practical benefit to children in the ASD unit because Maes Ebbw is 5km away on the other side of the city. The arrangement is one of administrative convenience, not one that is designed to meet the educational needs of autistic children. The lack of opportunity for contact with other children is the root of the problem.

In educational terms, and subject of course to individual assessments and the level of disability, it is generally right for children in an ASD unit to have a good degree of contact with children in mainstream schools, and the very last thing anyone would want is for them to be isolated. Autism is isolating enough in itself without making things worse. The best way to deal with this is to have small ASD units attached to mainstream schools ... but they must obviously be attached to schools which have the same medium of instruction.

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What has happened is that Newport's plans have been badly thought through, and create as many problems as they are designed to solve. As can be seen by reading the documents on this page, the council had planned to close the ASD unit at Brynglas and establish a new ASD school on the premises currently occupied by Gaer Infants, again in the south west of the city. But this would mean closing the current Gaer Infants School and moving the pupils to Gaer Junior School, which is obviously contentious. [Note: The decision to close Gaer Infants has now been confirmed. See comments for details.] The two buildings are shown below, with the infants school on the right.

     

But the next problem is that Gaer Infants is much too big for twelve autistic children, and the documentation makes it clear that the only way the plan would be viable would be for the new school to admit additional pupils with ASD from outside Newport. The fundamental flaw with this proposal is that it involves educating autistic children further away from their homes, as well as concentrating more of them into one building, which is the exact opposite of trying to integrate them as much as possible with children in mainstream schools.

There are plenty of English-medium schools in Newport with surplus places, and it should be possible to choose one, or maybe two, of them and remodel some of that surplus space to suit the additional requirements of autistic children. Those children would be educated closer to their homes, and doing things this way would actually safeguard the future of one or two English-medium schools which might otherwise have to close, which is a win-win situation.

However it would appear from the documentation that the amalgamation of Gaer Infants and Juniors is probably justified anyway on the grounds of rationalizing surplus places; and if that is the case I would suggest that a better use of the Gaer Infants building would be to establish a much-needed fourth Welsh-medium primary school in the south west of the city.

Hug a Husky

From Peter Brookes in the Times:

    

Live in Wales: Learn in Welsh ... the video

Following the lowest of low-key launches for the Welsh Government's new campaign telling parents about the benefits of Welsh-medium education, I've just discovered that they've put up this video on their YouTube channel.

     

It's a great video but, as I write this, it has only been viewed 21 times.

So I'd like to invite people reading this to change things by sending the YouTube link to everyone you know using Twitter, Facebook or just plain email.

The myth about high levels of immigration

The news that Ireland now has the highest level of net emigration per 1,000 inhabitants of any country in Europe is naturally a matter of great concern for the Irish. I wouldn't want to detract from how serious that is in any way.

   

However what struck me about the graph above from An Sionnach Fionn is that net immigration into the UK is not particularly great. It is only just above the EU average, with twelve other European countries having greater, and sometimes far greater, levels of net immigration.

Denmark, Finland and Belgium have greater net immigration than the UK. Germany, Austria, Sweden, Lichenstein and Italy have net levels of immigration more than twice that of the UK. Malta has three times more. Switzerland and Norway have four times more. Luxembourg has more than eight times more.

The raw data are available here on EuroStat.