Conservative zealots caught in their own hypocrisy

Iolo Webb

Last week, Gwynedd Council announced a plan to phase out monoglot English-medium education in the county and move towards at least 70% of their education being through the medium of Welsh.

This means that the last few non-Welsh-medium schools will transition into Welsh-medium so that pupils who have so far missed out will have the opportunity to become bilingual – that is, proficient in both English and Welsh.

Of course, the imperial-minded Conservatives in Wales have predictably thrown up their hands in horror.

Darren Millar, their leader in the Senedd has called the changes “totally unacceptable” and has called on “linguistic zealots” to “remember that there are two official languages in our country that all local councils and education authorities should cater for: English and Welsh.”

He’s also claimed that the plan would result in “a lack of choice for parents and pupils.”

Inconsistency

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Darren Millar appears to be unaware of a great inconsistency in his party’s understanding and attitude towards bilingualism, support for which is immensely vocal in some places but lacking elsewhere.

In December 2024, Tory MS and the party’s former Senedd leader, Andrew RT Davies quite clearly reminded us of Wales’ bilingual status when he claimed that making Welsh-only constituency names would “disenfranchise English speakers.”

Now he’s at it again, this time claiming that “by this logic, Welsh-medium schools would be closed in majority-English speaking parts of Wales.” – something that would destroy bilingualism in many parts of Wales, rather than enhancing it as Gwynedd Council are proposing.

The Conservatives’ concept of bilingual education appears to mean monoglot English-medium education (with a dash of Welsh being thrown in now and then if they don’t object) - whereas native Welsh speakers are all expected to be bilingual.

Gwynedd’s existing English-medium schools are currently used as a way of avoiding the Welsh language.

This is unacceptable in a system that is supposed to achieve bilingualism for all students.

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Insight

A former staff member with first-hand experience of Welsh language standards recently provided some insight into the inadequacy in this respect of Ysgol Friars in Bangor, one of the last monoglot English-medium schools left in Gwynedd.

The source noted that the most able learners are not confident in using even the most rudimentary, conversational Welsh; that the school culture shows no interest in creating confident speakers of the language; and that pressure on students to pass Welsh second language GCSEs result in any aspects of fun in learning being non-existent, with little or no time to improve students’ Welsh oral skills.

The former staff member was also told that “only around 15% of the school’s curriculum would be in Welsh”, and he said that “as long as they would say “bore da” and “diolch”, that would count that as “normalising the language”.

According to a 2017 Estyn report, 70% of Friars pupils could speak some Welsh, but only 16% were fluent – a dreadful statistic for a school in a majority Welsh-speaking county.

However, this wouldn’t be viewed as “unacceptable” by the Conservatives.

Whether Tory politicians like Millar and RT Davies realise it or not, monoglot English-medium schools do not enable pupils to leave the school being able to speak the two official languages of Wales (with few exceptions), whereas in Welsh-medium schools, bilingualism is assured, and pupils leave with fluency in two languages under their belt.

Monolingual education

There is no monoglot Welsh education in Wales from the age of 7, but there most certainly is monolingual English education, and that appears to be what the Tories are calling for – denying thousands of children even in Gwynedd (let alone the rest of Wales) the ability to speak their own country’s native tongue, which quite frankly, is discrimination in a country that’s supposed to be bilingual.

Gwynedd Council’s proposals set an example of ensuring bilingual education for every child to other county councils across Wales, so that every child in the country will one day be bilingual. Is this not something that the Tories would want? The only way to achieve full bilingualism is by promoting Welsh-medium education which facilitates fluency in both Welsh and English.

As Welsh language campaigner and education expert Toni Schiavone has said, “every student has the right to leave school fluent in Welsh as well as English.” In contrast, the Tories appear to want to maintain monoglot English-medium education which deprives pupils of the ability to speak Welsh, whilst loudly campaigning for ‘bilingualism’. One minute they’re calling for bilingual constituency names, and the next minute they want to maintain a system that achieves nothing but proficiency in a single language. This is pure hypocrisy.

So, Darren and Andrew, which is it? Genuine bilingualism for all, or the failing system which you monoglottist zealots are desperate to retain?

You can’t have it both ways.