First Minister Mark Drakeford has said he does not want all children educated through the medium of Welsh in future. Mr Drakeford said making the language compulsory would alienate people who are sympathetic to the language and set it back.
Language campaigners criticised the First Minister, saying his attitude would mean the majority of young people continue to leave school unable to speak Welsh with confidence.
Mr Drakeford, a Welsh speaker, was responding in the Senedd on Wednesday, December 7, after the 2021 Census found the number of Welsh speakers had fallen by around 24,000 over the last decade. He said that making all schools Welsh medium was not the answer to increase the number of people speaking the language in Wales.
Read more: Number of Welsh speakers fell over past decade, census data shows
Data published on Tuesday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that in 2021 an estimated 538,000 usual residents, or 17.8% of people in Wales aged three years and over, reported being able to speak Welsh. This was a decrease from 562,000 usual resident or 19.0% of the population that could speak, read, and write in the language in 2011.
According to the ONS one of the main factors contributing to the overall decrease in the percentage of people who reported being able to speak Welsh between 2011 and 2021 was the decrease in children and young people aged three to 15 years who reported this skill. You can read more about the report here.
Mr Drakeford was asked in First Minister's Questions by Plaid leader Adam Price whether his language policies were failing to develop Welsh medium education and if he'd commit to providing it for all children.
He replied that "the most important thing about the Welsh language is to maintain the support of people in Wales for everything that we're trying to do," arguing that making Welsh medium education compulsory risked threatening that goodwill.
Pushed further by Mr Price on mandatory Welsh language education, he was emphatic, saying: "It's a solution that my party will not adopt; let me be as clear as I can with him about that. Compulsory education for everybody through the medium of Welsh is not the answer to the Welsh language in Wales. It will alienate people who are sympathetic to the Welsh language; it will set the language backwards not forwards. You are perfectly entitled to make that your policy, if you like, but I'm clear with you, as clear as I can: it will not be the policy of the Welsh Government."
Catrin Dafydd from Cymdeithas yr Iaith's education group said that they were "amazed" that Mr Drakeford had chosen to "ignore the injustice" of the situation. She also noted that setting a goal of reaching 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050 would not achieve anything unless the government would take action to ensure growth.
In August of this year, the Welsh language pressure group called on the Welsh Government to set a target of 2050 to make all schools Welsh language. As part of its programme for government 2021-2026, the Welsh Government said it would legislate to strengthen and increase Welsh language provision.
In a statement, Ms Dafydd said: "We are amazed that a politician like Mark Drakeford who believes in social justice chooses to ignore the injustice of the current situation by rejecting the reasonable calls to give all children Welsh-medium education over time.
"As things stand, 80% of our young people are deprived of the Welsh language by the education system itself. Through these regressive comments in the Senedd, it's clear the First Minister would choose to exclude the majority of our young people from the Welsh language for generations to come, instead of opening the door for everyone to have access to the language."
Catrin Dafydd added: "The Welsh Language Education Act should be an Act for those who are being left behind, a law that will ensure that every young person who leaves school in future will have a real choice of which languages they want to use in their daily lives. Decisions like this should be made from a child-centric perspective, but unfortunately these comments show that the First Minister is willing to block the interests of future generations.
"Given Tuesday's Census figures, these comments raise the question of whether Mark Drakeford's Government is serious about the million target at all. Setting a goal is not going to achieve anything without taking action to ensure growth.
"Right now, thousands of children are missing out on the opportunity to become fluent in Welsh, and we know that the situation is not going to change overnight. But a long-term goal of placing all schools on the journey towards Welsh-medium education by 2050 is more than reasonable. It appears from his comments that the First Minister is actively choosing to prevent 80% of Welsh children from becoming fluent and confident Welsh speakers."
Speaking in the Senedd on Wednesday, Education Minister Jeremy Miles said that compulsory Welsh medium education was not the only way to make sure young people left school fluent in the language.
He said: "At the end of the day, as you heard the First Minister say yesterday: we all want to ensure that Welsh-medium education is available to all children in Wales who wish to access it. But, at the end of the day, what yesterday's figures tell me too is that we need to unite the education system, the Welsh-medium and English-medium around a commitment to ensuring that every child can leave school, whether you're in Welsh-medium schools or English-medium education, with fluency in the Welsh language.
"That's the opportunity here. Whatever kind of education you access, you should leave as a confident Welsh speaker, and to close that gap that certainly exists at the moment between Welsh-medium education and those learning Welsh in the English-medium sector. There are some excellent examples in the English-medium sector of people learning Welsh, but it is inconsistent, and we need to improve standards generally. So, that's the aim."
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