Welsh Medium Education Scandal

  Pleasel refer to the editorial.

      Professor Sioned Davies, who has now retired, and the Welsh Language Society, which is a direct action group, is demanding in a Nation Cymru article  that her 2015 Donaldson Curriculum recommendations should be implemented. Her legal teaching status is Tom, Dick and Mary.  The recommendations are eight years old and contemporary research illustrates that her findings are passed their sell-by date.

         Mark Drakeford has promised in the media that English-speaking children will never be compelled to learn a new language to be educated through the medium of Welsh. It would be an infringement of their human rights if they were, because children will always learn most effectively in their most fluent language.

          Professor Sioned Davies is a Professor of Welsh, not education. Her recommendation that all children in Wales should take the a common Welsh Language G.C.S.E., the one children in Welsh-Medium take, can only be  implemented if all children are compelled  to learn Welsh to be educated through the medium of it so they can achieve that standard. It appears to have been a surreptitious proposal. The intent was not clearly articulated to the public. 

         Hedledd Fychan Plaid Cymru expresses her dream of making every child in Wales confident bilingual speakers. She clearly wants children to devotes thousands of hours to learn Welsh instead of devoping their reading, maths and science.

       Q.T.S. teachers, who are intensively trained in schools of education, not Welsh, who are registered, are the legal authorities on children’s learning, not professors of Welsh who have never taught a child nor university academics with Welsh Language degrees. Unlike teachers they not registered.They are not required to be open and hones, and there is no protection for the public from institutional cover ups.

     Professor Paul Howard-Jones is a educational neuroscientist in Bristol School of Education. He refers to teachers having the equivalent impact upon the brain as neurosurgeons. University Welsh Language academics are not legal authorities in community or school teaching up to A'Level. Professor Margaret Brown, who is a very brilliant mathematical educator, for instance. She spent her career in school and schools of education. University maths academics do not teach maths up to A'Level.

        Children in Wales have a legal human right to have the opportunity to reach their full learning potential. Gold plated research illustrates that children will always learn most effectively in their most fluent language and that if they learn a new language and a subject content simultaneously this will cause cognitive overload. Their learning of both will be retarded. 

       There has been a failure in Wales to understand that the language children learn through the medium of  is fundmanetal to determining their learning attainment, Welsh or English, and fluency takes thousands of hours to develop and the fluency, including literaracy that children will develop will also be a matter of degree.

      English speaking parents invest a vast amount of time in their children’s education by developing their early language skills and knowledge and they continue to provide rich language environments for their them. The Princess of Wales is encouraging parents to support their children's learning.

      Parents cannot support their children if they are educated in a language thay they cannot speak. Native speakers develop their oral language learning naturally from birth. Older language learners and adults cannot jump back into the pram.

       Parents have a legal human right to support their children’s learning. Children have a legal human right to receive that support.         

         Shah on paper on the Irish Language refers the emphasis on developing the Irish language in schooling is simplistic, and it does not address the core issue of language survival (See hgunn.uk - Welsh Language Papers). It putting the blame for the decline of the Welsh Language on English speaker

      Welsh speakers will be engaging in xenaophobic prejudice if they do not respect children's human rights and demand that native English speaking children must be educated through the medium of Welsh. They have a human right to be educated through their native English language as much Welsh speakers theirs.

English Medium Education

     The Welsh Government is preparing create a Bill that it appears for English medium that schools must create confident Welsh Language speakers. This will require more lesson and learning time to be devoted to it. Children are not even learning proper Welsh. They are learning an artificial language because Welsh is such a difficult language to learn.

    The Welsh Language Learning College which appears to be directed by university Welsh Language academics who possess no legal teaching qualifications appears to be advising on Welsh Language practice in schools. The Head of Tutoring in the college is a university academic. She has never attended a school of education or taught a class. She is not registered. Professional Q.T.S. teachers are.

      Aran Jones is a quack who is playing being a teacher and researcher practising his delusional S.S.I.W. Welsh Learning method under the Welsh Government brand. He is practising what Confucius  in 551 B.C. referred to a Feed the Duck Human are not parrots they are intelligent beings.  His profession was an environmental council officer.   Anyone associated Anyone associated with Aran Jones is toxic.

         Q.T.S. Welsh Language teachers are highly trained. There are local authority Welsh Language teachers and teachers trainers, who are also Estyn inspectors. Why University academics and a quack appear to be informing on school practice, who have no understanding of children's needs, is a complete mystery

 Aran Jones is making things up and advising learners how not to learn. His advice is a danger to society.

Plenary 

    University Welsh Language academics do not understand children’s learning needs and that children go to school to be educated, not to learn Welsh. The world of professional teaching is a secret garden to them.

        Daniel Kortz, who is in Harvard Graduate School of Education in America, which is the equivalent to our Oxford and Cambridge University, refers to the trade offs in curriculum development and the damage that having too high expectations for children’s attainment can have on children’s education. The university academics are too ignorant to understand that there is a seven year spread in children's learning potential.

    All subject boundaries are artificial constructs and the same principles of teaching and learning are applied across the English speaking countries across the world. The notion that the university academics and quacks like Aran Jones are going to discover miracle methods of learning anything is delusional. Learning cannot be poured into learners brain like petrol into a tank.

          Professor Dylan Wiliam who is a Professor of Education, not Welsh, has lectured on education across the world. He contended  that good things must be replaced with be to better things in the curriculum. The problem with children’s reading development is that it takes thousand of hours to develop into fluency. There is not sufficient time in school day to allow it to be totally developed in schools. Developing fluency in basic skills, which new languages are, requires thousands of hours of practice and it will always remain a matter of degrees 

        Maths is a very important subject (FT Article).  It is a subject that even intelligent children find difficulty to learn and develop fluency in it. Its importance is recognised across the world. A Financial Times article on maths illustrates its importance. The more time children address to learning it the higher their attainment will be in the subject. I am confident parents want their children to do well in maths. 

         There is no evidence of how confident Welsh speakers can be created. Governments cannot learn for children. Ideally all children should be able to reach G.C.S.E. Level 3 in English, but 33% of them will always find learning more difficult than others. I am confident the parents want their children to do well in English, especially as it the language of higher education.

          Keith Field who is a distinguished second language teaching authority refers to second language as a preparation for future learning. Professor Sarah Eaton in Canada, who is a second language teaching authority and professor of education, contended class language lesson cannot provide anything resembling language fluency.  New language cannot be learnt in classrooms. They need to be lived thorough. 

     It takes adult around 10,000 hours for adult to develop anything resembling native fluency in a new language. Children will need to learn the same language as adults.

          Professor McChriost who is an authority on language planning in Cardiff School of Welsh has claimed that minority languages cannot be resurrected and children will always prefer to speak their mother tongue. Dr Margaret Newcombe Cardiff School of Welsh admits that most children in Welsh medium education speak Welsh in the school yard and at home.  

        Hywel Jones Cardiff University who was on statistician on  the Welsh Language Board stated that ambition to create million Welsh Speakers by 2050 is unattainable. He also refers to in a B.B.C. article the figure of  Welsh speakers being misrepresented in the public domain @ 27% and the population of Welsh speakers being around 10% to 12%. This is the figure Howard has referred to in his researched book. It must accepted the larger stamps were available for whoever created the ambition to write their rationale on the back of it.

           The question that must asked of the university academics who appeared to have informed on the new proposed Bill is what do they not want to be practiced in the school curriculum or to given less attention to it. Do they want children to devote less time to reading, maths and science? It appears parents have a right to be told this.

Additional information - Schools Crisid
 

"Pupils in Year 3 have been hit particularly hard by the Covid pandemic, with a steeper drop in learning than older primary schoolchildren, research shows."

     "An analysis of teacher assessments from more than half a million pupils also suggests that the pandemic has delayed the educational recovery of pupils in this year group more than children in the years above."

      "Primary multi-academy trust leaders, heads and education experts have warned that the race to recover lost learning and development among younger pupils after the Covid pandemic is a “ticking time bomb”.

      "One primary MAT leader told Tes  that supporting current primary pupils to reach key developmental goals is like “building on quicksand” due to disruption to foundation years, with some seeing standards in areas such as phonics falling even lower for current cohorts than last year’s."

"It comes after senior strategic government adviser Tim Oates told Tes the government had acknowledged that catch-up efforts did not reach all those who needed it, and that evidence shows the “severe problems of child development, equity and attainment which were caused by the pandemic are still with us, not behind us”, especially in the primary and early years."