Language campaigners have announced they intend mounting a legal challenge to a decision to keep teaching Welsh as a second language claiming it's at odds with the First Minister's policy.   

Three years ago, the Government received a report it commissioned by Professor Sioned Davies which called for urgent changes to the way Welsh is taught in schools, including scrapping the concept of teaching Welsh as a 'second language' and creating a continuum of teaching through the medium of Welsh increasingly in every school. Last year, the First Minister Carwyn Jones said he thought "the concept of 'second language Welsh' creates an artificial distinction, and we do not believe that this provides a useful basis for policy-making for the future". 

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During a consultation by Qualifications Wales about the matter, the majority of respondents called for the abolition of GCSE second language Welsh. Despite Government policy and the response to the consultation, Philip Blaker, Chief Executive of Qualifications Wales, told Education Secretary, Kirsty Williams, that the organisation wanted to keep the second language Welsh qualification.   

 

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg has commissioned lawyers to prepare to challenge Qualifications Wales' decision. The pressure group has today launched a financial appeal to contribute to the legal costs. Explaining the decision to consider a legal challenge, Toni Schiavone, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg's education spokesperson commented:  

 

"We haven't taken this decision lightly, but this is a serious situation. Around eighty percent of our young people are being deprived of Welsh language fluency every year. Everyone accepts that radical change is needed, because the present system is failing. However, officials have failed to act on the main recommendations of Professor Sioned Davies' report for three years.  

"Qualifications Wales has ignored the First Minister's policy and the vast majority of the responses to its consultation. A complete overhaul of the system is needed, not fiddling on the sidelines. Sioned Davies' report, which has been sitting on the shelf for three years, said that second language Welsh needed abolishing and instead a single new qualification, based on one continuum of learning, for every pupil should be introduced. In those three years since the urgent recommendations, very little has changed. It's essential that teaching Welsh as a second language ends in 2018 and that one comprehensive qualification is brought in instead."