A firmer footing for the future of the Welsh language - Mid and West Wales Senedd Member Cefin Campbell
A quarter of a century after the opening of this Senedd, the vast majority of children and young people in Wales continue to be deprived of the opportunity to learn Welsh via our education system and the chance to use the language in their everyday lives.
In 2014, 21.9% of primary school pupils received Welsh-medium education; by 2024, the corresponding percentage was 22.5%, which is an extremely small increase of just 0.6%.
In fact, over the same period for pupils in secondary schools, the percentage of those receiving their education through the medium of Welsh has actually decreased from 14.2% to 13.5%.
The fact that we have stood still for an entire decade underlines the need for a complete transformation of the current system in order to see significant growth in the number of pupils receiving Welsh-medium education, and a fundamental change in the way that Welsh is taught in English-medium schools. In recent years, we have reached widespread consensus that legislation was vital to ensure change: this opportunity presented itself with the Welsh Language and Education Bill, which passed its final hurdles in the Senedd in May, and that with unanimous approval from all parties.
The commitment to legislate came via the Cooperation Agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government, signed in late 2021. In the years since then, we have seen tremendous effort from those people who've worked on it: the stakeholders who submitted evidence, members of the education committee, the clerks and officials, the lawyers, and the researchers.
It has also been an admirable case study in our Welsh model of cross-party cooperation. I must thank the Cabinet Secretary, Mark Drakeford, for a number of constructive and positive conversations during the passage of the Bill. We haven’t agreed on everything, and I wanted to go ‘further and faster’ on many areas, but he listened and changes were made.
The Conservatives – led in this policy area by Sam Kurtz and Tom Giffard – have also had their voice heard and won amendments of their own.
To be clear, the Bill that has been passed in the Senedd is not one the one that I would have preferred, and in my opinion, it falls short in some key areas.
However, I look forward to seeing the bill put to work after the 2026 Senedd election – hopefully by a Plaid Cymru-led government – so that eventually, every child in Wales receives the most valuable gift possible: the ability to speak the language of their homeland and all the cultural and historic richness that comes with it.
Cefin Campbell, Member of the Senedd for Mid and West Wales
