Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg
The best endeavours start with a positive bunch of people who care about what they do, and whose greatest motivation is doing their best for the people they’re doing it for.
That’s why the development of the new curriculum for Wales is going to be a success.
We have schools, external experts, supportive commentators and a focused group of Welsh Government officials, all driving forward with the same aim – to produce a fantastic school curriculum for the young people of Wales.
This blog will help to tell the story.
Steve Davies – Director, Education Directorate
I look forward to keeping up to date with the new curriculum developments via this blog
Strongly disagree with Steve Davis’s take on the future of Welsh education as the Welsh education simply has no future until the establishment figures out that the imposed Welsh language and prioritising of Welsh Medium education by compulsion and diktat is counter-productive and is damaging most children (Evidence-based statement)
do you mean to do the best for every child in Wales or just the ones whose parents are willing to consent to Welsh medium education??? In Carmarthenshire eradacation of the English stream is happenng right now with children being given little or no choice in language choice. Director of education Rob Sully has stated in an education scrutinee committee that they intend to eradicate english stream education for primary aged children – how is this fair, not every child is capable of learning through the medium of welsh, as much as I appreciate the need to promote our beautiful language, I don’t think it should be done in such a discriminatory way.
Any curriculum for Wales which fails to provide continuity of education with England at all key stages has already potentially failed most of the children and most of the families in Wales. It will also fail Wales because it will limit the free movement of skilled labour into Wales, though I doubt if it will stem the flow out since the attraction of English schools to parents in Wales seems to grow year by year. We live in a world where ambitious parents will move across town to get into the catchment area of a particularly good school. The chance of these parents moving their high-achieving children into Wales is increasingly remote so the skills of these parents are lost to both the public and private sectors in significant, and growing, areas of Wales. One major loss is, of course, skilled teachers…
The need for continuity of education was recognised by the Ministry of Defence as long ago as 1999 when they introduced the Day School Allowance (North Wales) for the children of service personnel posted to Gwynedd or Anglesey where the forced Welsh-medium immersion created problems for children posted in and out of the area. They are not alone. It was later extended to cover 5 LEAs in North Wales including Conwy, Denbighshire, and Flintshire which were all judged to be unable to provide continuity of education with England. The DSA (NW) was introduced, according to a FoIA response I obtained in 2011, ‘following recurring casework submitted by personnel assigned to the area in question’. This looks like MoD code for parents who were very unhappy with the education provided in state schools in North Wales.
There are a significant number of parents who are very unhappy with the curriculum and its execution provided in state schools in Wales, particularly when it involves forced Welsh-medium immersion, but it seems these parents have no voice. They are not adequately represented by the political class, the civil service, the teaching Unions, the teachers themselves, by academics seconded to advise, in any significant way by the media, nor by any pressure group. Consequently the status quo, which has failed dismally since the late 1990s, not only remains in place but it is clearly going to be extended.
Any new curriculum which excludes the removal of compulsory Welsh at all key stages, and the absolute banning of forced Welsh-medium immersion, is doomed to fail IMHO.
I have no doubt you will all carry on regardless. As others have noted on this blog – nobody is listening! Failure looks to have reached a tipping point where a return to acceptable standards looks to be almost impossible. On the face of it you are rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.