Institute of Welsh Affairs

Friday, December 05, 2008

Planning needed to meet growth in demand for Welsh-medium schools

John Osmond considers the main recommendation of an IWA study:

The Assembly Government should enforce its requirement that Welsh local authorities should undertake parental surveys to assess demand for Welsh medium education, says a new IWA report, Creating a Bilingual Wales: The Role of Welsh in Education. The report says that despite an Assembly Government requirement, now more than five years old, so far only three authorities have carried out systematic surveys.

The report surveys the 14 Welsh counties with fewer than 20 per cent Welsh speakers – those identified by the Assembly Government as requiring surveys – and finds that advances have been made where the surveys have been undertaken:

Newport carried out a survey in 2002 and as a result the city’s second Welsh-medium primary school, Ysgol Ifor Hael, opened in September 2008.
A survey in Wrexham, published in October 2007, revealed that 43 per cent of parents would choose Welsh medium education if there was a school reasonably close to their homes. As a result a plan for the expansion of Welsh-medium education is now under discussion.
Swansea has also carried out a parental survey revealing that 28 per cent of parents who responded wanted a Welsh-medium education for their children regardless of its proximity to their homes. If it were available within reasonable reach the demand rose to 38 per cent.

Former South Wales AM Owen John Thomas, who carried out the survey of the 14 local authorities for the IWA report, said: “The greatest potential for gaining new Welsh speakers lies in the latent demand within these counties and this is substantiated by the growth of Welsh medium education across Wales.

“However, although several years have elapsed since they were first required to assess the demand for Welsh-medium school places, most of the local authorities have made little progress.”

In his contribution to the report Meirion Prys Jones, Chief Executive of the Welsh Language Board, notes that although the number of children in Welsh-medium schools has increased by 16 per cent over the past decade, to more than 53,000, there has not been a corresponding increase in Welsh-medium schools.

“Therefore, we must come to the conclusion that more children have gone to the same schools, “ he says. “This proves that an intentional policy of maximising the increase in the numbers of children and opening more Welsh schools was not implemented. This would have offered Welsh-medium education closer to the homes of an increasing number of children, and within their natural communities, and Welsh-medium education would have been far more accessible.”

He argues that the main difficulty facing the enhancement of Welsh-medium education is the lack of a national policy. This he puts down to a lack of political will, adding: “There has been no effort to ensure that the civil service, which is responsible for Welsh-medium education, has developed an understanding of this part of the education system. This is despite the fact that one in every four primary schools teaches pupils through the medium of Welsh.

“If you looked at the Welsh Assembly Government's education department today, you would see that the number of people there who are familiar with the Welsh-medium education and training sector is very limited. How, therefore, can this Department plan for the Welsh-medium sector with trust and confidence?

“It is time for the Welsh Assembly Government to adopt the role of a body responsible for planning the development of Welsh-medium education and training. The elected government of Wales needs to ensure that it has the capacity to plan the future of education in Wales in its entirety, not only the English-medium element. The sad truth of the matter is that that is all that has been done so far.”

Other contributors to the report explore problems facing teachers in classrooms where pupils have varying degrees of Welsh language ability and innovative Welsh teaching approaches in the Rhondda, Ceredigion and Gwynedd.

Under the terms of the 2007 One Wales coalition between Labour and Plaid Cymru agreement the Assembly Government is due to produce a consultation document on a strategy for developing Welsh-medium education early in 2009. The commitment in the One Wales agreement states:

“We will create a national Welsh-medium Education Strategy to develop effective provision from nursery through to further and higher education backed up by an implementation programme."

John Osmond is Director of the IWA. Creating a Bilingual Wales: The Role of Welsh in Education is available from the IWA at £15 (discount to IWA members).

Monday, December 01, 2008

Borrowing powers sidelined

John Osmond looks at the implications of a Scottish row for future funding of the National Assembly:

On the face of it the terms of reference for the Assembly Government’s Commission on ‘Funding and Finance in Wales’, chaired by hedge fund manager and IWA trustee Gerry Holtham, are pretty innocuous. They are to review the operation of the Barnett formula which allocates the Welsh block grant and to:

“… identify possible alternative funding mechanisms including the scope for the Welsh Assembly Government to have tax varying powers as well as greater powers to borrow.”

It is the possibility of the Assembly Government gaining powers to borrow which suddenly have become controversial, following an extraordinary admission by one of the economists that have been advising an equivalent funding commission in Scotland.

In Scotland the Calman Commission (see Fiscal Federalism post) has commissioned a group of 11 experts to examine the options for giving the Scottish Parliament greater financial powers. Now one of them, Hughes Hallett, Professor of Macroeconomics at Strathclyde University, said he had wanted the expert group to look at whether the Scottish Government should be given the power to borrow money but claims this was glossed over in the final report.

As he told Scotland on Sunday at the weekend: "Had it been a criminal issue, you would call it tampering with the evidence by not considering all the options."

In the final version of the report, compiled by the experts under the leadership of Professor Anton Muscatelli, Principal of Heriot-Watt university, Hughes Hallett said debt was hardly mentioned.

He said:

"There is a very brief note that debt and borrowing may be necessary, but there is no discussion of any of the consequences or consideration of how much debt a Scottish Government can issue. The issue is how we can manage debt and how it can be issued. It would be helpful to know what that was."

Hughes Hallett added that he could understand why the Labour Government might not want such issues fully explored if ministers were not keen on handing over more powers to Holyrood.
He said:

"You can see from the London end why they might not want to get into some of these issues. I can understand the political view from London that you don't want to go into it.

"I could imagine that if you're a sitting government, you probably have vested interest in keeping things more or less as they are. There may be all sorts of political reasons for keeping things as they are and they are legitimate. But they are not reasons to keep options out of the discussions."

Hughes Hallett explained that the ability to issue debt was essential if Scotland were to replace the current Barnett Formula funding mechanism with an assigned taxation system, which would see the Scottish Government's funds being calculated on the basis of the tax revenues paid by Scots to the UK Treasury.

He said the ability to issue debt was essential because tax revenue adjusts quickly to variations in income, but public expenditure for projects such as new schools and hospitals adjust at a slower pace.

Therefore the ability to raise money by going into debt is essential to keep projects going when tax revenue diminishes during economic downturns.

"You can't just close hospitals and schools every time the economy slows down," Hughes Hallett said. He also argued that the report had omitted to explore fully the merits of other economic models that could form the basis for a new constitutional settlement for Scotland.

"If you have to decide what you want and if people can't find that laid out, it (the report] doesn't have much legitimacy. What's missing here is any consideration of how these sorts of schemes might work."

Hughes Hallett said the report failed to examine the "trade-offs" between various systems. The economist claimed the report did not properly analyse the advantages and disadvantages of the Barnett Formula, assigned taxes and fiscal autonomy.

• John Osmond is Director of the IWA.

Welsh Climate Change Challenge

Cathy McLean provides a reality check on the Assembly Government’s carbon emission targets:

Nineteen solar panels per home in Swansea and 28 per cent fewer cars on the road in Bangor are just some of the methods Wales will need to achieve government carbon reduction targets, according to a report launched by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

The report, The Climate Challenge – Your City, Your Responsibility (available as a PDF in English and Welsh), uses scenario planning and statistical data sources to demonstrate the lengths three Welsh cities will need to go in transport, energy supply and energy demands of the built environment to meet the Assembly Government’s 20 per cent carbon reduction targets by 2010.

Wales was the first government in the world to legally embed sustainability in all its actions and the Assembly Government has ambitions to achieve the UK’s 60 per cent target for reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 – even bettering this with latest target now being at an 80 per cent reduction. They have also recently pledged to achieve annual 3 per cent reductions in green house gas emissions from 2011 onwards. These targets demonstrate the Government’s commitment to lead by example. While these aspirations should be applauded, the RICS research highlights the significant challenges needed to meet them.

According to the National Assembly's Members Research Service, Wales is currently producing more carbon dioxide per person than the rest of the UK and is the 12th highest producer in the world. Given Wales’s history of mineral extraction and manufacturing, and our ongoing presence of heavy industry, these statistics reflect an infrastructure that has traditionally relied on high carbon use.

Transport is also a hot topic for businesses, cities and public services. Strategies outlined in the RICS report highlight the extent we will need to go to make an impact in this area. One example is persuading the people of Bangor to drive 28 per cent fewer miles or collectively owning 28 per cent fewer cars. Moreover, every car in Bangor would have to perform significantly better than the best model currently available – the Honda Insight – of which there are only 500 in the UK.

A further recommendation stems from the issue of energy demand from the built environment. This section of the report, based on Cardiff, looks at domestic, industrial and commercial buildings. Regulations driving change in buildings and energy efficiency will produce some change. However, every business site will need to significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions per square metre. Yet as things stand it is considered ‘good practice’ for average non-industrial emissions to be brought down to a level currently achieved by office buildings.

Energy supply analysis was based in Swansea where research showed that on a household basis each home in Swansea would need 19 solar panels to help reach the 60 per cent target.

On a broader note, energy supply changes are likely to affect green belt policy, biodiversity and areas of outstanding natural beauty. Interestingly, industry developments in waste reprocessing technology, eco and resource parks may reflect the commercial opportunities.

With the Severn Barrage still in the frame, together with Defra’s comment that “Wales has tremendous natural potential for alternative energy”, the governments in both Westminster and Cardiff regard Wales as a major future resource for renewable energy.

Ultimately the Welsh Assembly Government has a role in developing Wales’s infrastructure in a sustainable and efficient way that can reach the ambitious targets for carbon emissions. The RICS research into these practicalities underlines that businesses, local authorities and the person in the street should be under no illusions about the scale of the challenge.

As David Fell, Managing Director of Brooke Lyndhurst, which produced the report on behalf RICS Wales, commented:

“It is relatively easy to set a future target for carbon reduction but the difficulty comes in addressing how to practically achieve this. 2010 is only two years away and so actions need implementing as soon as possible. As is demonstrated by the scenario planning in this report, small steps will not be enough to reduce our carbon dependency in Wales. A number of large measures need to be taken to achieve results. Whilst some of the measures may seem extreme or impractical this RICS report does not hide from that fact that it will take this level of commitment to reduce carbon by 60 per cent across Wales.”

Cathy McLean is Director of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors Wales.

WalesWatch — the IWA blog

Friday, December 05, 2008

Planning needed to meet growth in demand for Welsh-medium schools

Monday, December 01, 2008

Borrowing powers sidelined

Welsh Climate Change Challenge

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