Bilingual study is a shared endeavour
With the Welsh Government aiming to get one million people speaking Welsh by 2050 how do we ensure quality Welsh and bilingual qualifications? Philip Blaker, chief executive of Qualifications Wales, outlines the work being done
As the independent regulator of qualifications in Wales, we have set ourselves the aim of increasing the number of qualifications that can be taken through the medium of Welsh or a combination of Welsh and English. But this won’t be easy.
The most straightforward challenge is addressing the additional cost to awarding bodies of adapting their offer to be bilingual. We operate a grant scheme to help awarding bodies meet these costs and any awarding body that we regulate can apply for this financial support.
Other challenges aren’t as easy to address. Many awarding bodies operating in Wales are not based here and are not experienced in offering qualifications in multiple languages. Offering an existing qualification in another language is more than a simple matter of translating written materials – although that is part of it.
We require regulated awarding bodies to have rigorous quality assurance arrangements, and this will often mean that they must take on additional staff to so that assessments offered in Welsh are of the same high quality as those offered in English.
We are working with awarding bodies to identify how to overcome some of these potential barriers to developing and offering good quality, bilingual qualifications. They are helping us to see what more can be done to move forward, such as producing case studies and advice on good practice.
Our goal is not just to increase the number of qualifications available bilingually. We will focus our efforts on those subject areas where there is most demand for bilingual assessment. To help us with this we are setting up an advisory group of schools and colleges to target qualifications where there is most demand for Welsh-medium assessment. The group will also help us to consider how we can anticipate future needs so that awarding bodies can plan for provision to bilingual from the outset.
Where we set specific design requirements for a qualification we will make sure that it is available bilingually. This is the approach we took for new GCSEs and A-levels that we approved for delivery in Wales. It’s also the approach we will be taking for the new suite of qualifications we have commissioned to support the Health and Social Care sector in Wales.
However, this approach isn’t a silver bullet. Most regulated qualifications are offered in other countries as well as in Wales. For many of these, the number of learners taking them here is too low for a Wales-only version to be viable. If we were to insist that all qualifications must be available bilingually, there is a real risk that many would be discontinued in Wales.
Of course, when it comes to improving bilingual provision, qualifications and assessments are only one part of a bigger picture. For students to feel they have a real choice about the language in which they are assessed, there also needs to be a sufficient offer of bilingual courses leading to qualifications, and of teaching and learning materials to support bilingual study. This makes it a shared endeavour for all those involved in the education system in Wales.