P-05-783 Ensuring Equality of Curriculum for Welsh Medium Schools e.g. GCSE Psychology
P-05-783 Ensuring Equality of Curriculum for Welsh Medium Schools e.g. GCSE Psychology
This
petition was submitted by Chris Evans, having collected 652 signatures online.
Petition text:
I call upon the National Assembly for Wales
to urge the Welsh Government to prevent Qualifications Wales (QW) from
continuing to discriminate against Welsh-medium learners, and ensure linguistic
equality in terms of school curriculum.
In 2015, the WJEC decided to drop GCSE Psychology because
candidate numbers were relatively small (37 centres - 5 of which were Welsh
medium with 144 Welsh medium applicants each year). Because of this, an
invitation was extended by Qualifications Wales to the English Awarding Bodies;
AQA, OCR, Pearson-Edexell, to offer this subject, and others e.g. Economics, in
Wales.
Unfortunately, and astoundingly, there was no
pressure to offer these subjects in Welsh. Qualifications Wales' response to
this is to say that the English Boards would refuse to offer subjects in Wales
altogether if they were forced to offer a Welsh language option, and that they
seek to ensure 'the widest choice of subjects to learners in Wales' (QW
Newsletter, December 2016).
'The widest choice of subjects to learners in Wales'
.... unless you are following a Welsh medium education! In September, there
will be no year 10 Psychology GCSE course running in my school for the first
time since 2009, while the English-medium school a few miles away, start a new
GCSE Psychology course in English through AQA. The only reason that I can't
offer this subject is because we teach through Welsh. There are four other
Welsh centres in the same position.
Psychologists need to be able discuss their subject
in Welsh. By depriving Welsh medium pupils of the opportunity to study
Psychology GCSE through Welsh, we will lose 144 students per year who would
have had the potential of contributing to Psychology - as a teacher, lecturer,
therapist, researcher etc. in Welsh with confidence because the relevant
terminology familiar to them.
Additional information:
144 candidates sat the unit 2 Psychology WJEC
GCSE paper in Welsh to finish the course in 2015, with 5 centres teaching it,
so there is the potential for significant numbers, not just a handful. I have
arranged that three experienced Psychology examiners are available to work for
any English Board, so that translation of candidate's scripts (solutions) would
not be needed, just the translation of the paper itself.
The only English Board that even considered
the application to provide a Welsh paper (from myself, not QW), was Pearson,
but in the end they refused, saying it 'would require Welsh speakers at every
level of the production of the papers'. This is nonsense because that doesn't
even happen in the WJEC, where the Chief Examiner and the Subject Officer don't
speak Welsh!
I don't blame the English Boards, because why
should they go to the trouble when they don't have to? Qualifications Wales is
to blame for their limp policy, which does not protect the rights of
Welsh-medium learners. Surely it would have been possible to create an element
of competition between the English Boards by giving priority to those open to
the idea of offering a Welsh option, but they did not attempt to do this at
all.
This is totally unacceptable in the modern
Wales. If English Awarding Bodies are allowed to offer subjects in Wales, it
must be made clear that they need to offer a Welsh paper when there is a
reasonable request to do so.
A student
Status
This petition was
considered completed by the Petitions Committee at its meeting on 16/03/2021.
The petition was
closed as part of a review of all petitions currently under consideration at
the Petitions Committee's final meeting of the Fifth Senedd, in light of the
upcoming election and the consideration given to this issue to date.
Full details of the
consideration of this petition by the Committee and related documents can be
seen on the Meetings tab above.
It was first considered by the Petitions Committee on
07/11/2017.
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Business type: Petition
Reason considered: Senedd Business;
Status: Complete
First published: 31/10/2017