A new draft Welsh-medium education strategy for Bridgend was recently published, but later today a council committee will be updated on progress Bridgend Council has made over the previous five years to promote and sustain the Welsh language (pdf).
Bridgend is, traditionally, one of the more Anglicised parts of Wales and that’s reflected in the relatively low proportion of Welsh speakers in the county.
Just to underline this, although there’s better news elsewhere in the report, one of the standout findings is that just under 0.1% of all telephone calls to Bridgend Council’s customer services department during 2020-21 were in Welsh. This was actually an increase on previous years when it was barely above 0.
There’s also a relatively low uptake of Welsh language training for council employees, with just 15 enrolments on entry-level courses during 2020-21 (though this may have been impacted by the pandemic). However, four Welsh-speaking apprentices have been taken on by the council.
There’s better news on the public engagement and Welsh-medium education side of things.
Several Welsh language events and activities are promoted year-round (despite the pandemic). Welsh-medium sports activities appear to be popular – with proposals for a Welsh-medium gymnastics club in the pipeline – and many events have been held over the school holidays with reasonable attendance levels.
Elsewhere, the number of pupils at Ysgol Calon y Cymoedd (the former Ysgol Cwm Garw) has increased by 27.7% since 2015.
Another positive is that more Welsh-medium primary school pupils in Bridgend transfer to Welsh-medium secondary school when there has been an up to 10% drop-out rate at Year 6 as recently as 2017. This has been cut to under 4%, though it fell even further to under 1% in 2021.
However, across the Welsh-medium sector as a whole, the number of Year 3 pupils in Welsh-medium education as a total of all Year 3 pupils has remained relatively static for several years at between 7-9%. The new Welsh-medium education strategy proposes increasing the total proportion of Welsh-medium primary school pupils to 16% by 2032 (up from around 8% now).
Additionally, the number of 16-19-year-olds studying Welsh as a first language has remained static at around 100 students annually (but Bridgend only has one Welsh-medium secondary school so that’s a given).
