"What do we want?"
I left the building last night to the strains of students standing outside in the cold chanting their call for a Welsh Federal College, while inside the great and good of Welsh academia stood in the warmth, launching the Welsh medium national development plan. I spotted one or two familiar faces who've been accused by their students in the past of 'having aching feet'; in other words of fancying a sit-down in a professorial chair ... and that tends to mean keeping your mouth shut.
There were warm words in the Senedd but I doubt whether there's much fire in the belly on this one.
Guess which objective belongs to which crowd:
"The establishment and maintenance of a flexible, responsive, and sustainable bilingual learning environment across Wales based upon best pedagogic practice to ensure a high quality student learning experience'
and
"What do we want? Welsh Federal College! When do we want it? Now".
So what IS a Welsh Federal College? It doesn't involve concrete. It is rather an attempt to create a framework of support, training and eventually delivery of more higher education through the medium of Welsh. It's about ensuring "a substantial and independent funding stream". Or as someone whispered in my ear, it's about having a chance at last to train a new generation of lecturers in subjects other than drama and Welsh history.
A couple of top notch constitutional lawyers would come in handy by the way.
The chanting students want lecturers to be paid directly by the Federal College. The Government want the lecturers paid, as they are now, by their own colleges. The students want £20 million, last night Jane Hutt announced that £4.3 million will be made available over 3 years.
Inside there were nods and smiles but someone must have got busy with their Blackberry.
It took all of thirty seconds for the chant outside to change to "Pedair miliwn ddim yn ddigon", "Four million is not enough".
I'm Betsan Powys, ´óÏó´«Ã½ Wales' political editor. I'll be blogging the inside track on .
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As a taxpayer, in whats left of the Welsh manufacturing sector I say " Four Million is far to much"
Out of and over all Higher Education income of over 700 million, 4 million towards Welsh education is nothing - the full 20 million needed would only be something like 2.8% - English education would still get 97.2% if you want to put it that way!
On the point of the Welsh manufacturing sector. Now that we are living in the age o bilingualism don't you think the manufacturing sector in Wales would benefit from the availability of graduates who can work naturally in their field in both Welsh and English? It would certainly bring us closer to the European norm.
well, currently my uni has 1,500 welsh speakers (and im not in Bangor or Aberystwyth!) and only offer's 3 course in Welsh.
If you look at there website it's in English, Korean and Chinease and not Welsh!
The current standard of availability for Welsh courses are awfull throughout Wales. I was told i could'nt even do my dissertation in Welsh!
What am i to do? stand by and be happy to do all my work in English, when i want to live and work in a bilingual Wales?!
If you look at there website it's in English, Korean and Chinease and not Welsh!
The current standard of availability for Welsh courses are awfull throughout Wales. I was told i could'nt even do my dissertation in Welsh!
What am i to do? stand by and be happy to do all my work in English, when i want to live and work in a bilingual Wales?!
As a taxpayer who also works in what's left of the Welsh manufacturing sector I say....."4 million is a laughable amount and much more is needed."
I work in a bilingual HE institution.
During the last 12 months, some Welsh institutions have seen the 'W' coding of courses/modules ('W' for modules that offer more than 3% of it's course yn Gymraeg) as a way to make easy money... it seems that the WAG left a careless loophole.
A Welsh(medium) Federal College has little hope - look at how the existing Federal University of Wales is rapidly disintegrating. Centres looking at active bilingualism in HE however, do have a very important role, as do schemes such as Mantais.
korean and Chinese - well thats where a lot of Uni's make their money isnt it. What do they make out of Welsh nothing, the fact that this is Wales seems to be a secondary issue.
As one of those smiling inanely in the warmth on Tuesday night, I have to agree with your judgement, Betsan, that there is little fire in the belly on this one. The Brownite "announcement" of £4.3m over three years will do nothing to address the root problem; it is a few £100k more than was already announced, and falls about £55.7m short of the "£60m over three years" the students would be calling for were they also to talk in three-year rounds! I don't think there was one speaker who resisted the temptation to patronise the protesting students (my favourite being "Oh I do like a good protest" JH), but it was quite clear that those speaking understood very little about the issues that clearly concern those protesters, least of all the Minister herself unfortunately. Admittedly anyone expecting any better from last night was a little naive, but the self-congratulatory tone of the whole evening was astonishing, even by Cardiff Bay standards, considering the complete failure in this area so far and the lack of direction for at least another "next three years". The far from enthusiastic 'applause' between the speakers was testimony to their inability to convince the crowd that it was a "historic" evening, despite the aching feet filling the room.
In its judgement that the Higher Education Institutions can pay the lecturers themselves, the government is completely missing the point. If Universities were happy to employ lecturers to teach through the medium of Welsh from their own pockets, it would have been done and there would be no need for a Federal College. If they are required to pay those salaries under the new system, what will the Federal College be? Two words that spring to mind are powerless and pointless. Whatever was said last night, Welsh-medium nothing is priority in any HEI unless it has a wad of cash attached, and if the money is not substantial, additional and ring-fenced for Welsh-medium, rest assured Welsh-medium HE will never thrive.
Freeze the HE budget for a year or two. Assuming some increase is to be expected at some point, allocate that money to the Federal College instead. As Rhys said, it's a £700m budget, £20m a year will appear in no time. That will start things off.
I read your blog regularly Betsan, I never comment but I really do enjoy it; diolch.
If the grammar on some of these posts is anything to go by then the Welsh education service desperately needs a few quid to spend on the 3 R's (that's reeding, riting and rithmetic by the way!)