Welsh parents wooed by questionable propaganda
Like a dog drawn back to a buried bone, I can’t help returning to the issue of Welsh-medium schools, and the various ways in which surveys and statistics are used to promote them. This is not a prejudice against the language but simply a desire to see its promotion handled fairly, in which I am assisted by an active but anonymous reader in Wales constantly on the look-out for misrepresentations.
On Wednesday the Western Mail reported a complaint by Michael Jones of Rhieni dros Addysg Cymru (Parents for Welsh-medium Education) that five councils in Wales were “non-compliant” in meeting the need for schools that teach in Welsh. Mr Jones, a solicitor, called for ministerial intervention in Neath Port Talbot, Blaenau Gwent, Merthyr, Bridgend and Monmouthshire, all of which had fallen short, he said, either in providing schools or in conducting parent surveys, or both.
The Welsh Government has a target of a quarter of seven year-olds being taught in Welsh by 2015, and 30 per cent by 2020. While the first target is likely to be met, in Mr Jones’ view, the second will not be unless more Welsh-medium schools are opened. The issue is whether there is an unmet demand for such schools from parents, as opposed to the Welsh Government and promoters of the language such as Mr Jones.
Surveys are carried out fairly regularly by Welsh local authorities and are likely to increase under the School Standards and Organisation Bill, currently before the Welsh Assembly, which will require local authorities under some circumstances to measure parental demand for Welsh-medium education in their area. If so, then it would be wise for the assembly to lay down some rules for the conduct of such surveys, since more than one Straight Statistics reader has complained they are rigged to achieve the desired result.
Take, for example, a postal survey of parents of pre-school children carried out by Opinion Research Services for Powys County Council and published a year ago. (It is attached as a file attachment below). On its website ORS promises distinctive and rigorous research, reliable evidence and insights, honest advice and a relationship of trust and excellent value for money, so it places importance on the quality of its research.
My correspondent raised several questions about this particular piece of work. His principal objection was that the questionnaires were accompanied by a document that one-sidedly promotes Welsh-medium education (also attached below). It lists prominent Welsh speakers: Arsenal footballer Aaron Ramsey, singers Duffy, Cerys Matthews and Connie Fisher, and BBC anchorman Huw Edwards, but doesn’t mention any prominent and successful Welsh people who don’t speak the language.
It makes claims that those who are taught in Welsh achieve higher grades, but this is only true if results are uncorrected for social deprivation. It claims that choosing Welsh-medium education, parents “will ensure pupils will become completely bilingual” which is not borne out by examination results, and that learning Welsh won’t damage a child’s English, while in reality pupils in Welsh-medium schools underperform in English compared with those in English-medium schools.
Is it not likely that sending out this document with the questionnaire biased the results? Jonathan Lee, head of research at ORS, responded by acknowledging that the question raised important issues, and that in the many statutory consultations about policy initiatives it carries out all over the UK, “we are clear that any information that is provided should be carefully balanced and not leading.”
In this case, however, the position was more complicated, he said. Powys is already committed to more Welsh-medium education, and the survey was to discover the likely demand, not to consult on the policy. (The demand turned out, as far as I can see, to be roughly the same as the existing provision, but the response to the survey was rather low, at 28.7 per cent, so any conclusions are bound to be tentative.)
When asked what were the most important factors affecting parents’ choices of a primary school, the actual quality of the school was not included among the options. This is odd, because when parents were asked to cite other reasons that might influence them, many comments related to the quality of the school, with words such as “quality”, “reputation”, “standard”, “performance” and “results” amongst the words most often used.
ORS was not involved in the production of the leaflet, but admits that it needs to be cautious and to negotiate with clients what information they want to distribute along with the questionnaire.
Powys is less prepared to accept there may have been anything wrong. Its view is that the leaflet “demonstrates its commitment to the duty placed on it by the Welsh Government to promote access to statutory Welsh-medium education”, that the claims made were endorsed by the then Welsh Language Board and there was no obligation to be balanced by including, for example, some successful English-speaking people from Wales. “It is illogical to suggest that a reference to a group sharing a particular characteristic is unfair unless a similar group sharing an alternative characteristic is also mentioned” says the council.
The Welsh Government is fully entitled to promote Welsh-medium education and set targets for local authorities. But it needs to be careful in claiming support for these policies from surveys that make no serious attempt to be unbiased and have low response rates. If it’s a campaign – as it clearly is – then it cannot at the same time be a detached piece of social research. The two don’t mix.
As for the councils condemned by Mr Jones, Merthyr said there was currently a surplus of places in Welsh-medium schools, and Monmouthshire that every child in the county who has expressed a wish for a Welsh-medium education has been accommodated. The other three were more guarded in their responses.
MH @ Syniadau (not verified) wrote,
Thu, 26/04/2012 - 17:24
You've made three claims which I would like to pick you up on, Nigel:
1. Those who are taught in Welsh only achieve higher grades if results are uncorrected for social deprivation
2. That becoming completely bilingual by choosing WM education is not borne out by examination results
3. That in reality pupils in Welsh-medium schools underperform in English compared with those in English-medium schools
Let's see the evidence to substantiate these claims, so we can tell whether your "active but anonymous" correspondent is telling the truth or not.
So far as the first of these claims is concerned, I'd refer people to this post on Syniadau:
Do Welsh-medium schools get better results?
Michael Haggett
Plaid Gwersyllt (not verified) wrote,
Fri, 27/04/2012 - 07:15
Perhaps you'd like to read this so that you have a balanced view of the situation
http://syniadau--buildinganindependentwales.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/do-we...
Nospin (not verified) wrote,
Sat, 28/04/2012 - 13:46
BBCWales having been made aware of the corrected figures confirmed they will be removing the statement that WM performs better from their School Gate website.
Nigel Hawkes (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 01/05/2012 - 08:40
In response to Michael Haggett, the comments he referred to were based on three Excel spreadsheets which show performance by subject and by free school meals band, at Key Stage 2, 3, and GCSE. Almost all Welsh-medium schools have fewer pupils on free school meals, and almost none who are of minority ethnic origin. I would have liked to upload these spreadsheets and attach them to the original article but unfortunately cannot do so because the website doesn’t accommodate Excel files.
However, it was not my intention to start a debate on the relative performance of Welsh and English-medium schools, which may well be open to different interpretations, but to suggest that enclosing a document extolling Welsh-medium education with a questionnaire seeking opinions from parents may not be the best way to gauge opinion accurately.
Michael Jones (not verified) wrote,
Tue, 01/05/2012 - 09:04
My attention has been drawn to your blog article in Straight Statistics published last Thursday 26th April following an article by Martin Shipton in the Western Mail.
Your blog purports to be anxious to correct the misuse and misrepresentation of statistics. It is therefore a pity that you should quote a hearsay and partial report of an article which I wrote and which was published in full in "The Welsh Agenda" the journal of the Welsh "think-tank" the Institute of Welsh Affairs (Spring 2012 edition). If you had read the whole article you might have had a rather different impression of it and you might have realised how effective has been the Welsh Government policy of exhorting local education authorities to ascertain the true demand for Welsh medium education within their areas.
I drew attention to three authorities which I classed as compliant, Newport, Torfaen and Vale of Glamorgan. They carried out surveys, as I believe without any accompanying propaganda, and ascertained a substantial unmet need. Newport had one Welsh medium primary. It opened a second in an area demonstrated by the survey to have an unmet need and expanded the original school to accept 2 streams. Both additional streams were filled upon their being provided and the number of applications for places in the second school was such that for the second year of its existence it also was expanded to receive two streams. The applications for places in the year up to July 2011 were so numerous that in September a third school was opened to provide a fifth primary stream in Newport.
A similar survey in Torfaen revealed the need for a third Welsh medium primary in that area, around Pontypool. The school was provided and has regularly been filled with the full number of 30 children. There is current evidence for the need of a second school in Cwmbran which will be Torfaen's fourth WM school.
The Vale of Glamorgan survey revealed a demand for WM education from approximately 20% of the parents against provision of 13% of all places as WM places. The authority's response was to expand one existing school by 10 places per annum, to open 2 new schools one in an area with no convenient WM provision and to expand another school from a 20 pupil stream to a 30 pupil stream which will require a new building on a new site. The new schools have been opened and the first school expanded and children have come forward to take up the places offered.
It was against this background that I criticised the 5 non-compliant authorities for their refusal to carry out surveys or in the case of Neath to publish the surveys and statistics which they had accumulated, and I pointed to the statistics of The Welsh Department of Education which were published in "Welsh Agenda" if not in the "Western Mail" showing either no growth, little growth or actual decline (Neath) in the 5 authorities criticised as to the number of their WM pupils.
I was not contacted by Martin Shipton before he wrote his partial extract of my article and I did not have the opportunity of responding to the comments of the 2 LEAs quoted by you, Merthyr and Monmouthshire.
Merthyr council is notorious in many quarters for its antipathy to WM education, though its MPs have frequently favoured it, most notably Ted Rowlands MP who sent his children to WM education and was a patron of Mudiad Meithrin. Merthyr has 2 WM schools one opened in 1972 and the second in 1976. Since 1976 the next council to the east (variously called Rhymney Valley and Caerphilly) has added 5 to its existing 4 as well as acquiring 2 by expanding to take in the area of Islwyn BC. Merthyr was a pioneer in opening county run nursery education and proclaimed loudly that it had a nursery attached to every primary school in its area - every English medium school, that is. Welsh medium nursery schools were left to the private sector, the Mudiad Meithrin. Recently the more southerly WM school known as Rhyd-y-grug a Victorian building in Quakers Yard was given a surplus 1960s building in Aberfan. This may seem to be a blessing but was not as Quakers Yard is situated at the confluence of the Taff Bargoed river with the Taff and reasonably convenient for children in both valleys. For some reason a disproportionate number of the pupils came from Bedlinog and Trelewis, poor former pit villages in the Taff Bargoed. The new location means that Bedlinog children to get to school have to travel 5/6 miles down the Taff Bargoed to Quakers Yard and a similar distance up the Taff to Aberfan. Parents have not been prepared to put their children through this journey at the age of 4 and that is why places have become vacant in the WM school which is having to try to recruit in areas formerly far from both Rhyd-y-grug to the south and Santes Tudful to the north. If more schools had been opened over the years Merthyr children would have had the choice of WM education locally as they do in Caerphilly.
Monmouthshire is the authority largest in area of the 5 successor authorities to Gwent and historic Monmouthshire before that. It has 2 WM schools one in Abergavenny in the north-west of the county and one in Caldicot in the south-east. The middle of the county around Usk and Raglan has no provision nor does Monmouth town on the extreme north-east of the area. Surprisingly there is a substantial demand for WM education in Monmouth town which might have been thought to be very Anglicised and only a mile from the English border. The parents have repeatedly petitioned for local WM provision which has been refused. Those parents sufficiently determined not to be deprived of WM education for their children send them to Abergavenny some 12 miles away. Thus can the council say that no child in Monmouthshire is refused WM education, which is true but it is difficult to ascertain the precise number of children whose parents balk at a 12 mile journey twice a day for their child. Monmouthshire have as yet carried out no survey of demand.
I will not bore you with details of the position in Blaenau Gwent, Neath and Bridgend, though in fairness to Blaenau Gwent I should say that they are concerned by the distance from Tredegar to Blaina where the new WM school is situate and are giving serious consideration to a second school in the west of their area.
I trust that when you have read the whole of my article and not a second-hand summary of part of it and the evidence which I have placed on record in this letter you will be good enough to publish a correction of your blog article. I appreciate that a careful reading of your article makes it clear that the headline and its use of the words "questionable propaganda" are directed to the circumstances of the Powys survey of which I knew nothing but I nonetheless resent my name and my article being connected with those words.
You are at liberty to publish this letter as a response to your blog if you so wish.
Michael L N Jones
Retired Solicitor and High Court Advocate
Legal Advisor to RhAG