Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Minority languages and language revitalisation 101
140). These play an important role in consolidating L1 Welsh language skills and
in raising the linguistic awareness of L2 Welsh learners, laying thereby a sound
foundation for language work in the primary curriculum.
Not indicated in the tables above, but significant enough to mention, is the
considerable variation in the nature of bilingual education provision across Wales, a
variability conditioned principally by the demography of school catchment areas
(see Baker 1993, 1997). Thus, whereas in the anglicised areas of the south, Welshmedium
schools cater principally to English L1 speakers, in the north and west the
clientele consists predominantly of Welsh L1 speakers. But there are also mixed
catchment areas producing school classes in which Welsh L1 speakers sit alongside
L2 Welsh learners. The latter are in effect experiencing a form of Welsh immersion
education on a Canadian model and the former a form of heritage or developmental
bilingual education (see Chapter 3). There are, again, schools that only teach Welsh
as an L2 subject, schools that teach almost all subjects in Welsh and schools that
employ mixed-medium teaching, which is variously interpreted either as teaching
some subjects in Welsh and others in English, or as teaching bilingually, that is using
two language concurrently in the same lesson. This complex patterning of bilingual
instruction is certainly interesting but space forbids any further discussion here.
All one can say here is that it constitutes a potentially profitable area for bilingual
education research.
Looking at the overall impact of Welsh language education on the fortunes of the
language, we can summarise the principal contributions as follows:
• As activists had hoped, the education system in Wales has recruited new speakers
to the language, compensating thereby for the shortfall in family-based reproduction
of the language. Evidence for this effect lies in the census returns of 1981,
1991 and 2001, which show an increase in the number of Welsh speakers between
the ages of three and fifteen. And evidence for the effect of schooling independent
of the family can be found in the 1991 census data showing that no less than
36.1 per cent of all Welsh-speaking children come from homes where neither
parent speaks Welsh (Welsh Language Board 1999). This does not mean, however,
that Welsh language planners, ignoring Fishman (1991), seek to underplay the
importance of family-based transmission. Rather they emphasise the complementary
role of school-based language production in the maintenance of the
language. And, of course, if language maintenance were the sole purpose of
bilingual education, its justification would be weak. But, as we have seen in the
previous chapter, there are independent grounds for supposing that bilingual
education, properly implemented, can benefit the child educationally and
psychologically as much as, or more than, monolingual schooling.
• Welsh-medium education has helped consolidate the language skills of L1
speakers, especially literacy skills, whose positive influence on language maintenance
is generally well attested. That it is now possible to study through Welsh
from nursery up to postgraduate level is also in itself a considerable achievement.
• Finally, as Williams (2000a: 670) points out, the growth of bilingual education