UK - Wales

Key Findings overall

Efforts continue to be made to ensure equality of treatment for Welsh and English in Wales. Good progress has been made in school education but much remains to be done elsewhere. Foreign and immigrant languages both have a relatively weak presence even in the school education.

Promising initiatives and pilots

The Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol (National Welsh Language College) was established in 2011. It is not a single geographical entity, nor a degree awarding body. It will work with and through all universities in Wales to deliver increased opportunities for students to study through the medium of Welsh.

Under the Welsh Language (Wales) Measure 2011 a Welsh Language Commissioner is to be established from 1 April 2012. The Commissioner will be given functions to promote and facilitate the use of Welsh, to work towards ensuring that Welsh is treated no less favourably than English, investigating interference with the freedom to use Welsh, and to conduct inquiries into related matters. The Commissioner must have regard to ‘the principle that persons in Wales should be able to live their lives through the medium of the Welsh language if they choose to do so’. The Welsh Ministers (in the National Assembly of Wales) must adopt a strategy setting out how they propose to promote and facilitate the use of Welsh. It also allows them to specify standards with which public bodies must comply. These standards will replace the current system of Welsh language schemes. The Commissioner will oversee the implementation of the standards.

The Welsh Government published its new Welsh language strategy on 1 March 2012.