Developing the Welsh language within your school

The Schools as Learning Organisations model provides schools with a framework to enable professional learning for practitioners. As Learning Organisations, schools should nurture and develop all of their staff. The vision for Welsh and language acquisition should be clear to all and opportunities for professional learning and collaborative development of language should be encouraged. Creating Welsh Language staff development groups, buddying up of staff and promoting Welsh support groups will enable practitioners to develop confidence. Leadership should encourage these developments and model their expectations. The school should collaborate and share skills within their clusters and with partners further afield in order to create an ethos of Welsh language learning and support for all practitioners. They should be learning together and from each other and utilising the support and programmes available for the external environment such as Consortia, HEIs and the Welsh Government.

Practitioners should be discussing with their managers as part of their regular reviews how they could benefit from professional learning in this area, which should complement the school’s vision for Welsh Language provision and learning.

Developing the Welsh language is also a component of the Modelling Learning Leadership aspects of the Professional Learning Journey (PLJ). You may wish to consider the PLJ and its supporting resources in your strategic development of Welsh and its integration with the preparation for curriculum for Wales.

Schools can utilise funding allocated to them via the professional learning grant or the education improvement grant to support practitioners to develop their Welsh language skills.