Every school in county should be Welsh

11:29am Friday 25th January 2008

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A CALL for every school in Ceredigion to be a Welsh medium school has been made by the chairman of the county's education committee.

"Everyone moving into this county will be clear about it - every school will be Welsh," said Cllr Ian ap Dewi.

Speaking during a discussion on the council's language strategy for schools at this week's meeting of the authority's Cabinet Cllr ap Dewi insisted: "Every school should be a Welsh school."

And Cllr Ellen ap Gwynn, leader of the Plaid Cymru group, added: "Every child should have the same opportunity to reach full language ability. Some of our schools don't give that opportunity to every child at present. We need to convince all schools that everyone should be bilingual and use both languages. We need to push this agenda step by step."

Education director Gareth Jones said the council's language strategy sets up a system to ensure that every child will be bilingual by age 11. He said some of the county's schools were "English medium with substantial use of Welsh".