HOW bad do things have to get before they acknowledge problems with Welsh language policies?

There needs to be a realisation of the extent to which Welsh Medium Schools (WMS) are dragging down education standards in Wales.

They get disproportionate funds and support at the expense of mainstream schools – ask any mainstream head teacher.

It is a middle class fad to send children from English speaking homes to WMSs in the misguided belief they are somehow better.

WMSs dump their failures into the mainstream system depressing their figures. There are typically 50 pupils dumped, damaged, in Caerphilly County every year. You wouldn’t want this to happen to your child would you?

WMSs claim that their pupils are better equipped to learn more languages. In reality only around a third of pupils at WMSs go on to study a modern foreign language, compared with about a half in mainstream schools.

There is a growing industry where parents of pupils at WMSs are having to pay for private remedial teaching to make up for the deficiencies of WMSs.

After all this achievement in WMSs can only achieve a percentage point or so either way of the figures for mainstream schools.

T Green Harlech Close Blackwood