Welsh qualifications to be proactively offered to learners
Qualifications Wales has created a resource pack that will support all awarding bodies in proactively delivering the Welsh Offer (“y Cynnig Cymraeg”).
Taking the lead from the health and social care sector in Wales, Qualifications Wales has created a resource pack that will support all awarding bodies in proactively delivering the Welsh Offer (“y Cynnig Cymraeg”).
The resource pack provides guidance for awarding bodies on how the ‘Cynnig Cymraeg’ can be delivered alongside a learner’s qualification journey and includes examples of good practice and links to additional resources and contacts.
The resource pack encourages awarding bodies to provide learners with targeted information about Welsh-medium and bilingual qualifications, and to do so without them having to ask for it. It also encourages awarding bodies to proactively promote and advertise Welsh language or bilingual qualifications by highlighting their availability and encouraging their take-up.
When these elements are brought together, they are called the ‘Active Offer’, which was the key principle of the Welsh Government’s Strategic Framework for the Welsh language in Health and Social Care ‘More than just words’. The Active Offer aims to create a culture change that takes the responsibility off the service user to ask for a service through the medium of Welsh.
Philip Blaker, Chief Executive Qualifications Wales said, “We know that there is good work already happening by some awarding bodies within Wales, but what we want to see is a consistent Active Offer across the Welsh qualification system.”
Philip added, “This resource pack aims to encourage and support awarding bodies to deliver the Active Offer throughout a learner’s journey. This means ensuring that accurate and up-to-date information about Welsh qualifications is easily accessible and that bilingual support is available to learners. It also means asking about language choice at the point of registration, ensuring that learners are able to complete assessments in their language of choice and issuing bilingual certificates.”
Luise Ruddick, Policy Officer, Federation of Awarding Bodies said, “FAB welcomes this comprehensive resource pack, which will be very helpful to our members who provide qualifications in Wales during this period of growth and development in the sector.”
Qualifications Wales published a strategy in 2020 to increase the range and availability of Welsh-medium qualifications, Choice for All. In it, it stated that only around one fifth of the awarding bodies that they regulated offer qualifications in Welsh, and that only around 21% of the qualifications eligible for public funding are available in Welsh.
To achieve the aims set out in Choice for All, Qualifications Wales remain committed to supporting awarding bodies and giving them the opportunity to use the resource pack as they see fit as they embark on offering this important qualification journey to learners in Wales.
Qualifications Wales will be holding a consultation with key stakeholders in the autumn to gather views on requirements and guidance relating to promoting and raising awareness of Welsh-medium and bilingual qualifications that awarding bodies make available.