Janet Finch-Saunders AM: Thank you. Is there a difference in how the Welsh bac is valued by learners at the different levels that it is studied? ColegauCymru said that learners may have had a negative experience of the Welsh bac in previous study.
Dafydd Evans: That's been a new dimension lately, I think, in that, when the Welsh bac first hit FE, we were leading the way—
Kay Martin: Great advocates.
Dafydd Evans: —and great advocates. By now, of course, they're coming to us having been through a Welsh bac experience at school, and therefore many of the learners feel that there's repeating going on then—'Oh, we've done this at school already. Why are we doing it again at college?' So, I think that's a problem for us as well.
Kay Martin: Many have experienced a paper-based exercise rather than a real activity. So, at level 1 and level 2, it's not what we would call a crowd puller in colleges, but at level 3 it's more, especially for A-levels, because it can help them get into university, but even for the more able and talented—we were discussing this, weren't we? We have learners who do four A-levels, but they don't do the Welsh baccalaureate because they're part of the Seren network, and they are going to be applying for Oxbridge or high-level Russell Group universities. So, the Welsh bac, although it's technically universally adopted by universities, it isn't adopted by every admissions tutor in every university. So, to get into some areas, like dentistry, for example, and some of the other Seren-type activities, four A-levels is better. But in most colleges that have A-level students it's almost compulsory to do the Welsh bac as well, but normally that would be three A-levels and the Welsh bac—normally.
Janet Finch-Saunders AM: Okay. And then ColegauCymru say that, increasingly, the Welsh bac is not being offered at post-16 national and foundation level. So, are the different levels of the Welsh bac valued differently by further education professionals?
Nick Brazil: Yes.
Kay Martin: Yes.
Dafydd Evans: Yes.
Dr Rachel Bowen: Yes.
Ed Evans: Yes.
Nick Brazil: I think we've got to bear in mind when the students come to us—certainly when they're level 1, level 2 learners—that a number of them have come from school and probably not done as well as they'd hoped at their GCSEs. Okay, they've come to us, they're trying to build themselves back up, build their skills back up, and adding another qualification on top, adding the Welsh bac on top, whether that's foundation or national, on top of what they have to do, which is a programme they've come and decided to do—think of the pressure that increases upon them. Plus the fact is that they are resitting; they're probably having to resit GCSE English and maths as well. That's a huge volume of work for a learner who's probably come from a low base to begin with and who hasn't achieved what they wanted to. The whole idea when we bring them in at that level is that we want to build their confidence, build them up and, hopefully, eventually they will go to the stage where maybe the Welsh bac will be beneficial to them, when they've potentially hopefully progressed to level 3. But I think it's questionable, certainly at national and foundation. And the important point that Dafydd raised was that there's a lot of repetition there in school, pre 16 to post 16 at those levels as well. So, learners don't come in banging at the door saying, 'We want to do the Welsh bac because it's exactly the same or very similar to what we did when we were in school.' They want to see some difference, they want to see some progress, and that's not necessarily the case in the foundation and national levels.
Dr Rachel Bowen: And we know that delivery in schools is of variable quality, so obviously that impacts on how learners have experienced it and perhaps how they view it when they get to FE college.