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Since it was established in 1999, the Welsh Government has implemented several initiatives to increase the number of Welsh speakers in Wales. A core element of these initiatives has been strengthening Welsh-medium education (WME) provisions, which is now reflected in the high concentration of Welsh speakers in younger age groups, with an ever-growing number coming from non-Welsh speaking households. This paper draws on 8 semi-structured interviews with non-Welsh speaking parents from the South Wales Valleys, an area of Wales where Welsh is not widely spoken, who chose a WME for their children. The findings demonstrate that parents' incentives to invest in a WME centred around acquiring various forms of capital for their children, notably with a greater emphasis on economic capital than has been indicated in previous studies. Parents' beliefs about the Welsh language, and subsequently their ideas about their children's futures, played a prominent role in their decision to enrol their children in WME. There was also evidence that parents' experiences became increasingly challenging as their children progressed through their WME. This highlights a need for more attention to the accessibility and promotion of existing provisions, as well as systematising and strengthening the support available post-primary education within the WME sector.
Regan et al. (Wed,) studied this question.