The Welsh Labour government has been blasted for offering £10,000 worth of teacher training grants that are only available to Welsh-speakers and ethnic minorities.
The grants are part of Labour’s efforts to tackle teaching's recruitment and retention crisis in Wales, particularly in STEM subjects.
There are three grants available- £15,000 for anyone wanting to teach subjects like Maths, Physics or Welsh, with a further £5,000 available through the ‘Ethnic Minority Initial Teacher Education Incentive’ and another £5,000 through the ‘Iaith Athrawon Yfory Incentive Scheme’.
It means only Welsh-speaking ethnic minorities are eligible for the full £25,000 of support from the Welsh government.
The former scheme, open only to ethnic minorities like Black, Asian or Gypsy, aims to increase the number of ethnic minority teachers so learners have a ‘more diverse learning experience’.
Ethnic Minority grant scheme
Welsh Gov
Welsh speaker scheme
Welsh Gov
The Welsh Government says the scheme forms part of its ‘Anti-racist Wales’ plan which aims to ‘make Wales anti-racist'.
To apply for the latter scheme, the student must be ‘taught through the medium of Welsh’ or ‘enable the student to teach Welsh’ meaning it is only open to Welsh speakers.
Labour says it forms part of it its ‘Cymraeg 2050’ plan which aims to increase the number of Welsh speakers in Wales to 1 million by 2050.
This has sparked criticism as to why the government is not recruiting for teacher training in Wales, as well as fairness concerns.
Welsh Government's Anti-racist Wales plan
Welsh Gov
Questions have been raised over how many people will be eligible for the full £25,000, or whether the scheme is woke, virtue-signalling, taxpayer funded Labour nonsense.
Latest Census data shows 93.8 per cent of Wales’s 3.1 million inhabitants identify as White, meaning there are roughly 192,665 people who identify as an ethnic minority in Wales.
The Census also found roughly 6 per cent of ethnic minorities can speak Welsh, meaning 11,520 would be eligible for the full grant.
However, the true figure will be much lower as this doesn't take into account children and old people.
36 per cent of Wales’ population is aged 16-44. If we apply that to the 11,520 figure, we see the true number of people eligible for the scheme fall to 4,170.
But not all of these 4,000 people will want to become teachers. Indeed, 0.8 per cent of Wales’ adult population work as a teacher.
If we apply this figure to the 4,000, it falls to 32, meaning there are roughly 30 Welsh speaking ethnic minorities in Wales.
It means roughly 30 people in the entire nation will be eligible for the £25,000 of support being advertised by Labour, 0.001 per cent of the population.
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Roughly 30 people in the whole of Wales will be eligible for the full £25,000 teacher grant
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Commenting, Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Education, Natasha Asghar MS, said:“Ultimately, with the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis in our education system, we should be focusing on recruiting the best maths teachers, regardless of their ethnicity.
“This additional funding for ethnic minority maths teachers increases the total grant to £25,000—significantly higher than what is available to teachers from non-ethnic backgrounds.
“With the alarming number of mathematics teachers leaving the profession and so few being recruited, surely the Welsh Labour Government should be offering equal funding for all mathematics teachers.”
It comes after successive polls of Wales’ population fired warning shots at Labour who have been in power since devolution began in Wales in 1999.
Respected pollsters Survation, in a poll of Senedd voting intention, put Labour on 27 per cent (-2) and Reform on 24 per cent (+5).
That would mean from a standing start Nigel Farage’s party have leapfrogged Plaid Cymru (24 per cent / +4) and the Welsh Conservatives (15 per cent / -3).
Survation also polled Westminster voting intention in Cymru which put Labour on 29 per cent (-4), Reform UK on 25 per cent (+4), Plaid Cymru 18 per cent (+5) and the Welsh Tories 15 per cent (-3).
The research comes as a warning to incumbent Labour to focus on Welsh people's priorities like the failing NHS as opposed to woke initiatives.
The Welsh Labour government said: “We have a range of financial incentives to attract new teachers in priority subjects such as maths and have recently increased teachers’ pay by 5.5%.
“We are committed to increasing the number of teachers from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds so that our young people can recognise themselves and their own experiences within their leaders.”
