Mudiad Meithrin celebrates an increase of 38% in weekly Welsh-medium childcare hours

As an organisation passionate about giving all young children in Wales the opportunity to play, learn, grow and become confident Welsh speakers, Mudiad Meithrin is delighted to announce that there is a significant increase in the hours of weekly care available to children attending our childcare provisions across Wales and in particular our Cylchoedd Meithrin.

Dr Gwenllian Lansdown Davies, Chief Executive of Mudiad Meithrin, said:
“The weekly total figure has risen dramatically from 6,180 hours of childcare per week in 2015/16 to 8,554 hours per week this year – an impressive increase of 2,374 childcare hours and a record total hours ever.”

The data confirms the importance of our work to expand Cylchoedd Meithrin services along with the opening of new Cylchoedd Meithrin through the Set Up and Succeed Scheme (SAS scheme) which aims to set up new Cylchoedd Meithrin. Since the SAS scheme was established in 2017, 61 Cylchoedd Meithrin have been opened or expanded across Wales.

In addition to this the percentage of children progressing to Welsh-medium education remains high across Wales – with 86.85% of children transferring from our Cylchoedd Meithrin to Welsh-medium education. Several counties saw the highest increase in progression since 2016 with Conwy increasing from 83.37% in 2015-16 to 99.66% in 2022-23 and Powys increased from 74.27% in 2015-16 to 86.32% in 2022-23.

The data also serves to highlight the growing model that appears to be developing in our Cylchoedd Meithrin by moving from offering sessional morning-only care as was traditionally the norm to offer full daycare provision and those clear benefits to children and their parents/carers. There are now 11,076 children attending our Cylchoedd Meithrin across Wales offering families affordable, high quality education and childcare.

Gwenllian added:

“This gives us more evidence about children’s linguistic progress than just children’s figures and progression to Welsh education, because obviously, the more contact a child has with the Welsh language, the quicker they will acquire the language and become confident Welsh speakers.”