You asked
- Please disclose any internal/external information that you may have/hold, if anyone in your organisation has flagged up the inaccuracies or had other concerns about the quality of your Welsh speakers' annual survey data including the sample you use.
- From the selected people you question annually, how many are Welsh speakers - in numbers or as a percentage?
- Please disclose who the members of the FSS group are, who they represent, and how many Welsh speakers there are in the group.
- With reference to StatsWales data relating to the first language of children aged 5 and over, why don't you separate English from Welsh speakers? Please disclose who decided to combine English/Welsh speakers into one set of numbers and to what purpose? Please disclose for the year 2018/19, how many children have Welsh as their home language out of 369,275 pupils?
We said
Thank you for your questions around the collection of information on the Welsh language.
There are differences between the counts from the Census and Annual Population Survey of the number of people able to speak Welsh: this is well known and these concerns have been flagged up to the Welsh Government who are aware of these differences.The most recent reference to this was in a blog from the Welsh National Assembly Chief Statistician, see:
A more detailed explanation of why the two data sources are different can be found here:
in the section titled 'Why is there a difference between Census and survey results?'.
The Annual Population Survey receives responses from around 320,000 people each year in the UK, of which around 30,000 people live in Wales. Around 25% say that they can speak Welsh. These responses are then weighted to obtain a representative estimate for the total number of Welsh speakers living in private accommodation in the UK.
The Labour Force Survey Steering group consists of members from several government departments and the devolved administrations as follows: Office for National Statistics (ONS), Department for Transport, Health and Safety Executive, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Department for Education, Low Pay Commission, Bank of England, Department for Work and Pensions, HM Treasury, Home Office, Cabinet Office, Public Health England as well as the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The group collectively decides the content of the survey based on advice from us. The ability to speak Welsh is not a requirement for membership of the group, so we do not know how many of the group can speak Welsh.
The data you reference in your fourth question come from the Pupil Level Annual School Census. The collection and dissemination of this information is the responsibility of the Welsh Government. We are not involved in the collection or dissemination of this census.