The History of the Welsh Not in Schools

What Was the Welsh Not?

The Welsh Not was a small piece of wood — sometimes a slate, a leather strap or simply a card — hung around a child's neck as a punishment for speaking Welsh in school. It was usually carved or stamped with the letters WN, and the rules around it were simple and harsh.

The child caught speaking Welsh was given the not. They could get rid of it by catching a classmate speaking Welsh and passing it on. Whoever was still wearing it when the final bell rang was punished — commonly with the cane, sometimes with lines, detention or a rap across the knuckles.

It's worth being precise about one thing. The Welsh Not was never an official government policy. It was a local practice, used in some schools at certain times, absent in others, and some teachers refused to have anything to do with it. But where it was used, it left a mark that lasted far longer than the cane itself.

The Blue Books of 1847

To understand why English-only rules took hold in Welsh classrooms, you have to look at 1847. In that year, three commissioners were sent to inquire into the state of education in Wales, and their reports — published in three volumes — were scathing about the Welsh language.

Welsh was presented as a barrier to learning, progress and decent behaviour. The report's authors argued, in effect, that children would do better if they were taught in English. The publication caused fury in Wales and became known as Brad y Llyfrau Gleision — the Treason of the Blue Books.

The irony is that the report also revealed how little schooling most Welsh children actually received. Its solution, though, was not more schools in Welsh, but more English. From the 1850s onwards, English became the language of the classroom, the register and the playground, and many schools adopted rules penalising Welsh.

How It Worked in the Classroom

The mechanics of the not varied from school to school, but the pattern was recognisable across much of Wales:

• A child heard speaking Welsh was handed the not and told to wear it.
• They were encouraged to catch another child speaking Welsh and pass it on.
• The child holding it at the end of the day was punished in front of the class.
• In some schools, parents were told, and children were punished again at home.

That second point did the deepest damage. It turned friends into informers and made a child's own mother tongue something to be watched, whispered and suspected. Children learnt quickly that Welsh meant danger, and English meant safety. Punishments were not confined to the not either: some children were made to write lines insisting they would not speak Welsh again, and others had their name recorded on a list that was read out.

A Punishment That Reached into the Home

The effects travelled far beyond the school gate. A child who came home in tears, or with sore hands, sent a clear message to their parents: Welsh was a liability. Many families — particularly from the late nineteenth century onwards — made a deliberate decision to raise their children in English, hoping it would spare them punishment and help them get on in the world.

That decision broke the everyday chain of language transmission between parent and child. In many households, grandparents and grandchildren could no longer hold a proper conversation. Alongside the punishment came a quieter, more corrosive idea: that Welsh was a language of the past, of the kitchen and the chapel, not of ambition.

It's worth saying plainly that the Welsh Not was not the only cause of decline. Industrial migration, two world wars, the movement of people into and out of Wales, and the pull of English-language newspapers, radio and television all played their part. But the classroom was where the message was delivered most directly to children.

The Long Shadow on the Language

The numbers tell part of the story. Around 1900, roughly half the population of Wales could speak Welsh. A century later, that figure had fallen sharply, and the 2021 Census recorded that fewer than one in five people in Wales could speak the language — around 538,000 people.

The Welsh Not itself had largely faded from classrooms by the end of the nineteenth century, but English-only expectations persisted into the twentieth. Generations grew up believing their own language was second-rate, and many adults who speak Welsh today can still describe a parent or grandparent who was punished for it at school.

Remembering, and Reclaiming

Something important happened as those stories were told. The Welsh Not became a symbol — not of shame, but of what was taken. The memory of it helped fuel the campaigns that followed, and it underpins the way Welsh-medium education is valued today.

Welsh is now a compulsory subject for all pupils in Wales up to GCSE, and thousands of children are educated wholly or largely in Welsh. The language has official status, and there is a national aim of reaching a million Welsh speakers by 2050. You'll hear it in playgrounds, supermarkets and on the rugby terraces, mixed comfortably with English.

If you're learning Welsh, or returning to it after a gap, you are part of that recovery. Speak it badly, speak it hesitantly, speak it to your dog — the point is that no one is going to hand you a piece of wood for it now. That small act of using the language is the best answer we have to a very old punishment.