Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:35 pm on 31 January 2017.
Huw, you raise a fundamentally important point that we can have the best structure and the best strategic planning of these opportunities, but unless we successfully engage with young people, potential students and learners of all kinds, and the people who influence their choices, then we won’t realise the full benefit of this. We’re all guilty of it. Our children, often, are the prisoners of our own experience. So, if mum and dad did it a certain way, whatever way that is, if mum and dad did it that way, that’s the way you think it should be done. Sometimes it’s difficult to break free of your own experience and, sometimes, your own prejudices about how children should move forward.
My Cabinet colleague the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language is actively engaged in discussions with Careers Wales about making sure that children and students have access to the very best possible careers advice that gives them the widest possible range of choices and opportunities, whatever that is, and is based purely not on advantages for individual institutions, but on the advantages for and the needs of that particular student. If we need to do more research, and we need to do more work on this, then I’m sure the Minister has heard you, and we’re not frightened to do that.
I must say, I already go to prize-givings where there are celebrations of a wide variety of achievements of all kinds, whether those be academic or social—the child that has contributed to the school through their caring for other students, through their commitment to trying to be helpful to the school, as well as people who have taken different courses. So, I see that out there, but it is patchy and it is not commonplace, and we need to make it so. But I also come across young people who are making very positive decisions. I know of one young man—his mum is a friend of mine—who this summer had the choice between an engineering degree at a Welsh university or an apprenticeship with a engineering company, and he has gone for the apprenticeship, because he is savvy enough to know that, eventually, that company will pay for his degree for him, and he wants to learn on the job. That’s a very positive choice for him. So, we need to make sure that other students have those opportunities and have the ability to make choices that are best for them. I will continue to work with the Minister for Lifelong Learning and the Welsh Language to ensure that we have a system of advice and guidance that will make the most of the structural changes that we’re making.