Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:49 pm on 14 March 2017.
This review and this process will consider the Welsh-medium education plans. That’s the purpose and the point of the WESPs, and we will be considering how we can expand Welsh-medium education over the coming years. This will be an important foundation for how we create more Welsh speakers for the future. But it will also enable people to learn Welsh early on in their life, and the hope is that the Welsh language will remain with them, so that they have the opportunity to study through the medium of Welsh at school, post 16, and then, if they choose to do so, in the workplace after that. I very much hope that that will then reflect on the remainder of the education system, in that there will be more room for the Welsh language throughout the education system, to ensure that young people, when they leave school, when they’re 16, and wherever they’ve been to school—an English-medium or Welsh-medium school—are able to use and speak the Welsh language. Because that’s what we need to do if we want to create this bilingual Wales.