I support this motion, along with the Plaid amendment. Part-time study can be vital to those who cannot afford to give up work but need to study in order to improve the future for themselves and their family. A healthy part-time education sector can be a major attraction for businesses looking for a new home that want the option of being able to upskill their workforce. It gives increased options for those who want to return to work after a significant period away, perhaps looking after children.

Those most likely to benefit from part-time study are those who are most likely to need funding support, though. The upside is that they’re also the people most likely to be motivated to successfully complete their course. Adults attend study for different reasons and motivations than school leavers, and offer an excellent return on investment that justifies the investment of taxpayers’ money, apart from the benefit of improving people’s life choices. But there is still a need for young people to be able to access part-time education. A school leaver who has been failed by the education system, or has done poorly at school because of adverse childhood experiences, but who has a passion and the disposition to be, for example, an excellent nurse, will find it extremely difficult to make up for the deficiencies of their education in early life without appropriate advice and support.

It is possibly inevitable that some people will need to work full-time and study part-time. But, during that time, they deserve the help they need and the funding required to upskill, so that they can help Wales fill the jobs that are currently standing vacant or being recruited for outside Wales. If a person cannot take part in part-time education, or if it is made uneconomic or impractical, or if—due to poor or absent careers advice—they don’t know what their options are, people will find it difficult, if not impossible, to overcome accidents of birth that saw them born into a low-income family or with adverse childhood experiences or that sent them to a failing school whenever or wherever that was.

Good, accessible careers advice is vital for people if they’re going to take advantage of the part-time study opportunities that exist. For a person who has been out of education for, perhaps, many years, it could be a daunting prospect researching courses and applying for them without a good careers service to provide that helping hand. I will not be supporting the Labour amendment today, which displays the typical complacency of a party in Government that refuses to even admit that there may be room for improvement in the provision of careers advice in Wales. If Welsh Labour support the sentiments of point 4, why are they deleting it and replacing it with an amendment that says, effectively, nothing?

Welsh Government says in its amendment that it has the ambition to develop a new all-age employability plan, part of which is providing joined-up careers advice. But an ambition falls far short of delivery or even commencing implementation. So, my question is, why, after nearly 20 years in this place, are you only now expressing the ambition to provide joined-up careers advice in Wales on an all-age employability plan? Thank you.