6. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on achieving the Welsh Government’s target of one million Welsh speakers through the education system? (OAQ51112)

Education is one of the key areas that underpins our ambition to achieve 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050. Ensuring the increase in the number of children and young people educated through the medium of Welsh or bilingually will be a priority for us all.

Diolch. I’d like to raise the experience of a school in my region and that’s Ysgol Gymraeg Nant Caerau in the west of Cardiff. In 2012 the school had 86 pupils on a site designed for four to seven-year-olds. Now, the school has 240 pupils aged between four and 11, and they’re having to turn children away. There’ve been expansions of schools in other areas, but Nant Caerau is having to make do with a tiny site and the footprint is less than half the Government guidelines. There is a patch of land next to the school thatcould be used, and that makes perfect sense to me and almost everybody, but the council is dragging its feet.

So, would you agree that if we are to increase the use of the Welsh language in areas like Caerau and Ely, we need to invest in sites like this? And will you meet with parents to encourage Cardiff council to take action on the site as soon as possible?

Presiding Officer, Members will be aware, from yesterday’s business statement, that I’ll be making an oral statement on Welsh language education plans next Tuesday. Members will also be aware that I commissioned Aled Roberts to look at all the strategic plans for education published by local authorities, in the spring, and he published that report in the summer. In terms of the example that the Member has quoted, I would suggest to him that he takes that up with his local council.

Minister, in a statement back in April, which referred, at least in part, to promoting the use of the Welsh language, you explained how you’d like to focus on co-ordinating and commissioning practical support to facilitate the use of the Welsh language amongst small businesses. Now, about £4 million from the main education budget came to the Welsh language budget this year towards education support, and I wonder if it’s clear yet whether preparing young people for using Welsh in the workplace, which is obviously the best support of all that you can give, is being supported through the education system, via the Welsh baccalaureate, information technology training, or, most importantly of all, embedding the use of Welsh in vocational courses for front-facing careers.

I hope that that is happening. I had a meeting last week with the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol to discuss how we can expand and continue to implement the work that was recommended by Delyth Evans in her task and finish group, which the Cabinet Secretary published in the summer. I would expect and anticipate that all those different elements need to be in place. I will be publishing by the end of this year a plan for the teaching of Welsh in education and some of those elements will be addressed in that. Otherwise, you’ll see from the strategy that we published before the summer recess that we have targets in place for increasing the number of teachers and teaching staff available to be able to teach both through the medium of Welsh and to teach Welsh—significant increases by the end of this Assembly—and we have already put in place our programmes for achieving those targets. I would be very happy to update Members at appropriate times through this Assembly.

According to the Aled Roberts review of the Welsh in education strategic plans, which was completed on behalf of Government—Aled Roberts states that the plans show that a great deal more needs to be done if we are to reflect the aspirations within the Welsh Government’s 2010 strategy, let alone the more ambitious requirements of the Government’s new strategy to reach a million Welsh speakers by 2050’ and the majority of local authorities are eager to contribute to the Government aspiration of securing 1 million Welsh speakers. In looking at your language strategy, Cymraeg 2050, there are no targets and criteria for all local authorities in order to note how each local authority will contribute to reaching this ambitious aim. You’ve mentioned that you’re going to make a statement next week on the WESPs. In your response to Aled Roberts’s report, will you introduce these targets and criteria for the Government and local authorities?

I would very kindly suggest that the Member once again reads the strategy that I published in July. And if you read the programme of work, which was published simultaneously, you will see that there are criteria included there that show that we’re planning for an increase in the number of children receiving their education through the medium of Welsh, and how many teachers will be required to attain those targets. So, the targets are already there for the end of this Assembly term and the ensuing years. So, there are some targets included in both the programme of work and in the strategy itself.

When it comes to publishing the WESPs, of course, it’s a matter for the local authorities. It’s not a matter for this Government to do that, and it’s up to each individual authority to do that. And I have written to each one of the local authorities over the summer, and I would expect them to publish their plans, I would hope, before the end of this year.