2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 21 November 2017.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 2:32, 21 November 2017

Leader of the house, can I call for a statement from the Minister for lifelong learning on celebrating success in the Welsh colleges sector? No doubt everybody in the Chamber will want to extend their congratulations to students and staff at Coleg Cambria, who last week won awards in the WorldSkills UK awards. Many of them have also represented the UK overseas in Abu Dhabi at last month's world finals—Ethan Davies and Joe Massey were successful in picking up awards there. Just this college alone in Wales has managed to secure 10 medals and amassed the second highest overall provider score in the UK for the third successive year on the trot, and 13 of their learners have been selected in the long squad to compete at WorldSkills 2019 in Kazan in Russia. Not only that, but Rona Griffiths, one of the members of staff at the college, also beat off 77 other competitors to win the WorldSkills UK hero award for 2017. This is tremendous success, but not everybody's aware of it, and we ought to mark this sort of success and celebrate it more prominently here in the National Assembly and elsewhere. So, it would be good to have a round-up, if you like, on at least an annual basis, of this sort of success in the Welsh further education sector so that we can mark it more prominently as an Assembly.