Mudiad Meithrin

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 27 February 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:15, 27 February 2018

The Member's quite right, we did put the additional £1 million in—invested it—to enable them to respond to the challenge set out in 'Cymraeg 2050' to make rapid progress in expanding Welsh-medium early years provision. We've delivered to over 2,000 groups so far during 2017-18, providing support and advice to enable families to use more Welsh. The Member's absolutely right—there's real data to show that preschool activity does lead on to Welsh-medium activity. As I was saying to Suzy Davies, we've extended our monitoring of that to make sure that we have the data available, and we've extended the contract for delivery of the activities as well to March 2019. As the lead organisation within Cwlwm—a consortium of five leading childcare organisations in Wales—Mudiad Meithrin has also undertaken projects aimed at delivering a bilingual integrated service that will ensure the best possible outcomes for children and families across Wales, with a view to that bilingualism, as opposed to teaching Welsh as a foreign language, which I think is a policy that hasn't stood the test of time, and I'm living proof of how well it doesn't work.