7. Will the First Minister outline how much funding the Welsh Government is planning to give Mudiad Meithrin in the 2018/19 financial year? OAQ51790

Yes. Grants and contracts totalling more than £3.7 million have so far been allocated to Mudiad Meithrin for the 2018-19 financial year. This includes an additional £1 million to expand Welsh-medium early years provision across Wales.

Can I thank you for that answer? I want to raise the importance of Mudiad Meithrin, which gets children to start using Welsh at a very young age, which leads on to them attending Welsh-medium schools and thus increasing the number of Welsh speakers in Wales. Will the Welsh Government produce a plan to increase the numbers attending Ti a Fi and Mudiad Meithrin, because that is going to be the only way in which the number of Welsh speakers is going to be increased dramatically over the next 20 or 30 years?

I've some sympathy with what the Member's saying as my own parents are Welsh speaking, as he knows, and I'm not Welsh speaking as they didn't teach it to me as a child and I've singularly failed to get any better at it than knowing my colours and numbers, I'm ashamed to say. So, I think there's a lot to be said for bringing up your children bilingually. Cymraeg for Kids provides advice and support for parents and prospective parents aimed at enabling families to use more Welsh. The programme's targeted at prospective parents and families with children aged 0 to four, and Mudiad Meithrin delivers local activities and support on behalf of the Welsh Government. These include story and song sessions, baby yoga and baby massage groups. These activities were expanded to all local authorities from April 2017, and the contract for delivery of the activities has been extended to March 2019, as we absolutely agree with the Member that the earlier the engagement with the Welsh language and the more frequent that engagement in the family, the more likely it is that the language will stick.

We've got a network of more than 400—I can't even say it in Welsh, I'm ashamed to say—cylchoedd Ti a Fi parent and toddler groups across Wales. These provide activities promoting the development of children from birth to school age and offer the opportunities for families to socialise in an informal Welsh atmosphere.

I'm going to add something else in there that I know from my digital portfolio myself, which is that I very much encourage everybody to get as much Welsh onto Wikipedia as possible and onto the web because what we find is that if youngsters can use it in their day-to-day activities as part of their socialisation then they tend to use Welsh much more frequently amongst their peer group outside of the school setting, and that also helps to cement the use of Welsh language in their lives. So, we've been trying to encourage that for some considerable period of time.

The additional £1 million to support the work in 2018-19 will enable them to make rapid progress to expand Welsh-medium early years provision and it will be used to undertake work specifically aimed at establishing new settings in areas with a current shortage of Welsh-medium childcare provision as well.

This money is very welcome, and of course it's a very important seedcorn investment for the 1 million speakers policy by 2050, but you can't make the assumption that just because a child goes to Ti a Fi and Mudiad Meithrin they will continue to use Welsh throughout their lives, particularly when they leave school. While it might be quite difficult to monitor the progress of individuals using Welsh when they perhaps learn it online, it should be easier to track the progress of a child and whether they develop and use their Welsh throughout their life. Is that something that's a part of Welsh Government's plans within the 2050 strategy?

I'm not absolutely certain whether that specific is, but I know that the review of Welsh in education strategic plans undertaken by Aled Roberts in 2017 included recommendations to strengthen the strategic relationship between local authorities and Mudiad Meithrin to ensure growth at local authority level to contribute to the Welsh Government target for 2050 and to ensure the system for capital investment takes need for preschool provision into account in order to plan more effectively for the transition between preschool and the primary phase. So, that's partly answering your question, in the sense that we are tracking people from preschool into the primary stage provision, but I'll ask the Minister with responsibility for Welsh language to specifically answer your question.FootnoteLink

Information further to Plenary

May I also welcome the fact that the agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Government on the budget secured these additional resources for Mudiad Meithrin? But I would disagree to a certain extent with the point that Suzy Davies made, because the evidence shows that if you do go to Welsh-medium preschool education, then you’re far more likely to go on to Welsh-medium education than if you don’t.

We are talking here of the Government’s strategy to secure a million Welsh speakers by 2050, but I would like to refer specifically to the childcare offer that the Government is now developing, and the crucial role that that has in ensuring that as many children as possible in that preschool age group are caught within the Welsh-medium continuum rather than starting their education journey outwith that continuum, because, once you’ve lost them in those early years, the great likelihood is that they won’t come into Welsh-medium education and that they won’t become bilingual.

So, may I ask how you are ensuring that all children will have access to Welsh-medium services in terms of the childcare offer and also the need to ensure that there is sufficient workforce in place to secure that provision?

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.