11. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on careers advice services? OAQ51872

Careers Wales is an impartial careers service that gives guidance to young people and adults, as well as facilitating links between education and employers. The service is currently being revised in an exciting way, and there will be an even greater focus on working with young people and stakeholders and on developing digital services.

Thank you very much. I’m going to ask you not to be as impartial as careers advisers. My interest is in your willingness to work with the Cabinet Secretary for health to encourage the young people of Wales to follow a career in health and care. Would you, as a Government, support joint investment between education and health, possibly, in a kind of all-Wales roadshow to explain the whole range of career options in these areas and to generate excitement in those options, from nursing to medical care and other professions—something that could also double up as a roadshow encouraging people to take an interest in their own health, in their own bodies and in their own diet and so on? I would be more than happy to meet Government representatives to tell them more about my vision in this area.

Well, there are a great many exciting things taking place in this area currently. We do hold days where we encourage young people to have a go—they’re called 'Have a go' days. Thousands of children have been attending these events, where they have access to see what type of options are out there for careers in the future. Health is a part of that, and we must also emphasise that we do need to get people to look into STEM subjects and to ensure that we don’t just emphasise health but point out that there are other opportunities; for example, we would hope to see people going into Wylfa and the developments there. So, I think that limiting it just to health might not be the path that we would wish to take. However, I would be willing to give further information about these days that are already taking place—these ‘Have a go’ days, which are very successful.

Other than Careers Wales, of course, Minister, there are a number of organisations, businesses and other charities that offer careers advice and guidance and training—many of which get money from the Welsh Government or access funding from sources that start with the Welsh taxpayer. How are you working with those organisations to make sure that they understand the growing importance of Welsh language skills? Are you ensuring, even if the organisations have the awareness, that the people that they're training are also aware at the end of that experience?

I'm very pleased with that question because I do think that we need to recognise the Welsh language as a skill as well as other things. The more that we ask different organisations to adhere to the standards, then the more we will be needing to recruit people with the skills necessary to implement those plans. So, there is an awareness that that is something that we need to emphasise. We are emphasising it much more significantly now in further education colleges, understanding that that was an area where we saw a huge drop-off in the number of people actually using the Welsh language after they'd finished Welsh language education. So, there are real opportunities. It is something that we are very much focusing on, and understanding that, actually, the Welsh language is a skill, and it is a method of actually finding a job in the future. A lot of it is about giving people the confidence

to use the Welsh language in a way that will help them to understand that it's an important part of the skills that they have.

Thank you, Minister and Cabinet Secretary.