1. Will the First Minister make a statement about Welsh Government plans for the funding of band B 21st Century Schools? OAQ52976

Yes. Band B of our twenty-first century schools and education programme will see a further £2.3 billion invested in our education estate from April of next year, and, subject to approval of business cases, all local authorities and colleges in Wales will benefit from those investments. 

And it's the case that the Government has committed to use public-private funding through the mutual investment model of £500 million to partially fund the cost of the building of new schools. Last week, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance told me that individual school building schemes would not be of sufficient scale individually to qualify for funding, and instead schemes would be brought together in batches across Wales to be of sufficient scale to qualify. However, the Wales Audit Office produced a report in May 2017 in which they said that, to date, most councils had resisted procuring projects in batches, that protracted consultations on one or two controversial projects that involve merges or closures could potentially delay all the projects in a batch and that failure to collaborate would pose a significant risk to the revenue-funded element of the programme.

Having looked through previous discussions in this Chamber and in committee on the mutual investment model, I find the Government has provided inadequate information about how it's going to resolve these issues. With that in mind, would the First Minister, in the first instance, outline how the Government is addressing the batching problems, but, in the longer term, would he commit to a debate in Government time in order for all Members to scrutinise this funding model effectively?

The reason why we've chosen strategic partnering to deliver MIM education projects is that it allows for the capital value of individual projects to be much lower than they would be under single procurement. So, we encourage, of course, bundling to happen in order for the cost to go down, amongst other reasons. The successful strategic partner is granted the opportunity to deliver the aggregated pipeline of MIM education schemes—that's up to £500 million in value—and that represents an efficient and agile way to deliver single or small batched schemes at a local level with values as low as £15 million, because, without that, every individual local authority or further education institution would need to run a full procurement for each of its individual MIM projects, which is impractical and time consuming. We would encourage local authorities, of course, to take a bundling approach so that their own costs are brought down and, secondly, of course, to make sure that they are able to deliver projects that otherwise probably wouldn't be delivered because they are smaller in scale. 

Twenty-first century schools, First Minister, as we've heard you many times say, is about improving the school estate across Wales. In my own electoral region, the Vale of Glamorgan Council are proposing to shut a small rural school that has a good role to it, has a bright future ahead of it—Llancarfan school. I appreciate you can't talk about the specific case, but surely it is not right to use twenty-first century school money to shut a viable school that has a bright future, and, indeed, the argument the Vale council have put forward doesn't even talk of closure; it merely talks of relocation. That is not what twenty-first century schools is about, is it?

Well, as he puts it, the objective of twenty-first century schools is not to close schools; the objective of twenty-first schools is to provide the appropriate premises for children and young people to learn in. I know, of course, that in many parts of Wales that has meant that new schools have been built and that existing schools have been closed for any number of reasons. He's right to say, of course, that I can't comment on a particular proposal that's before the Vale of Glamorgan council, but we're proud of the fact that twenty-first century schools has delivered new buildings and refurbished buildings for so many children and young people across Wales. 

There is huge demand for the additional capital funding allocated for twenty-first century schools projects from the Welsh-medium sector, which is excellent news, of course, and demonstrates a desire to support the Government's ambition of a million Welsh speakers, but there isn’t sufficient funding to meet that demand by any stretch. Over £100 million-worth of applications for funding have been made for projects to increase Welsh-medium education across Wales. Will there be more investment for Welsh-medium schools or Welsh-medium education in this Assembly term?

Well, of course, we have made great investment in education and we’ve maintained the high level of education spend. For example, if you look at what we spend on education, you can see that the spending has increased over the years—1.8 per cent in 2017-18, and that’s more than any other country in the United Kingdom. But it’s true to say, of course, that there is more demand for Welsh-medium, which is to be welcomed. Of course, every local authority, through the plans that they have, should ensure that that demand is catered for, and we must also ensure that the teachers are in place so that the schools can grow and prosper. Of course, we will invest, of course, in Welsh-medium education and we’ll work with the LEAs to ensure that their plans are strong.