2. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on medical education in Bangor University? OAQ52969

Presiding Officer, it clearly hasn't done you or David Melding any harm as to when you were born.

Thank you, Rhun. The Cabinet Secretary for health provided a detailed update on medical education in Wales in his letter to Assembly Members sent on 13 November. This confirmed that the first full programme of medical education to be offered in north Wales will commence in 2019.

Thank you very much. I celebrated as though it were my birthday—27 August, by the way—when we heard the news just a few weeks ago that medical education was going to be provided in Bangor from this next academic year onwards. Siân Gwenllian, I and the Plaid Cymru team more broadly have fought hard for this, and we were very pleased that we had reached agreement with the Government to secure the funding to push this forward. I'm extremely grateful to everyone who’s been involved in making this happen, none less than those in the teams at Bangor University and Cardiff University, given that this exciting development will be a partnership between both those universities.

My question today is what work is the Welsh Government and your department considering doing in order to notify young people locally that this is happening, so that they can start to make educational decisions that may be different in preparing the ground to study this course. Furthermore, what work can be done to promote this option for students and graduates in Wales?

Thank you, Rhun. I, like you, am delighted that these opportunities are being made available for students in north Wales. Obviously, routes into medical school start from the very choices that children make when they take their GCSEs. That's why, this term, we're seeing the roll-out of our reformed Seren programme, which looks to support children earlier in their educational career, providing them with exactly the kind of advice around GCSE options, career aspirations and opportunities at an earlier stage.

Obviously, universities are autonomous bodies and we can't dictate who they admit to their programmes, but I am delighted to say that, following changes to the application and admissions programme both at Cardiff and at Swansea, which are working in partnership with north Wales and west Wales to expand medical education, we have seen an increase in the number of Welsh-domiciled students gaining a place to study medicine at their institutions. So, that is now 30 per cent of students in Cardiff and 50 per cent of students on the Swansea postgraduate programme who are Welsh-domiciled students. In fact, we see a record number of Welsh young people being accepted to medical schools across the United Kingdom. Applications from Welsh-domiciled students to study medicine have again risen by a further 14 per cent for this year's application cycle. So, there is obviously a very keen interest amongst our Welsh school and college students to pursue courses in medicine, and that's why the extension of the number of places at Bangor and in west Wales, in conjunction with Swansea, means that our students, I believe, are well placed to take advantage of that expansion.  

It's 18 months since I asked the First Minister here to ensure that the business case for a new medical school in Bangor included dialogue with Liverpool medical school, after the north Wales local medical committee had expressed concern that the previous supply from there, where many of their generation of GPs had come from, had largely been severed.

In addition, therefore, to the medical education to be provided in Bangor through the collaborative approach with Cardiff and Swansea, which I welcome, how do you respond to the continuing calls by the north Wales local medical committee to incorporate connections with Liverpool and Manchester medical schools and also, therefore, restore the supply of new young doctors into north Wales from there, when many trainee doctors may still choose to study there alongside their studies within Wales?

Well, of course, Mark, as I have said, we have seen a record number of Welsh students gaining a place at medical school, whether that be medical schools here in Wales or, indeed, in the rest of the UK, which shows the strength and the ability of our A-level students to secure those places. I have not been personally involved in those discussions with providers across the border. My priority is to support the intense work that is going on between Cardiff and Bangor universities, which is at an advanced stage and shows two institutions working really closely together. And let's be absolutely clear, this new expansion will provide pathways for doctors being trained completely in north Wales, enabling medical students to study in north Wales for the entirety of their degree and to plan for their postgraduate training, and I think that's very much to be welcomed.