4. What discussions has the Counsel General had with the Minister for Education on the future of standardised qualifications in Europe? OAQ53590

The Minister for Education fully supports the current re-referencing of the credit and qualifications framework for Wales to the European qualifications framework alongside Scotland, England and Northern Ireland, to ensure continued comparability and portability of qualifications, and to facilitate the mobility of learners and jobseekers to and from Wales.

I couldn't agree more. In fact, most of what I was going to say was on that—that we do need to make sure that people have equivalences, that people can move from country to country in order to carry out skilled work and that the qualifications are treated as equal. That is incredibly important. How is the Welsh Government, working with either the Minister for Education or with the Government in Westminster, going to ensure that occurs? I mean, we can't be certain we're going to keep all the geographical food names being protected once we come out of the European Union. We hope it's going to happen; we can't guarantee that we'll keep them. We can't guarantee we're going to keep them if we do deals with the United States of America. But the point I'm trying to make is: how can we guarantee our qualifications—City and Guilds qualifications were considered amongst the best in the world by many, many people—are still considered within Europe as equivalences of the European qualifications?

Well, at this time, Qualifications Wales is working on a report in relation to this. It will be presented to the Minister for Education, who I know will be making announcements at that point. The publication, I think, of the final report is intended currently to be over the summer. But, in relation to the future arrangements, clearly this is part of the discussions that are ongoing between the Welsh Government and the United Kingdom Government. Clearly, as with many of these things, the fork in the road depends on whether there is a deal or there isn't a deal. Clearly, in the context of a deal, there's a framework that may be continued at least in the short term. In a 'no deal' scenario, you're looking at a question of ensuring compliance with the individual member state requirements in relation to qualification recognition, which I'm sure we would all agree is a scenario we want to be able to avoid for the reasons that underlie the Member's question. 

I'd like to come at this from the other way around, if I may, because, at the moment, of course, a qualified teacher coming from the European Union can work here without any further training being necessary, whereas qualified teachers from other parts of the world need to basically retrain. Once we leave the European Union, there's a genuine question then about whether it will be illegal to discriminate against qualified teachers from other countries. I'm wondering what your view of this might be and whether you'll be speaking with the education Minister, perhaps, about the need to review that position, particularly in view of the new curriculum, where, actually, the qualifications of those other overseas teachers may be more relevant than they are at the moment? 

There is obviously a significant piece of work in relation to the qualifications make-up of the public sector workforce across Wales generally, including in the education sector, and that has been the basis of a lot of the representations we've made in the Brexit context particularly to the UK Government and beyond. But this is an area where work is absolutely under way at the moment. I know the Minister for Education is working on these questions at the moment.