3. Will the Minister make a statement on teaching Welsh to adults? OAQ53969

Welsh for adults is a matter for the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language. However, we work closely on this and in co-operation with the National Centre for Learning Welsh in order to ensure that a variety of opportunities are available to learn Welsh.

Certainly, there are areas here that overlap with different responsibilities and different Ministers. Tourism is important to the Welsh economy but can I draw the Minister’s attention to a report by Cylch yr Iaith on the issue of tourism and the Welsh language? Certainly, there are impacts to tourism that need to be tackled, and one thing that we can do is try and move from the back foot to the front foot and to try and take the Welsh language, through education, more directly to tourists and those who are here on a more permanent basis, perhaps, as the owners of second homes.

We in Plaid Cymru, by the way, see clear potential to develop language tourism, but that’s a matter for a different Minister again. But what plans does the education Minister have specifically to promote the learning of Welsh for adults in the context of tourism and those who settle in Wales permanently or partially, and what does she see as the way forward in driving a recruitment campaign for learners that would tie into the Welsh Government's strategy of a million Welsh speakers?

Well, you're absolutely correct to say that adults learning the language, whether they are infrequent visitors to Wales or people who move to our nation, will play an important part in the Government's reaching its target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050. Following the 2021 census, the assumption is that an additional 2,000 adults will become Welsh speakers every year, and the Welsh for adults sector will be the main mechanism for achieving this. As I said, we continue to work across ministerial portfolios and with the national centre to look to see what more we can do to promote the availability of our adult learning, as well as making sure that, when people do come to Wales as tourists, we increase the opportunity for young people who work in that industry to be able to utilise their Welsh language skills. And that's one of the reasons why we have extended the role and remit of the coleg cenedlaethol, not just in higher education but also into further education, so those children who are developing technical qualifications can see a real place and a real economic as well as a social and cultural value in being able to continue to study through the medium of Welsh, or utilise Welsh medium skills they've acquired earlier in their educational journey. 

Well, I think that our learners of Welsh are an under-utilised resource in Wales. And, as we know, not all adults living in Wales will have been through the Wales school system. For many of them, their first approach to perhaps learning some Welsh will be through the Learn Welsh website, and I was surprised to see that the disparity between the availability of taster sessions—specifically taster sessions—for adults is surprising. There are 11 in Gwent, 10 in Nant Gwrtheyrn alone, as you might expect, but none in Swansea bay or Pembrokeshire—or at least they're not on the website. If the issue is the well-documented lack of Welsh teachers, what thought has been given to encouraging non-teachers and competent learners to play a greater role in running those courses, duly supervised by professionals, in order to increase the availability of those taster courses?

Well, it is concerning to learn that those taster courses do not seem to be available, or at least it's not well known and it's not well advertised, if somebody was to go looking for those courses, that there's an opportunity, and I will raise those matters with my colleague, the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language, who has primary responsibility for this area.