6. Will the Minister make a statement on what further steps the Welsh Government is taking to achieve the target of one million Welsh speakers by 2050? OAQ54097

Since launching Cymraeg 2050, we've been focusing on laying firm foundations, for example, through planning, education and ICT. We're also ensuring that the Welsh language is an important part of all policy areas across Government, as well as looking at strengthening language planning functions in our institution.

Minister, in order to achieve this ambitious target, I’m sure you would agree that we will need to recruit far more teachers who can speak Welsh and teachers who are able to teach through the medium of Welsh. Unfortunately, the number of students who can teach through the medium of Welsh is at its lowest level for 10 years, and only 10 per cent of applicants are able to do this at the moment. Given these factors, and following some of the comments that have been made in this Chamber this afternoon, what are you and the Welsh Government going to do in order to turn this situation around? What discussions have you had with the education Minister to ensure that more students are encouraged to teach through the medium of Welsh?

Well, we are aware that we need to increase the number of teachers who can teach through the medium of Welsh. Of course, there is a step before that—that is, we have to ensure that enough people have a Welsh A-level so that they can go on to teach through the medium of Welsh, where that’s possible. We’ve seen that there’s a relationship between the people who study Welsh at A-level and those who go into Welsh-medium education, and we’re trying to encourage more of them. We’ve put £150,000 towards trying to encourage children of the right age to choose A-level Welsh as a subject, so we hope that will make a difference. Of course, you’re aware that we’ve already got an incentive of £5,000 in addition to try to get more people to teach Welsh and train through the medium of Welsh. Of course, what’s important is that we are expanding the sabbatical scheme, and that’s something that we’ve been looking at; it’s not something that necessarily lasts a year. But we’re looking at where people can speak a little Welsh, and we then need to just help to build that confidence. A lot of that work is going on at the moment.

On a personal level, I'm trying to increase the number of Welsh-speaking teachers by one. Whilst we will not know the number of Welsh speakers in 2050 because there'll be no means to find that out, we'll know the number after the 2021, 2031, 2041 and 2051 censuses. How many Welsh speakers do you expect in the 2021 census? One thing I do know is we're not going to go from 600,000 to 1 million in a one-year period. 

Well, what’s clear is that we have put in place a strategy for the long term. Of course, we have to ensure that we measure our progress along the way. The fact that the annual population survey has demonstrated that now 896,000 people are able to speak Welsh gives us some hope. Of course, we have to be aware that that isn’t the yardstick that we use—we are actually using the census as our yardstick. One of the things that we have to do is to ensure that people who are able to speak Welsh have the confidence to say that they speak Welsh. That is a problem for many people, and I do hope, for example, Mike, that by 2050 you will be one of those people who will have the confidence to tick that box to ensure that you, too, can say that you are one of that million.

Question 7 [OAQ54123] has been withdrawn. Question 8—Russell George.