5. What discussions has the Counsel General had with the Minister for Education about the continuing participation of students from Wales in the Erasmus+ programme following Brexit? OAQ54639

In addition to regular discussions on this and related issues at Cabinet sub-committee, I've met with the Minister for Education separately on a number of occasions to discuss the potential impacts of Brexit on the Erasmus+ programme.

Thank you, Counsel General. As you will know, Welsh learners have really benefited from Erasmus+, with over €40 billion being brought into Wales between 2014 and 2018 to support over 7,000 participants in 245 projects. I know the EU Commission has suggested that, for the cycle starting in 2021, the scheme will become global in scope, but, as with so much else, the uncertainty caused by Brexit means that there are question marks around future Welsh and UK participation. What discussions have you had around the continued participation of Welsh learners, for whom the experience can be life changing, and, in particular, around enabling vocational learners to access these opportunities?

This is a really important point, so I thank you for raising this. It was on 16 October that I met—courtesy of Colegau Cymru, who I thank for arranging this—a group of vocational learners from across south Wales who had benefitted from participating in Erasmus+ placements, and I heard at first hand about the benefits of that programme, which they described in their own lives and in their own workplaces. It was about building confidence, about personal development, about learning different perspectives on the world and the world of work, building relationships with people in other countries, and also taking back to their own workplaces new ideas and fresh ways of looking at things. All of them were clear that this was not the sort of thing that they would otherwise have been able to take advantage of in their own lives.

She talks about the future scoping of the replacement Erasmus scheme, and it strikes exactly the kind of priorities that we would wish to see: supporting disadvantaged learners into Erasmus, part-time learners, and a more global scope in many other ways. Those are exactly the kinds of things that I'm sure we would all want to see our young people in Wales being able to participate in fully.

I know that the Minister for Education has been advocating for this position with the UK Government from the outset, and I believe that, more recently, we've had some confidence, if we can't participate in the Erasmus replacement scheme into the future, which remains our priority, that the UK Government has a UK-wide scheme in mind. But the fundamental point, coming back to the point that I made earlier, is that the Treasury has to commit funding in order for that to happen, and, without that funding, it will not be able to be a reality.