Questions now from the party spokespeople, and the Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Siân Gwenllian. 

Thank you, Llywydd. I would like to discuss your recent written statement announcing the results of  the consultation to amend regulations on the Welsh in education strategic plans. Seeing specific movement towards change is positive indeed, and we do need meaningful planning in order to develop Welsh-medium education across the country, and there’s a long way to go.

The recent situation in Blaenau Gwent encapsulates this for me. The residents of the Tredegar area and Rhieni Dros Addysg Gymraeg have been battling for years for a second Welsh-medium school in that area. At last, the council agreed to do that after the campaigners had gathered the data that assessed demand. A number of cylchoedd meithrin were opened to prepare for this, but then, last month, there was a u-turn from the council and a decision was taken not to open these cylchoedd meithrin, which is certainly a mistake. How will the financial allocation within your portfolio change in order to allow the necessary changes to deliver the objectives of the reform to the regulations?

Can I first of all thank the Member for her support for the report on the way in which we are developing our WESPs in the future?

The situation in Tredegar is one that I am very familiar with. Not only is there clear demand from parents in that area for primary education through the medium of Welsh for their children, the Welsh Government has made available 100 per cent capital funding to build that school. The local authority bid into our capital programme. They have been successful in that. That money is available for the council to build that provision. 

However, as you have outlined, there now seems to be a different approach at the council. I have discussed this with both the portfolio holder for education at Blaenau Gwent and the director for education at Blaenau Gwent. It seems remarkable to me that a local authority would bid for that money, be successful in that application when other local authorities were not successful, and now find themselves in the position where they do not, it appears, at least, want to build that school. My officials are looking to consider the points raised with us by Blaenau Gwent council and looking to see if a solution can be found, because, like you, Siân, and like the local Assembly Member, we want to honour and to provide a service that parents and children in that area want. 

Thank you very much, and I am very pleased that you’re persevering with those efforts, and I very much hope that those discussions with the council will bear fruit very soon.

In turning now to the language charter, which is an innovative scheme that increases the use of the Welsh language outside the classroom, there is strong evidence that it is successful, but the 'Siarter Iaith framework' doesn’t have enough of a role in the new curriculum. It is crucial that there should be status for that framework. At the moment, it is described as part of the draft curriculum for 2022, but that is very soft. It is categorised under the heading of ‘further information and guidance’. I would like to see the framework being strengthened, and I’m sure you would agree.  Therefore, it would be good to see more of a reference to the language charter in the curriculum when the amended versions do arrive. And I’d like to hear from you, in relation to the charter, what amendments to the WESPs regulations will actually meet this need to strengthen the charter?

Again, like the Member, I believe that the siarter is a really important way of developing a culture across the school rather than in individual lessons, by actually ensuring that pupils and staff in that school, and parents and supporters of that school, have opportunities in a variety of ways to use the language. And I'm always very pleased to see a wide variety of schools embracing the ethos of that and looking to weave it into the daily life of their school.

It is in itself slightly bigger and broader than simply a curriculum issue. The Member will be aware that, following the substantial number of responses—very high quality and very detailed responses—that we had to the curriculum consultation over the summer, we now find ourselves in a refinement phase, where our practitioners, supported by our experts in HE, are looking to prepare a final draft. That will be available in January of next year.

What is absolutely crucial to me is that, beyond the curriculum, we find opportunities for children to use their language skills, both in Welsh-medium schools but also in our bilingual and our English-medium schools, so that the language is used not simply in lessons, but in the wider life of that school community.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to seeing the 'Siarter Iaith framework' given its proper place in the next version of the Welsh curriculum.

I must say that I am very supportive of some of the ideas of the consultation on the regulations—the move towards targets is to be welcomed, the shift in focus from reactive developments, namely measuring demand from parents, to being proactive in the approach, namely creating the Welsh-medium education places in the first place, and also the long-term planning of three to 10 years in order to be more ambitious—I welcome all of that.

But one issue that does need consideration is how to hold local authorities to account if they fail to create this development in Welsh-medium education that is so important in their areas. And would you agree with me that we now need to have that major discussion required on legislation in order to strengthen through legislation, and that that should be the next step?

Well, like you, I'm very keen that we allow the new reformed approach to Welsh in education strategic plans to develop and to bed in within our local authorities.

As a non-Welsh speaker myself who chose this option for my own children, I know how vital provision at meithrin or at Ti a Fi before that—Ti a Fi and meithrin, primary and secondary school, are crucial if we are to meet the Welsh Government's target of a million Welsh speakers by 2050, and simply reacting to demand is not going to be good enough. We have to be proactive in ensuring and promoting the benefits of raising bilingual, and, hopefully, in our new curriculum, trilingual, children. 

At this stage, within the timescales that we have in this Government, it would be wrong of me to suggest that we are actively considering legislation as the Member suggests, but I would not rule it out as a potential next step to ensure the success that everybody in this building would want to see for Welsh-medium education provision.

Conservative spokesperson, Suzy Davies.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Minister, according to the Education Workforce Council website, Welsh Government has introduced targets for the number of students who enter the new PGCE courses in Wales with the intention of qualifying to teach certain subjects. Some of those subjects are identified as priorities, and they include Welsh and modern foreign languages, and I'm looking forward to your reply to Delyth Jewell's question later on.

A few weeks ago, I asked the Minister for the Welsh language how she thought the education system could bear most of the heavy lifting for the strategy of a million speakers by 2050, when only 12 teachers qualified to teach Welsh at secondary level, which stands at just a third of what it was five years ago.

Your target for new entrants for September for Welsh teachers this year was 75, which is very different from 12. Modern foreign languages—your target is 59, when only 18 passed last year, which is half the number it was five years ago. How did you arrive at these new targets and how many successful applications were made for entry this September?

Well, the Member is correct to identify an approach that clearly had not been successful in the past, and continuing that approach and hopefully, suddenly thinking that it might change the outcomes—well, somebody did say that doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is the definition of madness. So, we need to try a different approach.

Now setting targets for our initial teacher education providers is important, but we need to reform how we're doing that, but also how we market teaching as a desirable profession has to change—the quality of our ITE is changing—but also, crucially, how we ensure that those people who train to be a teacher actually go on, then, to work in our schools, and not just for a period of one or two years, but continue to make an ongoing commitment to the teaching profession. 

I am currently considering an entire systematic reform of how we support initial entrants into our ITE provision and teachers through the first few years of their career, with specific mention of Welsh-medium provision in our secondary schools, which is of concern to me. The Member will be aware that, only this week, we launched a new scheme, where those who have qualified to teach in a primary school but have the potential and the skills to teach either the Welsh language or through the medium of Welsh in a secondary school but are not qualified can gain additional professional learning opportunities to allow them to transfer into a high school. Because what we do know is that, every year, we have a surplus of Welsh-medium primary school teachers who do not find jobs in our system. That's a huge waste of their talents and their resources. We can use those more cleverly, and therefore providing them with the opportunity to transfer into the secondary sector is just one of the new, innovative ways we're looking to address a problem that I'm not shying away from, is there, and we need to take action on. 

Well, thank you for that answer. Some of that was very interesting, but you didn't actually address the point on how many new applicants for these particular courses have materialised this year or how these targets were reached. Perhaps I can ask you if you're going to be dropping these targets. I imagine it's around now that you'd be sending a remit letter to the Education Workforce Council, so perhaps you can respond to that question when I ask you this next one. Because the Education Workforce Council also states that, and I'm quoting:

'If you are considering a career in teaching in Wales, from September 2019'— that's this year—

'you will need to obtain qualified teaching status (QTS) by studying on an ITE programme, accredited by the Education Workforce Council (EWC) through its ITE Accreditation Board.'

Now, traditionally, qualified teacher status from England is automatically accepted here, but I recognise the changes to our curriculum, qualifications, and the method of assessment that QTS now goes through in England is quite different from in Wales. Nevertheless, you have said before that you don't want to prevent talented teachers from outside Wales bringing their talent to our schools, but I can't find any information about how those teachers can train up quickly, preferably in situ, to teach in our schools. Presumably, they'd still need to be accredited by the EWC. September has been and gone—how long do you plan to exclude newly qualified teachers from outside Wales from our Welsh schools?

There is no intention, as I've set out in previous statements, to cut off a pool of talented people who may be thinking about embarking on a teaching career or actually who want to come home and teach in our new system with our fabulous new curriculum. Therefore, there are plenty of opportunities for those wanting to come across the border or from other countries to teach in our system and there are training opportunities available, crucially in situ—you don't have to go back to a university to do it—to ensure that anybody coming into our system has the skills, knowledge and understanding of our approaches in Wales. 

With regard to numbers, the Member will forgive me, I don't have them in front of me, but I'm happy to write to her with them. 

Thank you. I'd really appreciate it. If you could do that, that would be great. Thank you very much. Perhaps you could also send us some numbers on the number of those training opportunities in situ that have been taken up by teachers from outside Wales.

You mentioned this in response to my first question, actually, that you want schools to be employing the new teachers that will be coming through the system as a result of all of this. How will you be making sure that schools can afford to employ more of these teachers and slow down the reliance on supply agencies, which, of course, comes with its own problems? How much of that £195 million education consequential coming to Wales as a result of this year's UK spending review will find its way to Welsh schools specifically? Thank you. 

Well, the Member is well aware of the Government's intention to publish its budget in the middle, now, of December—delayed, I'm aware of that. And it'll be clear to Members how the steps that this Welsh Government has taken to enhance not only the education budget—but also, crucially, the vast majority of school funding goes to schools not via my budget but via the local government Minister and the revenue support grant. And the Member will have a few more weeks to wait before those details are made available to all Members.