However you look at it—culturally, economical or simply in terms of better mutual understanding between fellow human beings—we are at a disadvantage. We are less than we might be, and in Wales we can't afford to be less than we might be. And, in fact, we have an advantage that we don't promote and value highly enough. In theory at least, we are the linguistically agile nation in this United Kingdom. An increasing number of us are laying aside the English-only comfort blanket and are becoming less freaked out about having two national languages at our disposal. The rest of the world probably wonders why having two national languages freaks us out anyway, but I think I'm running ahead of myself a little bit.

The reason I've brought this to the Chamber today is because I think we do share, for a range of reasons, a real worry about the decline in our capacity at population level to communicate in languages other than our own. There also seems to be some considerable consensus between ourselves as Welsh Conservatives, and indeed the Government, and in that I include previous education Ministers, on the introduction of a third language into children's lives in primary school. Of course, for some of our luckier children, it won't be their third language, it could be their fourth or even their fifth.

And yes, there will still be people who blame the decline in modern foreign language skills on the inclusion of compulsory Welsh in our curriculum, but that overlooks the fact that other parts of the UK are also committed to giving children three languages and are facing not dissimilar problems in the uptake of the study of three languages.

The guidance on the teaching of modern foreign languages has barely changed since 2008. Estyn thematic reviews at the time, and again in 2016, didn't paint the prettiest of pictures, effectively saying that enthusiasm and good intentions in year 7, maybe year 8, dissipated pretty quickly due to any number of factors from a menu of reasons given: variable teaching quality; too few lessons; too few teachers with the language as their main discipline; the standards perhaps more generally in a school; problems with the options timetable at key stage 4—I think we're all familiar with that one; the Welsh bac; insufficient collaboration with other schools; the socioeconomic profile of pupils; whether the school is English or Welsh medium; inconsistent support from local authorities; the attitude of school leaders and careers advisors to studying modern foreign languages—just 17 per cent are giving positive messages on the value of modern foreign languages; and of course the perception, and it is just a perception, that languages are just too hard.

For those pupils who do decide to continue with language study at key stage 4 and key stage 5 onwards, their standards of achievement are pretty high. Teachers for those cohorts may feel themselves lucky, as they are getting the children with the greatest aptitude for the subject and the greatest desire to study it, and so we should expect achievement there to be high. But, 'This language is elite'—and I do use that word in the most positive sense—brings its own negative consequences. If demand drops because modern languages are not seen as universally accessible in the way that successive Governments have tried to make sciences, then the number of bright people wanting to teach modern foreign languages also drops.

Minister, we've discussed the targets you've given the Education Workforce Council to try and bring in new students to train as modern foreign language teachers. They're not hugely ambitious, but they're not being met either. It's not a sort of unvirtuous circle, it's more of an unvirtuous downward spiral, and it's something we all want to stop. So, I'm sure in your response, Minister, you'll refer to this being a problem outside Wales, which I completely accept, that Global Futures has achieved something, but I hope you don't mind if we take that as read, because this is a short debate where I'm not on the attack but I'm hoping to share observations and to learn what's been gleaned from your experience to date of trying to reverse that slide in modern foreign language uptake and how it's informed the new curriculum, which is where you hope and we hope that the new language literacy and communication area of learning and experience will bring some real change.

Now, communication. I think what has leapt out at me from all the research and reports that I've read—and I'm sure the Minister and her officials have had the opportunity to read far more—whether they're from Estyn, the Gertner Institute, British Council, Gorwel, the OECD, loads from the EU, medical articles, blogs, you name it, the message that comes through loud and clear is that languages are first and foremost means of communication. But that's not what it feels like when you study it at school. And yet, their purpose as a means of communication, which makes teaching them so valuable and especially valuable to Wales, is because we need to communicate with the world.

And I recognise in that AoLE much of what I read around this subject boiling down to the strength of multilingualism for communication. Without the ability to communicate and understand what others are trying to convey to us, how can we learn to become enterprising participants in our own lives, to become the ethical citizens of the world or to develop the positive relationships?