Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:09 pm on 22 January 2020.
Well, my colleague, the Minister for the economy, will have to clarify that, because actually apprenticeships fall under his department, not within the education department. But I will ensure that that information is made available to you.
The motion does discuss—[Interruption.] The motion does discuss degree apprenticeships, which, again, are already a feature in the draft budget. Both the Minister for the economy and I remain committed to the expansion of degree apprenticeships where they work for the benefit of employers and learners. Now, it seemed to pass some of the speakers by, but we already have a pilot running designated to create an integrated programme that has the credibility and prestige of an academic degree and the applied industry skills that you would expect to find in an apprenticeship. Those pilots are already up and running, with students recruited and currently studying for degree apprenticeships in digital, in engineering and in advanced manufacturing. Now, this is something that I'm sure that we can all agree we have to get right, and let us not forget that, only this month, a think tank run by a former adviser to the Westminster Government stated that half of the apprenticeship courses in England could be considered fake, while finding examples where existing undergraduate programmes were, in essence, simply being rebadged as an apprenticeship, rather than the approach that we are taking here in Wales. So, let me be clear that the future development of the degree apprenticeship programme in Wales will be dependent on the outcome of an independent evaluation and value-for-money considerations, and I think that's in sharp contrast to what we can see happening across the border.
The motion also calls for the creation of an adult learning allowance, and clearly some of the Conservative speakers have missed the fact that in Wales we are leading the way in this area with the establishment of personal learning accounts. Now, this initiative, piloted at the moment by both Coleg Gwent and Llandrillo Menai, is available to people who are currently in employment but are earning less than £26,000 a year. It ensures that people have an opportunity to obtain the skills, knowledge and qualifications they need either to embark on a career change to a better-paid job or to be able to find opportunities within their current work for advancement. I'm looking for an early opportunity to expand that pilot to another setting within Wales.
Mohammad Asghar spent a lot of time quoting the Open University and the need to support part-time education. This country is unique in the fact that we do not make a distinction between support available either for undergraduate or postgraduate, full-time or part-time, and I am delighted that, since the introduction of our student finance reform package, the Open University here in Wales is reporting a 46 per cent increase in the number of people beginning to undertake a degree with them—a 46 per cent increase—and we're only in the second academic year of those reforms.
Can I also say—can I also say—that we need to look at skills on a wider level? Whilst we absolutely need to ensure that skills are addressed at a lower level, we also want to see more people studying at a higher level, including Master's, and I have set myself some very stretching targets for the number of Welsh students I want to see studying for a Master's. But I have to say, since the start of this session of this National Assembly for Wales, we have seen a 33 per cent increase in those starting Master's programmes—a 33 per cent increase.
We also have an innovative scheme to support Master's programmes for the over-60s. Because of Treasury rules in London, we cannot allow the over-60s to have access to the student loan book, but we were able to find a workaround, and, therefore, if you're over 60 in Wales and you want to study for a Master's you will receive support from the Welsh Government via our Welsh universities.
Quite rightly, Bethan asked about what we're going to do to attract more people to return to Wales. Now, we have universal support for Master's students regardless of which part of the UK they are studying in, but if you return to Wales or come to Wales to study for a Master's in certain key areas you will have a bursary on top of what you can claim and what you can apply for from the usual student support system.
Paul Davies mentioned the issue of Welsh-medium provision. I'm committed to expanding Welsh medium provision in the FE sector. That's why, since coming into office, we have increased the role of the coleg cenedlaethol, not just to cover HE, but also to cover FE. I'm delighted with the work that they have done, alongside ColegauCymru, to establish a very clear plan of how we can increase Welsh-medium provision in the FE sector.
Andrew R.T. Davies, you're absolutely right—we need a renaissance in agricultural training for our young people if we're to have a vibrant agricultural sector in the future, and I have already had numerous conversations with the providers that we already have at an FE level on what a reformed curriculum can look like, making sure that children who are coming out—'children', they're all children to me; young people, sorry—young people who are coming out of those colleges have got the work-ready qualifications, skills and competencies to be able to be really successful in that industry. [Interruption.] Of course.