Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 5 February 2020.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:30, 5 February 2020

(Translated)

Thank you very much. It was good to see in that meeting last night. I do think that we have a problem in relation to a number of people who've been through Welsh-medium education who don't have the confidence, perhaps, to use the language, in particular in the further education colleges. And that's why this group is so essential, I think, so that we do have the coleg Cymraeg, which encourages people to use the Welsh language. But, also, one of the things that they've done is to create ambassadors to try and get people the same age as the students to convey that message themselves. And I think that is extremely important, and a step forward.

One of the things that we have to do is to ensure that we know who can speak some Welsh, and one of the things we're doing in the education field, for example, is that we have undertaken an annual census so that we know now who in the education field can speak Welsh and is teaching in schools that aren't Welsh-medium schools. So, I do think that, ultimately, we may need to do that in these further education colleges.

I do think that Work Welsh—it is quite a new project still, and we're just starting out on this journey, but the feedback we've had is very positive, and I think that we have to give some more time to see what the impact is, and whether there's anything that we need to do to improve the way that we're undertaking this work. But what we've done to start with is to concentrate on those areas where we know that the Welsh language is completely essential, such as care and childcare and so forth.