Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 12 February 2020.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 1:47, 12 February 2020

Well, Presiding Officer, I'm not in charge of health and care, but I think what's important for me is that if we are to respond, as I said, proactively to the demand that there is out there for Welsh-medium education, if we're to meet that target, then the first important element is our teaching workforce. The Member joined me and other Members recently at the event organised by our coleg cenedlaethol. We are working collectively with them and our FE partners to increase the availability of Welsh-medium FE tuition, building on the very real success the coleg has had in terms of expanding Welsh-medium tuition in the HE sector.

It is absolutely an important principle to me that we give children and young people in Wales a Welsh language continuum, from our childcare offer through to access to our nursery schools via the mudiad, into Welsh-medium schooling, and then for them to be able to continue to develop and use their language skills in both an FE and an HE setting wherever possible.

We will continue to look to ensure, in other aspects of education workforce, that we address the linguistic needs of staff, whether that be, for instance, our teaching assistants, our nursery assistants in the mudiad, or other professionals who work with our children and young people. It's really important from an equity point of view that we continue to work as hard as we can to address those linguistic skills of professionals who work alongside our children and young people.