On the first strand, in 2018, we invested £100,000 in Dennison Advanced Materials Centre, a state-of-the-art engineering training facility at the Blaenau Gwent learning zone. The centre is one of only a handful of FE colleges in the United Kingdom that can provide advanced composite training as part of its aeronautical and motorsport engineering courses. Since then, the first advanced composite apprenticeship course in Wales has started and it has attracted 60 students to date, including, I'm very pleased to say, Deputy Presiding Officer, a number of female applicants. Last year, 30 per cent of the engineering applications were from women.

As you know, we're also working with the global technology company, Thales on a £20 million National Digital Exploitation Centre—the NDEC—in Ebbw Vale. We are match funding Thales's £10 million investment, and the NDEC has already injected £1 million into the local economy with 20 of its 53 local suppliers based in Ebbw Vale, and has employed over 90 per cent of its start-up staff from the local area. The initial capability is now open for business with a state-of-the-art cyber range and business facility, and a growing education programme with links to local businesses.

On the second strand, we've developed a focused programme of support to assist grounded firms in the Tech Valleys area to increase productivity. The productivity enhancement programme will utilise the combined resources of our regional relationship management team, the smart innovation programme, the Blaenau Gwent economic development unit, and the Upskilling@Work project led by Coleg Gwent. And it will also lever additional specialist resources, such as the ASTUTE programme, where appropriate. Furthermore, Coleg Gwent are leading on our personal learning accounts pilot. This is already making a difference in supporting employed individuals aged 19 and over and earning under £26,000 to gain higher level qualifications or skills in these sectors where a shortage of skills has been identified by the regional skills partnership, such as engineering, construction, ICT and health. That will enable them to progress into employment at higher levels of wages.

But we're also raising attainment and aspiration earlier in the education journey. Earlier this year, the brightest and best students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the world's No. 1 university, spent time in our schools supporting maths and science teaching. We are only the seventeenth country in the world to take part in the scheme, and schools across Rhondda Cynon Taf benefited from this as well as schools further afield in the coalfield area, such as Neath and Bridgend. 

Our reforms to student support mean that more students from low participation areas are studying full time, part time, and for Master's degrees. Just yesterday, I was speaking at a lifelong learning conference and was able to confirm an 80 per cent increase in new Open University students in Wales. And nearly half of OU in Wales students now come from our most disadvantaged communities, including a significant uplift from students from the coalfields. This year, we've also seen an 8 per cent increase in university applications from our most deprived areas and that is the best record anywhere in the United Kingdom. 

The Valleys taskforce also has as one of its priorities the further development of the foundational economy, which Vikki again highlighted as being a crucial part of work. It has provided £2.4 million to fund 27 Valleys projects as part of the foundational economy challenge fund, enabling them to experiment with novel projects in their local areas. So, for example, the Rhondda housing association has been given funding to acquire a vacant department store and manage it as an enterprise hub to help revitalise the high street. Blaenau Gwent council has received support to examine how it can increase spend with local businesses, up from a baseline of 17 per cent of its procurement expenditure. 

The successful spreading and scaling of the outcomes from the foundational economy challenge fund projects will support policy objectives that complement the priorities of a range of Welsh Government departments. And this Government, together with our partners in the WLGA have adopted a town-centre-first principle. This will see Government, local authorities and wider public sector business and communities consider a town centre location in their decisions to put the health and the vibrancy of our town centres at the starting point for their location strategies and location investment-making decisions, and that includes the twenty-first century schools and colleges programme. 

Our transforming towns regeneration programmes are also providing or enabling £800 million-worth of investment to support over 50 towns across Wales to rebuild and refurbish buildings and public spaces, as well as tackle empty properties. In January, we announced a further package of support for town centres with nearly £90 million, and the package includes extending our capital grant programme for a further year to March 2022. And this will deliver additional regionally prioritised town-centre regeneration projects worth £58 million.

Our transforming towns agenda supports investment to create well-connected, vibrant, viable and sustainable towns, with a strong local economy where people are proud to live, work, play and invest. And for our children, we chose Rhondda Cynon Taf as the area to pilot our new approach to independent careers advice as part of the Gatsby programme. Recently, I was in a school in the constituency of Mick to see the aspirations of those children there and the advice and the work experience opportunities and mentoring that that pilot is bringing to children in those communities. Deputy Presiding Officer, I asked one student where he was applying to go to university, and he said to me, 'I want to go to the best—why not? I'm applying to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.' And I have every confidence that that student will get there.

I hope that this gives the Senedd, those of us that are left, a flavour of the many different areas of work across the Welsh Government that is focused on, or is contributing to implementing the long-term sustainable changes needed in the south Wales Valleys. And as always, the Government is grateful for the dedication that Vikki has in ensuring that these matters are discussed on a regular basis here, on behalf of her constituents and those across the south Wales Valleys communities, for which we are grateful. Diolch yn fawr.