8. Will the Minister make a statement on the provision of Welsh-medium education in South Wales East? OQ56285

Demand for Welsh-medium education in South Wales East remains high. Our investment in five new Welsh-medium primaries and several childcare and school extensions in this region will further support this upward trend. This is encouraging news, I think, as local authorities head towards the publication of their new Welsh in education strategic plans, with individual targets aligned with the Welsh Government's overall aims of 'Cymraeg 2050'.

Thank you. At the moment, at the moment, Minister, there is only Welsh-medium school in Blaenau Gwent, and travel there is a barrier, particularly for younger children. Obviously, parents don't want to put three-year-olds on two different buses to go to a school which is two valleys away. And local campaigners have been concerned for many years about the reduction in the number of children from the county attending Welsh-medium schools; that is until now: the council in Blaenau Gwent has proposed the construction of a new Welsh school, opening the first classrooms in 2023. Would you, first of all, Minister, join with me in congratulating campaigners such as Meryl Darkins and Ann Bellis, and also ensure that you will support the council in order to ensure that the school does open on time? In the meantime, Minister, could you speak to the Minister for transport to see whether there is any means of improving the transport situation for the children in the meantime, before that school opens? And this is my last point, I promise, Deputy Presiding Officer: I understand that this is a matter for the council, but you helped to put momentum behind Welsh-medium education in Merthyr last year when you provided grant funding. Places like Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr are so central to the target of a million Welsh speakers, so Government support would be truly beneficial here. Thank you.

Thank you, Delyth. Welsh Government are supporting Blaenau Gwent with the development of the school that you have just referenced with a grant of £5.8 million. That grant has been awarded to address the very real logistical and travel problems that you have identified, and that has meant that families who would previously have chosen Welsh-medium education have not done so, because of the long distances involved. Therefore, it is very important that this need has been recognised, and with the help of that £5.8 million from Welsh Government, we will see a new Welsh-medium primary school in the Tredegar-Sirhowy area. It's much needed, much longed-for, and as you said, people have been campaigning for that. The local authority have also identified the need to improve their marketing and promotion strategy in relation to Welsh-medium education to sit alongside the development of that school. My only regret is that I will not be the Minister who gets the privilege and the pleasure of opening it and welcoming children to that new establishment.

Minister, six months ago the Welsh language commissioner expressed concern about the decline in the number of newly qualified teachers able to teach Welsh, and said it could undermine your Government's ambition to have a million speakers of the language in 30 years' time. I'm just wondering what you've been doing to address this.

You're absolutely right. To achieve the target in 2050 we do need to recruit more teachers who are able to teach in our Welsh-medium schools and in our bilingual schools, and we also need to equip our teachers working in English-medium schools to deliver high-quality Welsh lessons. We have set targets for ITE providers to recruit to the initial teacher education programmes, and we have established, although the pandemic has slightly impacted on it, a new conversion programme for teachers who have previously qualified to teach through the medium of Welsh in the primary sector, where we sometimes, in certain parts of Wales, have an oversupply, to allow them to convert quickly to be able to teach through the medium of Welsh in the secondary sector. We have seen significant demand for that professional learning programme, which I believe will help us to address some of the issues identified by the commissioner.