Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:46 pm on 10 November 2021.
I thank the Member for that question, and if these are his new permanent responsibilities, I welcome him to them as well. This question is a very valid one. So that we can extend access for people to Welsh-medium education in all parts of Wales, we have to ensure that we reach and go further than the targets that we have at present in terms of recruitment, and we haven't yet done that.
The programme of work that I published some weeks ago mentioned the plan that we have for a new strategy. The solutions are not simple ones; everyone recognises that. And we have to ensure that we do work in partnership with our broader stakeholders in order to ensure that we make progress in this area. So, we're about to publish a draft document to discuss with stakeholders. We've already been in discussions with the Education Workforce Council, with CYDAG, with the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, and with the commissioner, but there are others who will have to be part of that conversation.
There are variety of things that we can do in order to encourage people to train as teachers—making it easier for them to do that, providing financial incentives for them to do that. So, there are many ways to tackle this. But we need to look at the broader workforce as well. I've had discussions recently on the shortage of classroom assistants who can speak Welsh, and we have to make progress in that area as well, and see the workforce as a whole, as it were.