Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:44 pm on 10 November 2021.
Thank you very much, Llywydd. Would the Minister agree with me that one of the most important things that needs to happen in order to ensure that more children benefit from Welsh-medium education is to ensure that qualified bilingual teachers are available to teach them? Now, whilst we recognise that there has been some progress since the beginning of the pandemic in terms of the numbers choosing to train as teachers, generally speaking the situation in terms of number of Welsh-speaking teachers continues to be critical. And, given the importance of securing an adequate supply of teachers to the 2050 strategy, with the aim of creating a million Welsh speakers, the shortage of over 300 Welsh-medium teachers in the primary sector and 500 in the secondary sector is a cause of great concern. And, as far as I can see, there is no strategy in place to tackle this issue. Now, you and your predecessor have referred on a number of occasions to a 10-year plan. So, can we have an update and a timetable on that plan? And the obvious question to ask, of course, is what are you as a Government specifically intending to do attract bilingual people to the profession, or to provide language training so that non-Welsh speakers can garner the skills and confidence to contribute to the Welsh-medium education sector?