Our young people have been able to vote at 16 now in two elections—the Senedd elections and  the local elections this year. That, of course, is a cause of great joy and pride on a national level. My own daughter voted for the first time in the Senedd elections, and of course she voted for her mother, and my son in the local elections this year, and they clearly come from a family that discusses and, indeed, lives politics. But, I know that they and their friends weren't immersed in the topic in school. And I know that the number of voters participating in our democracy is not high enough, particularly in terms of younger people.

The initial data of the Welsh Government showed that between 40 and 45 per cent of young people aged between 16 and 17 who qualified to vote registered for the Senedd elections last year. Now, clearly, the pandemic had an impact on some of the plans to raise awareness, but survey after survey of young people has demonstrated that they want more political education in a formal setting. And the more young people learn about politics, the more they want to participate in politics. A limited element of what could be called political education is part of the current curriculum, as part of the Welsh baccalaureate and personal and social education.

In responding to a petition presented to the Petitions Committee in the fifth Senedd calling for statutory political education, the Minister for Education at the time, Kirsty Williams, said, 'Schools are already encouraged to provide broad-ranging education, including political awareness, and there are opportunities for learners to look at politics in the current curriculum through the Welsh baccalaureate and personal and social education'. But note the use of the word 'opportunities'. It doesn't give one great confidence that the current situation ensures provision of quality political education in all schools.

Some of the political education that is provided at the moment to our young people therefore emerges from elements within personal and social education, which is a statutory requirement under the curriculum, but, unlike other subjects in the national curriculum, the way that it is taught is reliant on a framework—a framework that schools are expected to use, but that they aren't mandated to do so. The framework says that learners should have an opportunity to learn about active citizenship, but not that they have to have that opportunity.

Many reports echo the findings of an inquiry by our previous Youth Parliament that only 10 per cent of the young people questioned by them had received political education. Their report stated that they were very disappointed to find that very few young people in Wales learnt about politics through political education—something that was frightening, according to them, given the change in the voting age. They felt that this reflected a lack of confidence among teachers and schools in teaching the subject. The Electoral Reform Society Cymru has echoed this point on the patchy nature of provision and the need to support teachers better, particularly given the change that is in the pipeline, with the introduction of the new curriculum.

Education unions have revealed that their members are concerned about providing political education. What more, therefore, can the Welsh Government do to support educators in introducing quality, rounded political education—an awareness that goes beyond an understanding of the bare facts and mechanisms of Welsh governance? How, for example, do we ensure that our young people have an understanding of the history and importance of the trade union movement, or their language rights? We need to teach about the systems and ideologies that give context and meaning to the party political discussions and the electoral processes in the first place. And according to the National Education Union, professional teaching varies across Wales, and we need additional support for this important subject now and in preparation for the requirements of the new curriculum. It is true that new digital learning resources were made available recently, but the lack of confidence and, of course, the lack of experience among teachers—the vast majority having never had any political education themselves—needs to be addressed quickly in order to raise confidence and ability among our educators to ensure a high quality of provision.

In terms of the Welsh baccalaureate, the global citizenship element within the bac does allow for some political education, but this doesn't always follow. At a national level, the aim of the global citizen challenge is to give learners an opportunity to develop an understanding of global issues, chosen from one of the following topics: cultural diversity, fair trade, future energy, inequality, sustainable living, natural and human disasters, and poverty. At a higher level, the global citizen challenge gives pupils an understanding of complex and multifaceted global issues within six themes: health, food and shelter, population, transport, the economy, and the natural environment. So, although every pupil studying the Welsh bac does have to undertake the global citizenship challenge, it won't necessarily include anything about Welsh politics or education about the governance of Wales or the electoral system in Wales. And the Welsh bac isn't mandatory either, although the Welsh Government encourages schools and colleges to provide it to all pupils.

In other nations in the UK, citizenship is a main element of the post-primary statutory curriculum, and Scotland introduced that way before giving the vote to those at 16 years of age. We cannot therefore rely on what is in place at the moment. There are awareness-raising projects, which are excellent and in place already in many school settings. I participated in a session at Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Llangynwyd recently with the Politics Project. But projects such as these, although effective in empowering some groups of young people, are something of a postcode lottery, according to the Electoral Reform Society. The 'Making Votes-at-16 Work in Wales' report by Nottingham Trent University noted that the Welsh Government did not introduce a programme to strengthen political education when the legislation to reduce voting age was introduced.