Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 19 October 2022.
Of course, I think this and our previous iterations of Welsh Labour-led Governments have a good record on promoting apprenticeships, not just on the numbers, but also on the quality and the completion stats. I remember Ken Skates, when he was an even younger man, as a skills Minister, and the work he was doing and the fact that our completion figures even then were much better than was being achieved by the UK Government in England, and that's a record we've continued.
Our challenge is about getting enough people to want to go into the apprenticeship route, and employers that will benefit from it as well. There is a real financial challenge in that as well. We've talked before in this Chamber about the fact that a third of our apprenticeship programme was funded by now former EU funds, and that gives us a really big challenge to get over. We've also seen rising inflation that's creating more and more pressure, also not just on apprenticeships, but on in-work training as well. A number of employers are now interested in what they can do to recognise that the future worker is largely here—your employees in 10 years' time are probably in your workforce already—and what you can do to upskill people in the workplace as well.
I attended this morning a Skills Cymru programme. They're expecting 5,000 people towards the end of their high school career to look at future choices, and apprenticeship options and options in future skills are very much part of what they're talking about. So, there is a deliberate and purposeful conversation we're having about all routes for the future—further education, apprenticeships, other skills, and not just the university route—to not just a rewarding career in terms of the people you'll meet, but in terms of the financial rewards that are on offer as well.