This week marks the fifth year of Love Our Colleges Week, a campaign which highlights the amazing and transformational work further education colleges do day in and day out. The celebrations this year will focus on staff, students and skills. Keeping this in mind, I'd like to draw your attention today to the life-changing opportunities on offer at our colleges to international exchange programmes, both for learners and staff.

For learners, overseas experiences will broaden their horizons and raise their aspirations, making a positive contribution to their progress through education and on to future employment. One of the most important aspects of these international exchanges is that they offer equal access to all young people within our colleges, regardless of their background. Further education staff have opportunities to share best practice with colleagues overseas, participate in training or job shadowing, as well as sharing lessons learned with their organisations in Wales.

I am pleased to say my local college, Coleg Gwent, are actively involved in several of the programmes. ColegauCymru leads on the development of these exciting overseas opportunities, and their consortium projects for international mobility would have enabled over 3,000 learners and 490 staff to work, train and volunteer overseas while gaining insights into different cultures and languages that they may not otherwise have had the chance to explore.