Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:35 pm on 11 January 2023.
A very important question, if I may say so. The census has shown a decrease, particularly among schoolchildren between the ages of five and 15, and that's a cause of concern. But, as the Member said in his question, that's not the only data source that we have. The annual population survey shows that there's been an increase over the same period, and that's the first time that the two sources have shown a different direction over the same period. So, that's an important part of the broader landscape.
It's not the Welsh Government that gathers the data; that is done by the Office for National Statistics. They gather the data for both sources. So, the First Minister has written to the national statistician about these differences to see what we can do to understand what underpins that, and I look forward to seeing the ONS working with our statisticians within Government on the issue. And the Member is quite right in saying that, in order to have an evidence base that is reliable for drawing up policy, we need to understand why different sources show different things. The way the data is collected, and the questions asked, are different in both data sets. So, that, certainly, is part of the explanation, but we need to understand the broader context too.