Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd.

6. Will the Minister provide an update on the Welsh Government's strategy for the teaching of modern foreign languages? OQ58927

Certainly. 'Global Futures' is our strategy for international language learning, and I announced the publication of our revised strategy towards the end of last year. That outlines how we and our 'Global Futures' partners will continue to support international languages in schools for a further three years.

Gweinidog, the new curriculum has a commitment to making Wales a truly multilingual nation. There is also the programme for government commitment along those lines and, as you say, the 'Global Futures' strategy having recently been updated also. But despite all of that, Minister, we know that there has been a considerable drop in the number of students taking German and French at GCSE and A-level. I think the drop is roughly a half between 2015 and 2021. I'm sure there are various factors behind this, Minister, but obviously it is a trend that's very unwelcome, given the Welsh Government's stated ambitions. I'm sure all of us here want to see Wales as an international country offering opportunities to our young people in terms of work and travel and personal development. I just wonder, Minister, given the reality on the ground at the moment, what more the Welsh Government can do, working with schools, teachers and other education providers, to reverse this trend and see the sort of progress that the Welsh Government wants to see into the future.

I thank John Griffiths for that supplementary question. I do agree with him; it is concerning. We do want to make sure that young people are choosing to study modern foreign languages. He's corresponded with me in the past in particular around the decline in German provision, and I do recognise that. The pattern that we see is that, where students are enrolling for qualifications in those areas, they're still doing very well in them; it's just that the numbers in some of those areas are dropping, as he says. What we are doing as a Government is we've looked again at the strategy that we've had for the last three years, sought to identify the things that need a refocus, if you like, perhaps to take into account what we've learnt over that period. There are three priorities that we will be focusing on in the next three-year period we're committing to: obviously to support the development and delivery of international language provision across Wales—that's the underpinning objective—but in doing that, a focus on providing practitioners themselves with the skills that they need to deliver, and also challenging some of the misconceptions around language learning, which I think has a part to play in the challenge.

We'll be offering a range of support, including specific funding to primary teachers with the Open University's Teachers Learning to Teach Languages professional development programme, which offers primary teachers the opportunity to learn a new language, be that French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and how then to teach that in the classroom. I visited my old primary school at the end of last term and heard the young people in one of the primary classes learning Spanish. I thought that was exactly the kind of thing that we need to see more of. We'll be continuing a programme that has been actually successful—the student mentoring programme—which provides direct support at a secondary level with students who are studying at Cardiff University going into the field to promote language study to GCSE and beyond, talking about their own personal experiences of that. But also, we're trying to link up the work that we do through 'Global Futures' with the work of Taith. I think there are some synergies in that area and I'm glad that that's been able to be linked up, so that we can link, in the minds of young people, the opportunity to study abroad, perhaps, with the opportunity to learn a new language and offer that more holistic opportunity.

So, I think there are a number of things that we can do. I'm very hopeful that we will see a better trend in the next three-year period than we saw in the last three-year period. But I think the point that he was starting with, the role of languages in the curriculum, over the longer term, admittedly, will make a significant contribution.

I strongly believe that our education system needs to adapt to reflect the needs of the future job market locally, nationally and, of course, internationally with the opportunities that now come because of Brexit and opening up ourselves to the rest of the world. Even though you've ploughed £5.7 million into your Welsh Government's 'Global Futures' programme, as John Griffiths outlined just now, we have seen that downward trend in GCSE take-up, and it is concerning. I welcome your intention in this updated plan, but if we're really serious about embedding modern foreign languages in the new curriculum and having success, we need a serious plan on how to recruit and retain modern language teachers for all age groups, across primary and secondary, and the money to follow that. Merely offering an upskilling programme to primary teachers is really not going to cut the mustard after years of failure in this area and the skills just not being available at present. So, Minister, what plans will you put in place to ensure all children have access to a fit-for-purpose modern language education, and how are you going to monitor that progress?

I thank the Member for the welcome that she's given to the work that's under way and refer her to the answer I've just given to John Griffiths in terms of the steps that we will be taking as a Government. I do think that one of the things that is really important is that the steps that we take in this policy area, as with any other, are based on the reality rather than on our particular world view. I do think that a world in which we claim that Brexit is an opportunity is unlikely to be consistent with promoting the value of European foreign languages to our young people, which is why I think it's important that we as a Government will respond to that by replacing one of the key benefits of membership of the European Union for our young people, the Erasmus programme, which they're now denied as a consequence of Brexit. I think remaking that link for our young people is a good way of solving the problem that Brexit has caused.