7. Statement by the Minister for Education and Welsh Language: Sustainable Communities for Learning

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:59 pm on 17 January 2023.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 4:59, 17 January 2023

Thank you very much for your leadership on this in ensuring that all new projects are going to have to be zero carbon. I'm particularly interested to find out how South Point Primary School in the Vale of Glamorgan is sharing the learning from this project, or rather the Vale of Glamorgan Council or your officers, to ensure that we understand the strengths and weaknesses of this pathfinder project, as well as an analysis of how much local labour was involved, or whether the expertise had to be imported from England or elsewhere, because it's a really crucial way of understanding how our net zero skills plan is going to be informed. I also think that it's really interesting that there's a school in Merthyr, Pen y Dre High School, that's going to be completely refurbished using the original foundations. So, both of these are really, really interesting.

Secondly, I just want to pick up on what James Evans was saying about active travel and what consideration you've given to some sort of bicycle loan scheme, similar to employers offering loan schemes for active travel to employees, so that poor families can also afford to have a bike, rather than putting all their money into £400 a term on a bus. Without that pump-priming, I don't think that's going to happen.