Thank you to the Minister for giving me sight of the statement before it was delivered—thank you. The results of the 2021 census were a disappointment, given this Welsh Government's ambition of a million Welsh speakers by 2050. I see it as a significant setback that Wales has moved backwards in moving towards our target. So, it's important that we don't allow this setback to undermine what we're trying to achieve.

Now, we're all highly aware of the challenges in terms of teacher recruitment, particularly in ensuring that we recruit sufficient numbers of Welsh-speaking educators to teach in our Welsh-medium and bilingual schools—a point that is highlighted by the census data. A high percentage of Welsh-speaking teachers are approaching retirement age while some choose to leave the profession early. Given that there aren't enough newly qualified teachers who are Welsh speaking joining the profession, this is a great barrier to delivering the targets of Cymraeg 2050. According to the Welsh Government's own data, in order to reach the target of Cymraeg 2050 and to implement every Welsh in education strategic plan effectively, the Welsh Government should be recruiting and training 550 teachers per annum. In reality, this figure is 250—300 teachers short of the numbers necessary every year. Given this, I'd be interested in hearing how the Minister intends to tackle this shortfall. I'm sure that he'd agree with me that we need great improvement in recruitment policies if we are to have any hope of achieving our targets.

In addition to this, we also know that Welsh-medium and bilingual education alone will not deliver the numbers of Welsh speakers required to reach the 2050 target. As I've said previously, we should use all the tools available to us to reach that target, and, therefore, given the opportunities available to us within English-medium education, I'm sure you would agree that they have an increasingly important role to play. The new school categorisation system published by the Welsh Government requires every English-medium school to provide 15 per cent of teaching activities through the medium of Welsh, which is an increase on current levels, but not enough teachers have the right level of Welsh language skills to deliver this increase, and this was reflected within the census data. In the areas where education is delivered mainly through the medium of English, the numbers who use the Welsh language saw serious decline.

We have to be clear that the problems with regard to the education workforce are very complex and we need collaboration between the Welsh Government, colleges, universities and local authorities to resolve them. One area where the Welsh Government could alleviate this problem significantly is within the current consultation that assesses the criteria in terms of initial teacher education accreditation in Wales, and the consultation closed last week. Initial teacher education partnerships have a role in developing a bilingual education workforce, and, therefore, the criteria for accreditation are a clear way for the Welsh Government to set out its expectations in this regard. It's important that the Welsh Government does ensure that the criteria, which will be renewed, go far enough and are consistent with the current Government policy around the Welsh language and Welsh-medium education—a clear and practical way for the Government to show their policy of a million Welsh speakers as being a target and an ambition.

A final point on the census: if you consider that there are two censuses to come before the year 2050, I would like to know whether the Government has calculated what the number of Welsh speakers should be for those next two censuses in order to ensure that we're on the right trajectory towards a million Welsh speakers by 2050. I agree with you, Minister, that the Welsh language belongs to us all, as does the responsibility for its future, but it's your Government that puts policies in place for its future. So, best of luck to you. Thank you, Llywydd.