Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 28 February 2023.
Well, Llywydd, I thank Sam Rowlands for that and absolutely agree with the point he's making, and not just higher education, but further education as well, and north Wales is particularly blessed, I think, in the quality of further education that is provided to young people in those regions.
We know that the experience of the pandemic means that even young people who have attended higher education have a sense of needing to build confidence back in order to be in the workplace. And it is interesting that a number of the schemes that run under the remit of the youth guarantee are actually taking young people who have graduated already under their wing in order to give them that start. And the relationship between the providers of further and higher education and the world of work, I think, is fundamentally important in making sure that those young people who need just that extra step on their journey early on, to make up for some of the experiences that they will have had to navigate over recent times, that that extra help is available to them, and supported from both sides.