Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy, Energy and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 1 May 2024.
Jeremy Miles
Labour
1:34,
1 May 2024
I thank the Member for his question. I do agree with the point that it is important that we make available, through the medium of Welsh, the full range of educational opportunities for our young people, including work-based learning, apprenticeships and provision more broadly than that at the further education stage. The work of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol is really beginning to bear fruit, I think, in the increase in availability. It is still a significant piece of work—there is a long way to go before there is that widespread provision in all parts of Wales that we would all want to see. Some of those challenges are well understood and they're relating to the workforce, but some of it is about an expectation, often. And I was struck by the work of, I think, Coleg Llandrillo Menai, which they were talking to me about at the Eisteddfod last year, where they developed a mechanism and programme for individual staff members to be identifying these opportunities and bringing people to them in a really proactive way, which struck me as being a very productive way of going about it.
I would just say, in passing—I know this wasn't the main thrust of his question—that I'm not myself sure that the way we will encourage more and more people to learn Welsh is simply by talking about the economic imperative for it. There is an important element to that, but I think what we are learning is that people's relationship to the language is much more than transactional. I'm not suggesting he was making that point, but there is a sense of warmth and welcome towards the language that I think goes beyond what is the particular individual economic benefit to a learner. But it is important, as he says, to make sure that those opportunities are available, because we want more people to be working through the medium of Welsh in our workplaces.
The language of Wales spoken by around 25% of the population. It is an Indo-European language and belongs to the Celtic group. It was made "offical" in Wales by the Welsh Language Act 1993. It is known in Welsh as Cymraeg.
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