National Assembly for Wales

Welsh Government envoys are a small cohort of successful individuals who utilise their close connections to Wales alongside their own international profile to support and secure opportunities for Wales in the Middle East and the US.

It is not possible to directly attribute any export or investment results to their work as their roles are more faciliatory in nature. In their voluntary and unpaid capacity, the envoys support our export and inward investment ambitions and also play a wider role in raising awareness of Wales, promoting areas of Welsh excellence and, more recently, our equality agenda.

Welsh Government envoys are a small cohort of successful individuals who utilise their close connections to Wales alongside their own international profile to support and secure opportunities for Wales in the Middle East and the US.

It is not possible to directly attribute any export or investment results to their work as their roles are more faciliatory in nature. In their voluntary and unpaid capacity, the envoys support our export and inward investment ambitions and also play a wider role in raising awareness of Wales, promoting areas of Welsh excellence and, more recently, our equality agenda.

Welsh Government envoys are a small cohort of successful individuals who utilise their close connections to Wales alongside their own international profile to support and secure opportunities for Wales in the Middle East and the US.

It is not possible to directly attribute any export or investment results to their work as their roles are more faciliatory in nature. In their voluntary and unpaid capacity, the envoys support our export and inward investment ambitions and also play a wider role in raising awareness of Wales, promoting areas of Welsh excellence and, more recently, our equality agenda.

£15.500 million is being invested in the National Centre for Learning Welsh for 2024-25, which provides a range of opportunities for adults and young people over compulsory school age to learn Welsh. 

16,905 learners were enrolled with the National Centre in 2022-23, an increase of 11% compared with the previous year.

Although in previous years, the Welsh Government has provided funding to Tata Steel, we have not been asked over the last year to do so. We will however be making available our employability and skills support programmes to workers affected by the recent announcement by the company.

In my response to WQ92580, the first sentence was added erroneously.  However, to reiterate, we are unable to provide a breakdown of which local authority students from Wales are from due to the relatively low numbers involved.

Bangor University has contextual requirements around the Welsh language. This allows it to make a more favourable academic offer to applicants on the basis that Welsh-speakers are under-represented in medical programmes.

Bangor University’s offer is available to those with a Welsh GCSE first language, or an A-Level Welsh second language.

On this basis, 21 of the 120 applicants (18%) met the criteria for the first-year course. And two of the 25 applicants (8%) met the criteria for the graduate-entry programme.

As I am sure you will appreciate, higher education institutions are independent and autonomous bodies responsible for their own academic and administrative affairs, including any arrangements in terms of Welsh language skills. I can however confirm that as part of its Widening Access Strategy, Bangor University is seeking to increase its number of Welsh speaking students. 

As part of this strategy, the University has undertaken a number of actions to improve these numbers, which include:

• securing a Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol grant for a Medical Science Lecturer to deliver and create Welsh language materials. The Coleg will lead a Case Based Learning group for Welsh speaking students if numbers allow.
• Welsh Language lessons for all students, delivered by Canolfan Bedwyr in Bangor University. There are three levels: exposing first language Welsh speaking students to medical Welsh terminology; increasing the confidence of second language Welsh speakers; and providing Welsh language lessons for beginners. 
• engagement activity with ‘Doctoriaid Yfory’ (an all-Wales secondary school outreach activity), and ‘Doctoriaid Dyfodol’ (a new north Wales equivalent, set up with schools across north Wales).
• engagement with the Seren programme.
• an Eisteddfod yr Urdd essay writing prize.
• an Eisteddfod yr Urdd summer school at Glan Llyn.

Cardiff and Vale University Health Board has received £4.02 million from the Digital Priority Investment Fund specifically designated for the development and deployment of an Electronic Patient Record and Electronic Referral Service programme across Wales to date. This includes the OpenEyes system and development work undertaken through other third parties.”

The information you requested is shown below:

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The Welsh Government publishes data about children who start to be looked after by local authority and their need for care. This is available at: Children starting to be looked after during year to 31 March by local authority and need for care (gov.wales). 

This includes reasons why children are fostered or placed for adoption.

We remain committed to delivering 20,000 homes for rent in the social sector this Senedd Term. To support this, we have allocated a further £330million for 2024/25 to support the delivery of vital homes through our Social Housing Grant Programme. This brings the total investment into Social Housing this term to over £1.2bn so far.

Whilst our focus is on building new homes, acquisitions are important in helping to meet the needs of our most vulnerable groups and in addition to our Social Housing Grant Programme we are continuing to take action and support the Transitional Accommodation Capital Programme to ensure the earlier availability of homes for those most in need.

Leasing Scheme Wales is targeted at the private sector to help deliver more affordable homes, as the property is leased to the local authority. A key aspect of the scheme involves properties being let at Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates to ensure they are affordable.

To date 60% of the homes coming onto the scheme have previously been empty for more than 6 months bringing unused properties back into use.  

The scheme includes the provision of grants and other financial support to cover property improvements, repairs and management costs.

We are committed to equipping our children and young people with the knowledge, skills, and resilience to navigate the online world. A key part of this includes developing media literacy skills and knowledge to recognise misinformation. 

The Curriculum for Wales contains a range of expectations across areas of learning aimed at helping learners to find, evaluate and use appropriate evidence in forming their views, and to think critically about sources of information in both the digital world and the real world.

Media literacy resources are available on Hwb for learners and practitioners. These resources are designed to equip learners to recognise and deal with misinformation, clickbait and ‘deepfakes’ online. The Keeping Safe Online section of Hwb contains a range of information and resources for schools and learners on this topic. We have also worked with sector-leading experts Full Fact to deliver misinformation training modules for education practitioners.

We continue to have regular discussions with schools to understand their priorities and needs.

The Welsh Government offers a range of incentives to attract applicants into initial teacher education (ITE) in Wales.

These schemes are targeted at those areas and subjects where recruitment is most challenging; priority subjects, the Welsh medium sector and attracting more entrants from ethnic minorities. At present Religious Education is not a subject area where the statistics have indicated there was a need to incentivise to recruit student teachers.

We review the Priority Subject Incentives scheme annually and amend the scheme, including the subjects classified as ‘priority’, to meet our ITE and workforce requirements. If the data available shows there is a need to attract more Religious Education (RE) students into Initial Teacher Education we will consider this alongside existing priorities.

The Welsh Government is working in partnership with the Wales Association of Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education (WASACRE) and religious education practitioners across Wales to develop a suite of modules to support practitioners with the changes to religion, values and ethics (RVE) (formerly Religious Education), within the Curriculum for Wales.

We are also continuing to work with WASACRE and other partners to explore the opportunities available to ensure that there are sufficient numbers of suitably qualified RE and RVE teachers available to deliver the Curriculum for Wales.

The Welsh Government made changes to the Priority Subject incentive scheme for academic year (AY) 2022/23 so that a portion of the incentive would be paid on completion of an eligible teachers’ statutory induction period. The Priority Subject Incentive is paid over three instalments; one after the completion of a student teachers first term, one on award of Qualified Teacher Status and the final payment on completion of the Induction period. The award of QTS occurs at the end of a student teacher’s programme of initial teacher education. Most newly qualified teachers will then complete the statutory period of induction within one year.

As the refreshed incentive scheme only became available to student teachers in AY2022/23 most claimants under the scheme are expected to complete their induction at the end of summer term 2024 and claim the final part of the incentive over the summer break or autumn term 2024. For those undertaking part-time provision starting AY2022/23 they are expected to graduate and achieve QTS at the end of this academic year (AY2023/24) and complete induction the following year (summer / autumn 2025). As such we do not have the data yet for new teachers that studied from AY2022/23.

We do not have the data you have requested for those that entered initial teacher education prior to AY2022/23 however my officials are currently working with the Education Workforce Council to secure a data agreement to receive this information via a data linking exercise.

I am keen to engage with all parts of the bus industry. I have already met with the Confederation of Passenger Transport, as well as several operators and their representatives at the Cross-Party Group on Public Transport. I have several further meetings scheduled with the leaders of bus companies over the coming weeks.

Substantive response

The Welsh Government has no intention of restricting the use of mains water supply to any organisations or businesses.

The financial impacts of including glass in the Deposit Return Scheme have been assessed and the inclusion of glass was shown to be the best option in a Regulatory Impact Assessment published jointly with the UK Government in 2021.  A revised Regulatory Impact Assessment will be published alongside the legislation for the scheme in Wales. It should be noted that there are also costs associated with excluding glass.

In March the Welsh Government published new guidance to help public bodies in Wales make well-informed decisions about existing and future commemorations in public spaces, and in doing so, contribute to our goal of an anti-racist Wales. The guidance assumes that decisions about public commemoration should be made locally, and it is essentially a tool for good decision-making. The guidance will not be mandatory. It is for public bodies themselves to decide how they use it.