Thank you for that. Part of that diversity, of course—it would be great if you had more people interested in qualifying to teach through the medium of Welsh. Great aspirations; the trend's going the other way. No-one can solve this in 280 characters, I get that, but can you give us some indication about why you think this is proving still such an unattractive option when it's clear that there's a policy for this country to improve the number of Welsh speakers? You'd have thought there'd be a pretty good carrot for this.
Sure. Again, data for recruitment for the 2018-19 cohort is not yet available and we are, as I said, keeping in touch with our ITE centres to keep a close eye on them. I think an important thing to recognise is that there is a difference between the number of people who are on courses where there is a specific designation that enables them to teach through the medium of Welsh and those people who have linguistic ability and Welsh ability but don't necessarily do a course that allows them. So, there is a difference. We do think that, for the 2016-17 cohort, there were an additional 130 qualifiers that, actually, were fluent in Welsh and who could have gone on to teach in Welsh-medium schools, didn't necessarily do a course that gave them that designation. But, clearly, we've got three academic years now to get to the targets that we've set ourselves. The evaluation of Welsh-medium provision in ITE reported at the end of last month, and the Minister and officials are busy working now to implement the recommendations of the report that was published, I think, on 28 September, to be able to move this agenda forward. Again, we've got new incentives, this year, both for people starting their course and then for teachers who complete their QTS after a year. So, we've added in new financial incentives this year to try and address some of those issues. But, clearly, these are ambitious targets and we will need to have a step change over the next three years if we're to meet them.
Thank you for that, Cabinet Secretary. Thank you for that answer. We're now talking about cohorts of students coming into PGCE and teaching degrees. If they're from Wales, they will have had Welsh as part of their education from day one, and we'll accept there are varying qualities in different parts of Wales, different attitudes towards it as well. But there isn't a single a person now who's been through Welsh education who can say they have no Welsh at all, unless they've moved into the system from, say, England very, very recently. What is being done within the teaching qualifications, including the degrees, to ensure that, at least in Welsh universities, those nascent Welsh language skills are at least kept alive, even though we're not talking necessarily about being at a level where people can teach through the medium? It's the age-old question: once the school gate closes, is that the end of their Welsh use? So, is there something—it won't be Donaldson, but in the teacher training qualifications—that is keeping this going and, hopefully, increasing the usability of the Welsh skills they have?
Well, in terms of how we can encourage children who have got Welsh skills as a result of their education up to 16, how they can continue to use those skills and, potentially, use them in the workplace, I'm sure Eluned will want to talk about some of the work, for instance, in other, non-teaching sectors. But, with regard to ITE, you'll be aware that, in the evaluation report, as I said, that was published, the report comes forward with two options in how we could develop an intervention programme to support Welsh language skills amongst all primary and secondary ITE entrants. So, what we'll be doing now as a result of that report is that we'll be working very closely with our ITE centres to develop and agree upon minimum provision that constitutes those skill levels within ITE provision for all teachers.