Janet Finch-Saunders AM: And finally from me, what specific steps have been put in place to take forward the commitments from the Welsh Government's 2017 childcare/play early years workforce plan to build a better understanding of the workforce's Welsh language skills to enable support for the sector to be targeted and to identify where capacity needs to be built for the future to meet the needs of the early years sector in a bilingual Wales?
Julie Morgan AM: We think this is very important, and we're pleased that 29 per cent of children taking up the childcare offer are in Welsh or bilingual settings, so we think that's very good. We have established a specific programme to develop Welsh language skills in the childcare and play workforce with the National Centre for Learning Welsh, to develop workplace Welsh language skills across the sector. So, we're actually working with that, and I think you've done something with those recently, haven't you? I don't know if you want to—
Nicola Edwards: Yes. So, we have a stakeholder group where we've brought together a variety of people with an interest in the early years, childcare and play sectors, and we had a presentation just last month from the national language centre about the education programmes that they're rolling out, and how this is all coming together, which is quite interesting. We've been working quite carefully to make sure that the variety of work-based learning programmes that we provide and offer are also available in Welsh and bilingually. Recruitment and retention within the childcare and play sector is quite challenging in any  case. Recruiting and retaining staff with really good Welsh language skills adds an extra dimension to it, and that it's a point that Mudiad Meithrin makes to us quite regularly, that they do struggle to find staff with the right skills. So, upskilling the existing workforce is a key part of it, but also doing more to attract people in with Welsh language skills in the first place in terms of the training courses that we're taking forward, and thinking about that in the context of the targets within Cymraeg 2050 and the aim to get to one million Welsh speakers. So, as the Deputy Minister said, we've got quite a number of children accessing the offer in Welsh-medium or bilingual settings at the moment. We're going to be doing some baselining work against that in terms of local authorities' Welsh in education strategic plans and education places, and what we can then do to increase the number of childcare places in parallel with that so that you can make sure that you start that pathway through learning Welsh, interacting with education and childcare through Welsh at a much earlier stage.
Lynne Neagle AM: Suzy, you've got a supplementary.
Suzy Davies AM: Just on this early point, anybody who's been through the Welsh education system, which is 20 years now, will have some Welsh language skills, obviously to differing degrees. For the entrants that are coming into childcare training now, there are going to be very few of them, realistically, with no Welsh at all, so what's actually being incorporated into the early years care training to make sure, at that stage, that the Welsh language skills are being developed, as opposed to an add-on later on?
Nicola Edwards: You're quite right. Most people coming through the education system will have some awareness of Welsh although I think it's probably important to remember we do also employ people from outside of wales.
Suzy Davies AM: Yes, but the majority, being realistic.
Nicola Edwards: But they don't necessarily have Welsh that is appropriate. They've got Welsh that they've developed in school. It's not necessarily appropriate for then teaching that language to children, who may be coming from families who don't use Welsh at home. So, that might be the first interaction that child has with the language. So, there's a lot of that in terms of child development and how you develop children bilingually, particularly if they're coming from English-medium homes, and reinforcing the language in language choices. There will also be some people who are, perhaps—we see this quite a lot in the office—quite confident in terms of speaking Welsh but less so in terms of some of the paperwork, the reporting, the writing and the interacting with parents more officially, which we need to think about as well. But it is mainly about getting people to a point where they can transmit that language onwards in a confident and meaningful way.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay. And it's ingrained in the early years training.
Nicola Edwards: Yes.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay. That's fine. Thank you for that. Thank you, Chair.
Lynne Neagle AM: Just before we move on, you said that 29 per cent of the take-up of the childcare offer is either through Welsh or is bilingual. Have you got any figures about how many children are accessing it in Welsh only?
Nicola Edwards: We will have. It becomes—. With the way we do it, it's because of the way that the setting defines their language category, and that's how we collect it. We do go down to individual child level, although it's anonymised, data collection on a termly basis. So I'll have a look and see if we can send you through the last term.
Lynne Neagle AM: Maybe if the committee could have a note, that would be really useful.
Nicola Edwards: Yes, that's fine.
Lynne Neagle AM: We've got some questions now on childcare from Dawn Bowden.
Dawn Bowden AM: Thank you, Chair. Deputy Minister, the evaluation of the childcare offer, when it was published last year, said that there was very little evidence currently available to determine what its impact was. You're going to be producing a second evaluation in November this year; do you expect to see some indications now of the impact?
Julie Morgan AM: Well, the evaluation of the first year of the childcare offer was very limited, because the childcare offer wasn't available throughout the whole of Wales. And it was a very early implementation phase. So, obviously it takes time to grow. And the evaluation for year 2, I think, will also show a limited impact for the same reasons. The offer became available across the whole of Wales only last April. So we've only got since last April that it's actually been fully available. And the parental survey was released to parents in June 2019, therefore any impact on parents in the authorities coming on board in the second year will also be negligible. So, it's from the next one, however, we hope that we will get more information.
Dawn Bowden AM: So you think, by the time we get to November 2020, you might have a better picture.
Julie Morgan AM: The evaluation will be more meaningful, we think, then, yes.

Summary: Julie Morgan thought the demand was very important, and they were pleased that 29 per cent of children taking up the childcare offer were in Welsh or bilingual settings, so that they established a specific programme to develop Welsh language skills in the childcare and played workforce with the National Centre for Learning Welsh to develop workplace Welsh language skills across the sector. But Suzy Davies thought that just on this early point, anybody who had been through the Welsh education system which is 20 years now, would have Welsh language skills obviously to differing degrees. Next, Nicola Edwards alleged that it was not necessarily appropriate for teaching language to children, because they might be coming from families who didn't use Welsh at home, but it is mainly about getting people to a point where they can transmit that language onwards in a confident and meaningful way.