P-06-1565 Continue funding Technocamps to provide the support that schools and teachers across Wales rely on - Correspondence from the Petitioner to the Committee, 29 January 2026

Dear Kayleigh,

Many thanks for providing me a further opportunity to offer my views for the benefit of the members of the Petitions Committee who will be considering my petition.

I was surprised and sorely disappointed with the lack of attention that my petition received by the Petitions Committee when they met on 8 December 2025. The outcome of that meeting, after 90 seconds of consideration, was to request further information from the Cabinet Secretary that is irrelevant to my petition.

For example, in her letter to the Committee of 18 November 2025, the Cabinet Secretary made false claims about the petition; in particular, she wrote that:

“the petition claims [the STEM Learning UK project] is an exclusively English language programme”.

My letter to the Committee of 27 November 2025 opened by exposing these blatantly false claims. In particular, in regard to the above claim, I wrote:

“This is blatantly false. I ask the Petitions Committee to read over my petition and confirm for itself that it makes no such claim.” 

Given this, I am utterly astounded that the Committee would spend less than two minutes considering my petition, resulting in the following: 

“The Committee agreed to seek clarity from the Cabinet Secretary for Education on the issues raised by the petitioner about bilingual provision [by the STEM Learning UK project].”

 It is clear from this that the Committee had neither read my petition, nor my response to the Cabinet Secretary’s false narrative, with enough attention to note that the Committee itself was repeating the false narrative invented by the Cabinet Secretary about my petition.

 By obfuscating the issues that I raise in my petition with her false narratives, the Cabinet Secretary has seemingly succeeded in side-tracking the Committee from its assigned duty.

 I beg the members of the Committee to properly read and consider my petition, and my response of 27 November 2025 to the Cabinet Secretary’s letter of 18 November 2025, and debate my petition itself rather than the Cabinet Secretary’s false characterisation of the petition.

I provided a great volume of salient information in my earlier response that I will not repeat here – please reflect carefully on this. I will only add two points to the consideration.

• The end of 11 years of DfES funding for Technocamps has resulted in the loss of salary of 15 people employed in the Welsh universities throughout Wales. As noted in the Cabinet Secretary’s latest letter, in place of this Technocamps work force in Wales, the greater funding provided to York University will go instead to two people working at and for York University.

• The Technocamps Delivery Officers at the various universities across Wales that, until last year, teachers across Wales have relied on for professional training and support have been clearly identified on the Technocamps website, and have always been readily accessible. Teachers across Wales are now expressing their grave concerns to us, as they do not know where to turn; there is no information available about people in York University who are funded to help them. They are now truly struggling.

The strength and volume of feeling amongst the practitioners is clear from the response to my petition: despite being live for a relatively short period, and despite its specialist nature, the number of signatories to my petition places it amongst the top 5.6% of such petitions historically in terms of support.

Beti

Beti Williams, MBE