Kirsty Williams: Nineteen schools have closed since May 2016. Three of these schools had no pupils.
Kirsty Williams: Local authorities are responsible for funding schools, as is set out in law in Wales. There are no current proposals to review the way in which schools in Wales are funded.
Kirsty Williams: The Health and Well-being area of learning and experience is an important part of our mission to create an education system that better supports young people to maintain their physical, mental and emotional health; and so thrive both academically and personally.
Kirsty Williams: We recently consulted on revised school organisation code in respect of a presumption against the closure of rural schools and will publish our response in the summer. We have also introduced a new small and rural schools grant to encourage innovation and support greater school to school working.
Kirsty Williams: Diolch yn fawr. A vital part, Presiding Officer, of our national mission is to equip all learners with high-level digital skills that ensure that our young people are digitally competent to become enterprising, creative and critical thinkers. I know that this is an area of interest to many Members, so I thought it would be helpful today to outline progress made. Our national education action...
Kirsty Williams: To enable schools to be fully embedded in the DCF, regional consortia are undertaking detailed work to configure digital professional learning to the new professional standards, national professional learning models and the leadership academy's endorsement requirements to develop a national digital professional learning framework for all schools. This new framework will support teachers and...
Kirsty Williams: Could I thank the Member for his questions? Firstly, I think it is really important that Wales plays its part in the development of UK-wide organisations. We should not cut ourselves off from participating in these initiatives, and I'm delighted that we've been able to successfully fund, via HEFCW, projects from Cardiff and Swansea universities. It builds on their strong tradition, strong...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Llyr. With regard to Cardiff and Swansea universities' successful grant application, it is for HEFCW to make the decision on which universities will be funded. Those two universities sent forward a bid that was regarded as worthy of that funding and I'm sure HEFCW and individual institutions that want to participate in this work will continue to have those conversations. What I'm...
Kirsty Williams: The reason I looked at Lee Waters was because Lee and I continue to have these discussions because he doesn't just let it drop—he doesn't do his five minutes of glory in the Chamber and then forget about an issue. I'm sure nobody does that, actually; I'm sure no Member ever gets up and says something in the Chamber and then forgets all about it once they've left and they've had their two...
Kirsty Williams: I'd like to thank the Member for his welcome to the statement and the work that the Welsh Government is doing in this area. He raises an interesting proposition about the curriculum at Wales's universities. What I should tell him is that any even sniff of Government interference in the autonomy of our academic institutions is something that I would wish to avoid. The curriculum and offer of...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Lee. I don't shy away from the fact and the findings of the Estyn report about what needs to happen in day-to-day practice in our schools. That's what's absolutely key: what can we do that is impactful on practice, because we need to see a step change within classrooms? How we can get that leadership from the very top of the school to recognise the importance of this and then to...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you very much, David, for those series of observations and questions. Just to reassure you, Tom Crick remains an integral part of support for Government on these areas. He chairs one of the networks of excellence, and I notice from his Twitter feed today that he has very much welcomed the announcement and thinks that it's a really important thing that we've done today in terms of the...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you very much, acting Presiding Officer. I'd like to begin by thanking Rhianon for bringing forward this debate today. I'm sure that all Members would recognise her determination and her passion for the subject, and I'm sure we'd all agree that the same is true of Bethan also. Acting Presiding Officer, one of the joys of being the Cabinet Secretary for Education is visiting schools...
Kirsty Williams: Of course.
Kirsty Williams: What's important to remember about how that scheme operates is that it's up to the individual school to work with the arts council to identify creative partners to deliver the project. So, it's for the school to identify the type of practitioners who they want to work with. I wouldn't want to take away from the autonomy of head teachers to be able to plan that provision and to work with a...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I believe that the key to building success in any organisation is good leadership, and nowhere is that truer than in an education system. Time and time again, evidence shows that a good school leader is essential in transforming a school environment so that its students and teachers can flourish. A common trait amongst great leaders is that they...
Kirsty Williams: Can I thank Darren Millar for his positive welcome of the development of the academy? He's quite right to say that this has been a priority for me since coming into office. If we look back at a series of educational reforms in Wales, there has been a glaring gap, I believe, in the focus on leadership support within the system. It was identified in the 2014 Organisation for Economic...
Kirsty Williams: I thank you very much, Llyr. I think, to begin with, I would acknowledge that being a school leader is a challenging, time-consuming, sometimes difficult, job to do, but it is also an extremely rewarding job to do. The impact a school leader can have on the lives of the children and young people who travel through their institution can be absolutely immense. Most recently, I was talking to an...
Kirsty Williams: It's also crucial, as the OECD and Estyn have identified, in terms of the teaching profession: being managed by a leader that is not good adds to your workload as a teacher, adds to your stress as a teacher, and doesn't help you be the best that you can be. But good leadership in our schools raises everybody up. One of the focuses of having the academy is to say to people who are thinking...
Kirsty Williams: Can I thank Michelle Brown for her observations? It's important for Members to understand the way in which the leadership academy has been set up, as a company limited by guarantee that is arm's-length from the Welsh Government, because I wanted to be able to create some kind of independence, on a day-to-day operational basis, from Welsh Government. We announced last week that the...
