Kirsty Williams: Can I begin by thanking Suzy Davies for the points she raised and the question she asked? She firstly talked about implementation. And as I said in my statement, we will publish an implementation plan later on this term. I want practitioners and interested parties to be able to spend the next couple of weeks reading what is a quite extensive document, and beginning their thought process...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you very much to Siân for her contribution. Firstly, we talked about the space and the time to prepare. Those are important considerations. That's why I took a decision to, first of all, delay the introduction of the curriculum to give us more time, and I took the decision to alter the way in which the curriculum would be implemented by having a phased roll-out approach in the...
Kirsty Williams: Siân Gwenllian is right to say that I'm going to mention the additional INSET day; if she had seen some of the responses to the consultation on that INSET day, she will have seen that, in some sectors, that is not a popular thing to have done. But it is a necessary thing to increase, once again, the time available to schools. We've been very clear in the document that we've published today...
Kirsty Williams: Can I thank Jenny Rathbone for her support with regard to these two very important parts of the curriculum? I would point all Members to page 38 of the document, where we explain in some detail that: 'Children begin to learn about relationships long before they start school. As soon as they enter the social world they will be encountering and interacting with complex and often contradictory...
Kirsty Williams: Can I thank Darren Millar for the points that he made? I absolutely accept the point about the rights of parents to educate their children, and nothing that we are proposing here takes away from that. I'm sure all of us would agree that the vast majority of parents are in a position to do that successfully, but not all of our children are so lucky, Darren; not all of our children are so lucky...
Kirsty Williams: I thank Lynne Neagle for her comments, and I'm delighted to hear that there were practitioners yesterday talking in such warm terms about the health and well-being AoLE. You and I were both in the ministerial task and finish group yesterday, and we heard from the primary school headteacher representative about the opportunity that the new curriculum gives them, and she was very excited about...
Kirsty Williams: Our most recent statistical release, for the period of 2017-18, shows almost 11,500 children received counselling, comparable to numbers in previous years. In the current year, we also made an additional £626,000—no; yes, £626,000—available to local authorities to support improvements to the service as part of our work on developing a whole-school approach to mental health and...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Joyce. Well, since the publication of that report, a great deal of work has been undertaken and continues to be driven forward. For example, by making all aware of the availability of both counselling provided in schools, in community-based settings, and, indeed, online, in a virtual world, our revised counselling toolkit, which will be published next month, will, I believe, help...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Suzy, as I have just answered to Joyce Watson, we are making over £600,000 extra available in this financial year to support counselling services, and, in the new financial year, additional resources will also be made available to look to extend support services for children—traditional counselling, but perhaps group-based approaches for younger children, to extend the help available...
Kirsty Williams: You're right, Mick: we need to ensure that any Government investment and policy response to promoting children's good mental health and well-being needs to be on the basis of evidence. And there are a variety of ways in which we do that. We have the formal statistics that are collated as a part of the formal counselling service. Most recently, in reporting back to the 'Mind over matter'...
Kirsty Williams: Post-16 delivery in Wales supports access to a range of programmes that support lifelong learning. Whether it's upskilling to access employment, a first step into post-16, or a return to learning, delivery serves to improve economic prosperity and to ensure that people in all areas are equipped for their futures.
Kirsty Williams: Well, Presiding Officer, I'm immensely proud of the success and the achievements of the FE sector in Wales. The fact that nominations have been made for six colleges, in total, from Wales in the TES 2020 awards is a testament to the good work that is going on across the sector. And I'd like to wish Merthyr College, and indeed other colleges that are nominated, all the very best when those...
Kirsty Williams: Presiding Officer, if the Member had missed it the first time around, I am incredibly pleased that Merthyr college finds itself subject to such nominations. And, as I said in my previous answer, I wish them—as well as Gower College, Bridgend College, Cardiff and Vale College, and Dolgellau construction and engineering team from the Llandrillo Menai Group—all the very best in those awards.
Kirsty Williams: The organisation of post-16 education is a matter for local areas. I believe in a mixed economy. I believe that both our sixth forms and our FE colleges provide really important opportunities for our young people. Of course, greater co-ordination across the post-16 sector and the ability for that sector to meet all the education and training needs of our local population form the bedrock of...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Siân, you're absolutely right. This is an issue that is common to education systems, actually, across the globe and was the subject of much debate when we hosted the Atlantic Rim Collaboratory conference here in Cardiff back in the autumn. There is no one single thing that we can do to address these issues, but to outline some of the actions this Government is currently taking, we have...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Siân, you're absolutely right: recruiting more Welsh-medium teachers is a vital component of our aim to reach 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050. The requirement for teacher training providers to work towards training 30 per cent of teachers to teach through the medium of Welsh is an important instruction to them, and the Education Workforce Council, of our intention to be able to ensure...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Presiding Officer, I'm not in charge of health and care, but I think what's important for me is that if we are to respond, as I said, proactively to the demand that there is out there for Welsh-medium education, if we're to meet that target, then the first important element is our teaching workforce. The Member joined me and other Members recently at the event organised by our coleg...
Kirsty Williams: In all my dealings with headteachers' unions and with teachers' unions, Oscar, I have to say their first concern is the inability of your Government in Westminster to give this Government an appropriate level of public expenditure. One very real example, Presiding Officer: we received no consequential this year to pay for the teachers' pay rise. We were short-changed again this year to pay...
Kirsty Williams: First of all, Presiding Officer, I don't want the Member's thanks for answering his question, what would be more useful to me is if he did something about it and had a conversation with his Westminster colleagues. With regard to the class sizes reduction fund that we have made available to schools, I'm glad that the Member recognises that, first of all, small class sizes can be really...
Kirsty Williams: I very much welcome Estyn's thematic report and draw the Member's attention to the good practice in schools already delivering very positive actions, whilst also accepting the recommendations in areas requiring further improvement. For instance, we are funding the Welsh Extremism and Counter Terrorism Unit, working in partnership with the all-Wales school liaison core programme, to produce...
