Jeremy Miles: My announcement on Monday was part of a conversation that will continue with our partners over the rest of this term. We will then publish the framework before the start of the new school year, and we will give schools the notice that they will need in order to be able to move to this new way of working in the next school term. We recognise that careful planning is needed to ensure that we...
Jeremy Miles: I thank the Member for that question. In relation to what the next academic year looks like, she'll be mindful of the announcements I made yesterday in relation to categorisation and in relation to school performance measures and their suspension for the 2021-22 academic year, and also in relation to the approach that Estyn will be taking to inspections over the course of the next year, which...
Jeremy Miles: Thank you to Siân Gwenllian for those questions. In terms of the questions on fees, well, the provision that we have ensured today as well as what the Welsh Joint Education Committee has provided, ensures that the examination costs are halved. I think it is important, as I have already said, to acknowledge and recognise the work that teachers are doing to ensure that pupils and learners are...
Jeremy Miles: I thank the welcome that the Member gave to that statement. She's posed a series of questions; I'll do my best to try and run through them as comprehensively but briefly as I can. I don't think it's helpful to talk about grade inflation. We will see that some learners prefer and perform better with exams, and some will do better in continuous assessment. There has been an equalities lens that...
Jeremy Miles: To promote fairness and consistency, this flexibility has been scaffolded by guidance, by exemplar materials and professional learning. The Welsh Government has provided over £9 million to support schools and colleges as well as allocating a national inset day. There are both internal and external quality assurance mechanisms, including professional dialogue with the WJEC on grade outcomes...
Jeremy Miles: Thank you, Llywydd. In my statement on ‘Renew and reform’, I confirmed that we would be putting learners first, supporting their well-being and confidence and providing opportunities for them to develop key skills and knowledge to enable them to make progress. These are principles that have informed our approach to the qualifications this summer. I want to wholeheartedly thank teachers...
Jeremy Miles: I thank the Member for that important second question. I think that reforming the legislation that is the basis for the strategic plans is going to have a positive impact in this context, and there are many ambitious things in the Welsh in education strategic plan of the council to which you refer, and I'm very pleased to see that. But I do accept that as well as looking at the numbers—this...
Jeremy Miles: Every child who wants to attend a Welsh-medium school should be able to do so, wherever they live. Our new statutory framework through the Welsh in education strategic plans sets out a clear ambition for local authorities to plan their Welsh-medium education provision in order to meet that expectation.
Jeremy Miles: Outdoor education has an important role to play in enriching teaching and learning, and this is reflected in the curriculum for Wales. We are at the moment providing £2 million to the residential outdoor education sector to support them between June and September 2021 to respond to COVID restrictions.
Jeremy Miles: I absolutely agree with the Member about how important learning outdoors can be and the opportunities that that brings for our children and young people. And as it happens, I was recollecting with somebody this morning that this is the kind of day that when I was a school kid, it would have been spent outside for most of the day, learning in the outdoors, and actually that brought back some...
Jeremy Miles: The Clwyd South region benefited from a total investment of over £20 million during the first wave of funding of the twenty-first century schools and colleges programme. A second wave of funding began in 2019, involving significant further investment for the school and colleges estate in the Clwyd South area.
Jeremy Miles: I thank the Member for his kind words and for the supplementary point that he made. He will know that there are proposed projects, including Ysgol yr Hafod, Brymbo and Ysgol I.D. Hooson, which are exciting developments, I think, in his part of the world. I think it amounts to about £12 million-worth of investment, with an intervention rate from the Welsh Government of around 65 per cent,...
Jeremy Miles: Well, I agree with the fact that it is entirely unacceptable that people should suffer because they choose to do something that they should be able to do easily—that is, respond in Welsh. And you're right to talk about the specific impact online. Of course, there is an opportunity to do it on paper, but, as you mentioned, the dark ages—that's not sufficient now. Many weeks of delay come...
Jeremy Miles: We've had discussions with the Welsh Language Commissioner. I understand that the checking processes of the Disclosure and Barring Service are not available to be completed online in Welsh for school governors and other postholders. That, of course, can cause delays in filling posts. I have already sent a letter to the service to ask them to improve the Welsh language service.
Jeremy Miles: I thank the Member for that question, and I think she underlines how significant the issue is. I think, in the way that I responded to Hefin David, there are two aspects to this. One is the investment of £10 million, which was specifically around increased support for emotional and mental health difficulties, but there was also a further package of support prior to that, which was about...
Jeremy Miles: Certainly. In a further education context, obviously, individual institutions provide their own well-being and mental health support for students in a wide variety of different ways, from counselling, online support, resilience training—there's a wide range of options that individual institutions deliver to their students. They've all developed and are implementing well-being strategies to...
Jeremy Miles: Today, I published the 'Renew and reform' plan, a framework for this Government's response to the impacts of the pandemic on learning. The plan focuses on supporting the foundations of learning, including learner well-being, and supporting learners to make progress by focusing on their capacity for resilience.
Jeremy Miles: Well, of the four UK Governments, we were the first ones to take the first step in most contexts in terms of FSM provision in our schools. So, I do accept what the Member says in terms of how important it is for us to be able to meet that need. We've said already, and we reiterate, if I can say that, in the programme for government, that we intend to look again at the eligibility criteria for...
Jeremy Miles: It is.
Jeremy Miles: Well, the answer to the final question is that we intend that they will continue to do their work until their work is done. That's our commitment. In terms of their functions, they provide education. The word 'staff' means people who teach or support—teaching assistants and so forth—to allow the pupils to have more support in terms of their learning. And that's the commitment. And I think...
