Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 2:36 pm on 11 January 2017.
Obviously, substantive posts, with teachers that know their students and know their classrooms and schools well, is the preferable way of staffing our schools. However, what we also know is that in a self-improving school system, we want some of our teachers to move around institutions so that they can share their best practice. There will be times when it is perfectly legitimate to have a planned absence from work for training purposes—a secondment, for instance, for teachers to develop their Welsh language skills—but we also need to make sure that we’re managing those planned absences and that schools follow Welsh Government guidance. There are, of course, occasions when staff will be sick, just like all of us sometimes get sick, and, again, schools need to manage that appropriately.