6. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on pupil engagement with the education system? OAQ(5)0069(EDU)

Thank you, Janet. Engagement and well-being are important factors in supporting children to do well in school. Recognising this, the 2016-17 Estyn remit commissioned a review into the effectiveness of pupil participation and production of a guide to help schools involve pupils in meaningful debate. This report is now available on Estyn’s website.

Thank you. One thousand and five pupils are now registered at pupil referral units in Wales, and the number of pupils increase in each age group from about 11 to 15. Over 51 per cent of those registered at a single PRU and over 40 per cent dually registered are around 15. Now, I know from my own experiences in my constituency, where I’m dealing with cases, that, sometimes, pupil referral units seem exclusive—they don’t appear to be inclusive, and children feel quite disenfranchised from the education system. How are you working with education authorities in terms of resource so that we can actually have in Wales a more inclusive education system that recognises the strengths, the weaknesses and the ambitions of all our children in today’s society and allows them to feel part of our mainstream education system, and allows them to be educated along with their friends and their peers?

Janet, you raise a very, very serious point. I want to ensure that I preside over an inclusive education system, and a system that meets the needs of all children regardless of where they live, regardless of the language of choice through which they study or, indeed, any additional learning needs or challenges they have in accessing their education. Estyn had some very serious things to say about quality in many of our pupil referral units and children who are educated in settings other than at school. You will be aware that Ann Keane, the former chief executive of Estyn, is working with the Welsh Government to address the findings of that report to do what we can to improve pupils’ experience in PRUs but also in other settings where increasingly we find schools or local authorities placing children if they are not able to maintain a place in full-time education. The Member is absolutely right to raise the issue of the education of these children. There is more to be done, and I will be using some of the additional resources made available to me by the Cabinet Secretary for finance to work on this particular area.

Cabinet Secretary, I wonder if you would agree that the prospects for good pupil engagement are greatly enhanced if parents and the wider community are engaged closely with their local schools, and, if so, whether you will work to devise a mechanism or system by which we can be confident that there will be good-quality community-focused schools consistently delivered right across Wales.

John, you will be aware—because we have discussed this previously—that our twenty-first century schools programme will only gain a sign-off by Welsh Ministers if there is a significant community element in all of those proposals that are brought forward. We know, from looking at the evaluation of the pupil deprivation grant, that with schools that use that grant effectively, much of that grant is used on building strong relationships between families and the school to get buy-in into their children’s education. On the announcement that we have made with regard to food and fun clubs in the summer, one of the most successful elements of those clubs is that, on the final day, parents come into the food and fun club to participate in the lunch and activities in the afternoon, again to bind parents into those programmes. So, we are working as a Welsh Government on a number of fronts—both on the physicality of the building of the school, as well as the ethos of what goes on in those buildings—to build strong relationships between parents and schools, because we know that that is when children do best. They don’t even have to go to school to be a focus for Welsh Government. We have spent considerable resource last year, and we will do so again this year, on developing resources for parents to help their children get ready for life in school, and what they can do as parents to make the transition from home into school as successful as it can be. So, we will continue to work on a number of programmes to support families to support their children be the best that they can be in school.