3. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on her priorities for schools in Wales for the next six months? OAQ(5)0139(EDU)

Thank you, Lynne. I have set out our national mission to improve education attainment through a programme of education reforms. These include the development of a new curriculum and assessment reform, improved initial teacher education, teachers’ professional development and building leadership capacity, and, crucially, reducing the attainment gap for our poorer children.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I very much welcome your assurances in committee this morning that the renamed pupil deprivation grant will continue to be targeted at pupils on free school meals and also thank you for your kind words about Woodlands school in my constituency. It is undoubtedly the case that there is really excellent practice in the use of the PDG in Wales, and I recently visited Garnteg Primary School, where they are making outstanding use of the PDG to promote emotional resilience and mental well-being amongst their pupils. What assurances can you offer that you will continue to prioritise funding for the PDG, and also that you will stringently monitor the use of the PDG to ensure that is does benefit the pupils that it is intended to?

Thank you. I know that some people have concerns about changing the name of the pupil deprivation grant to ‘pupil development grant’, but let me be clear: the reason for doing so is because I do not want to focus on the barriers that children face to their learning. I want to focus on their ability and having high expectations and ambitions for those children. The PDG will continue to focus on the learning needs of those who are on free school meals, but we’re also extending that to children who are looked-after, and also extending it to children who find themselves in education other than at school, who are some of our most vulnerable learners.

This year, the Welsh Government will spend £93 million via the PDG, and there is excellent practice going on out there that is truly transforming the life chances of our young people. I was delighted to visit Woodlands primary school with you to see at first hand the work they do, and equally delighted to recently visit Blaenymaes Primary School with Mike Hedges AM, a school that has high levels of free school meal pupils, and to note that, in their recent Estyn report, they received an ‘excellent’ categorisation for well-being. The pupil deprivation grant is something that I championed whilst I was in opposition and I am delighted to have the opportunity to expand now that I am in Government.

It’s just over four months, actually, since Members from all sides of the Senedd backed my legislative proposals to receive age-appropriate lifesaving skills as part of their education—as learners, not as Assembly Members. I was pleased, Cabinet Secretary, that actually you were one of the Assembly Members in the previous Assembly who supported my statement of opinion on broadly the same proposals.

As the Government’s preferred route at this stage is to encourage voluntary uptake, I wonder if you would either write to me, if you can’t—. Oh, if you would write to me, actually, because I suspect you might not be able to update me today, firstly on how many schools and colleges in Wales have installed defibrillators since February, and how many more schools and colleges are now providing this kind of training to learners, and how frequently any given cohort of those children and young people receive refresher training. Thank you.

Thank you, Suzy. I do think lifesaving skills are crucially important to young people, and I have a particular interest in looking at the availability of defibrillators in both primary and secondary schools. And I have asked officials, actually, to do a mapping exercise for me, to find out how many of our schools currently have those facilities and where there are gaps and what opportunities there may be, working with the voluntary sector, to address that. As always, in Wales, these statistics are not centrally held, and so it is taking a little bit of time to find out who has got what, but I am very interested to find that out and to see what we can do to ensure that there is universal coverage.

With regard to the place of lifesaving skills in the curriculum, you’ll be aware that one of the areas of learning and experience is health and well-being. The work on the areas of learning and experience is coming to a conclusion, before we do a deep dive into the granular nature of what will be taught, and these issues have been part of the discussions in the areas of learning and experience.