Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 25 April 2018.
I understand your concerns, Mick. You'll be aware that the leader of the house and the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services recently agreed to write to the Advertising Standards Authority with regard to that specific point about the prevalence of gambling adverts. Gambling sponsorship is an issue because many, many children are getting to see those. I am very pleased to let you know that questions on gambling were included in health behaviour in school-aged children's research network survey for the 2017-2018 survey, so that we can get a better understanding from children themselves about the effect that gambling may have on them as individuals, and that gives us baseline data that we can really take action from.
I think it's really important that we use our opportunities via the personal and social education part of our existing curriculum to be able to explore the dangers of gambling with our children and young people, and you'll be aware, as we develop our new curriculum, that there are opportunities in the new health and well-being area of learning and experience for schools to address these issues but also via our numeracy AoLE, where I would expect schools to be talking about financial literacy and how to make positive choices about how you utilise your money.
Via our healthy schools network as well as our adverse childhood experiences hub we're also better equipping schools to deal with issues around problem gambling if they become aware of that within their school community. I believe that in the cross-Government approach, whether that be health and social care or planning, there are many things that we can do to address this agenda head-on.