7. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Education: Digital Skills and Coding

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:34 pm on 1 May 2018.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 6:34, 1 May 2018

Thank you, Lee. I don't shy away from the fact and the findings of the Estyn report about what needs to happen in day-to-day practice in our schools. That's what's absolutely key: what can we do that is impactful on practice, because we need to see a step change within classrooms? How we can get that leadership from the very top of the school to recognise the importance of this and then to plan appropriately is key. I continue to discuss with the learning council who advise on these issues what more we can do and what more I can do to ensure that each school is addressing that seriously, strategically and consistently, rather than individuals getting ahead.

Our pioneer school network is also absolutely key in this in ensuring that they are out working with schools that are not part of the pioneer network to see change and practice. I think it's really important that we do that because, sometimes, some of the resistance to change is, 'It can't possibly work in my school. It's all very good for you, the sage on the stage, to tell me that, but you come to my classroom—', and actually by using the pioneer network we are demonstrating that these are approaches that have been trialled and tested in schools and that have worked and therefore, 'There is nothing to stop this being transferred into your own school.' So, the pioneers are a crucial part of that. We will continue via Estyn inspections of individual settings to keep a very close eye on how those schools are addressing these particular needs.

To hand, I don't have figures on free school meal children accessing coding club. I will go back to officials to see if it's possible to ascertain that data. We don't want this to become yet another divide between those children who can and those children who cannot. What was really interesting with the approach taken at the primary school in Llanedeyrn this morning is that that headteacher pays the teaching assistants to stay after school for an extra hour so that all children, whether they've got access to computers or technology at home, get to have that time to use that technology for their homework or to attend the coding club. That's just really interesting. That's in a school with over 20 per cent of children on free school meals, in an area of very mixed economic status for the families attending the school.

This will continue to form part of my work that I'm doing, following on from the debate that we had last week, about the true cost of secondary education and what the financial barriers are for all children being able to experience all that our education system has to offer. I'm determined to keep my officials' feet to the fire on this; also there is the digital council's willingness to keep my feet to the fire on how we can develop this to create that step change that you talked about, and it is my intention to continue to come back to the Assembly so we can monitor and you can monitor developments in this case.

But I don't underestimate the challenge of incorporating the DCF into the literacy and numeracy framework. When we think about how long it took the literacy and numeracy framework to be embedded into practice, and we were talking about concepts that all schools would have been familiar with—the teaching of literacy and numeracy—that gives us a picture of the challenge of introducing something consistently in our classrooms where perhaps there hasn't been that experience and that track record. And we should be mindful of that, and we are learning the lessons of the implementation of the literacy and numeracy frameworks in how we approach this.