Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 23 May 2018.
Thank you, Darren. As you say, there is an array of interventions that can be successfully used in school to address pupils' well-being—mindfulness being one that I know is particularly successful in the school that we visited together. Through the pioneer school network and the individual areas of learning and experience, they are taking a range of evidence and advice from expert groups. Now that we're at this stage of the development of the curriculum, I would expect to see a far greater level of interaction between pioneer and non-pioneer schools, working in their cluster arrangements, and I've already received feedback from some schools that were previously critical of a lack of interaction, saying that things are now much better.
I'm not sure if the Member was in the Chamber yesterday to hear me say that, actually, I've written to the Children, Young People and Education Committee offering to organise specific visits for committee members out to pioneer schools, so that this work can be seen by Members on the ground, and I hope that the Member will be able to avail himself of the opportunity to do that. But I want to see as much dialogue as we can between the pioneer and non-pioneer networks.