The Educational Well-being of Adopted Children

Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 27 June 2018.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 1:31, 27 June 2018

Thank you very much, Dawn. It is important that we recognise that resources aren't necessarily the answer to all the issues that are faced by looked-after and adopted children in our education system. But the looked-after children element of the pupil development grant actually stands, for 2018-19, at approximately £4.5 million, and that is available to support the education of adopted children. I'm very keen for myself and my officials to work with representatives of Adoption UK Cymru to look at the asks in the report, especially with regard to the collection of data. I know that there is some frustration that we're not able to easily identify educational outcomes for adopted children because that's not part of our pupil level annual school census data at the moment. Whilst I would not want to be in a position to force parents to reveal or divulge information regarding adoption if that's not something that they feel comfortable with or want to do, I understand the rationale behind wanting to improve the data collection, and I'm very happy to continue to work with officials and those with an interest in this area to look to see how this can be achieved proportionately and sensitively.