3. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that young people's voices are heard in the development of A Curriculum for Wales, A Curriculum for Life? OAQ53348

5. Will the Minister make a statement on the development of A Curriculum for Wales, A Curriculum for Life? OAQ53349

Thank you, Hefin. In answering both question 3 and 5, I can assure you that the views of children and young people are essential to our curriculum reform process. We've already engaged with them on key developments such as e-portfolios, online assessments and the relationship and sexuality education programme that we will put on the face of the Bill. Pioneer schools have engaged with learners during the curriculum development and we will continue to involve them fully in the feedback process. There is a children and young people's version of the White Paper and their views will be essential in getting our new curriculum right. 

In spite of those great steps, the children's commissioner has been critical that the voices of children haven't been heard enough in the development of the new curriculum. I hosted an event last week at the Pierhead building on Tuesday with Caerphilly Youth Forum, where they submitted a petition that said that they wanted to make sure that 'curriculum for life' lessons were compulsory in the new curriculum. They feel the current curriculum is failing to provide them with the life skills that they need. The Children's Society have also recommended that child well-being be a central part of the new curriculum, and the general feeling among those people I spoke to is that still more could be done to involve children's voices in the development of the curriculum. Therefore, what progress is she making?

Absolutely. I would absolutely agree with the Member that this is a process that will need to continue. The strategic stakeholder group representing children and young people has been set up specifically to take account of the views of children and young people in the reform journey, and that includes additional learning needs children, young carers, elective home education—so there are lots and lots of voices that can feed into that process. The overall aim of that group is to strengthen how we communicate and engage with children and young people to help us identify what is the best way we can actually do that and make it meaningful for everybody involved. In addition, we've been working with colleagues from the new youth Parliament, because again, I believe that is another useful forum that we can use to inform our feedback during the curriculum design process. I look forward to working with the 60 newly elected members to engage them in that. 

Further to the development of the new curriculum, the Minister will be aware of the criticism from the Welsh Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Education in Wales, in which they said the curriculum's development was

'generic, poorly defined and weak on knowledge and skills development'. 

She came to the Children, Young People and Education Committee on 10 January and said that ADEW had not attended a consultation meeting on the development of the new curriculum to express these concerns directly since 2017. With that in mind, what progress has she made in rebuilding relationships with ADEW, and has she had any further meetings to address those concerns?

As I said, what was disappointing about that is that not only had the opportunity not been taken by ADEW to contribute their concerns during formal stakeholder meetings, but I meet regularly with the leadership of the WLGA and, indeed, ADEW, and none of those concerns had been expressed to me. I'm aware that those concerns have not been expressed to the previous Cabinet Secretary for local government either. So, it was disappointing to see the evidence that had been given to CYPE. I'm pleased to say that, at the most recent stakeholder board, both the WLGA and ADEW were represented.

Minister, I was encouraged to hear about some of the direct consultation mechanisms you are using to get the views of young people on the curriculum and its development, and I applaud what you've done there. I would like to hear whether anything's been done with the school councils, because they're in a very good place to do some really deep deliberative work where they actually take control of the process and consult with their members—the pupils in those schools—and then feed through to the Welsh Government their views, rather than be part of a very controlled, narrow, specific process of a number of questions, for instance. 

And that's exactly what the strategic stakeholder group for children and young people will be doing to look at the most effective ways and meaningful ways that we can engage with that group. I'm also interested in ensuring that children who are in education provision not in school also have an opportunity to feed in. So, for instance, we'll also be exploring with our youth service colleagues about how people who engage with and use the youth services, who perhaps sometimes aren't in formal school education, can also feed in. We want to hear from all children—as many children and young people as we can—in a variety of settings so that their voices can be heard. 

Minister, it does seem ironic that we spend a lot of time in this Chamber talking about listening more to young people, and, indeed, as you've just mentioned in your previous answer, the establishment of a Youth Parliament, which we all welcome and want to see developed to its fullest extent. You mentioned that you think the Youth Parliament would be a vehicle for greater involving pupils' and young people's thoughts on the curriculum and wider issues. I wonder if you could elaborate a little bit more on how you'd envisage that might happen in practice in terms of developing the curriculum. 

Well, I think the Youth Parliament is an exciting new vehicle that we can feed into our work. The introductory meeting of the full Youth Parliament, I understand, will be during the February half term, where each of the 60 Members, I think, has a certain allotted amount of time to discuss issues that are important to them. I hope some of them will choose to talk about the curriculum. It's not for me to dictate to those Members what they spend their time doing; it is for them to decide what they spend their time doing. But the offer is open and I would be very keen to engage with them on the issue of the curriculum. It might not be for the whole Youth Parliament to do that, but there may be a particular group of young people who are interested in the Youth Parliament who want to engage on this issue and my door is open to that engagement should they wish to pursue it.