Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 14 May 2019.
I thank the Member for that important question. I agree with her that the difficult business of growing up is, in some ways, even more difficult than it has been in the past because of the way in which new media and other things intrude into young people's lives and the pressures that young people can feel to succeed in what can feel like a difficult and competitive world. Where those things are in our hands, as in the case of six and seven-year-olds, then we have acted already to try and make sure that the formative work that is important—because it's very important that formative assessment is made of young people so that they can get the help they need and, as their education progresses, it's tailored to their needs—but to try and bring about those formative assessments in ways that do not have the downsides of making those young people feel under additional pressures. And I know that Caroline Jones will know that we've moved to a new form of testing that will mean it doesn't all have to be bunched into a particular part of a year, that it won't feel like conventional testing, and that individual young people will be able to pursue a series of questions that are right for them and allow their teachers, then, to make an assessment of their progress and to make sure that, as they move ahead, they're able to get the sort of help that we would like to see for them.