6. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve the educational outcomes for children with special educational needs? OAQ54212

Llywydd, equity and inclusion are at the heart of our national mission for education. We are committed to ensuring all learners experience a high standard of education and reach their full potential. This is the purpose of this Assembly's Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018.

First Minister, Welsh Government figures show that children with special educational leads are being significantly over-represented in permanent and temporary exclusion from Welsh schools. Pupils with SEN made up to 60 per cent of all permanent exclusions from maintained schools in Wales, despite being only 23 per cent of the school population. These figures suggest that exclusions are not being used as a matter of last resort for children with SEN, but as a norm. Does the First Minister agree that there is an urgent need for overhauling how the educational staff deal with pupils who have special educational needs who are disruptive and to work with schools and local authorities to get the number of exclusions down in Wales? Thank you.

Llywydd, I share the Member's concern, and I know that the education Minister does as well, at the over-representation amongst school exclusions of pupils with additional learning needs. It's partly why we are investing £20 million to prepare the system and staff for the new regime that flows from the Act that was put on the statute book in this Chamber, and, in doing so, we certainly look to those figures to see a reduction in the proportion of school exclusion that comes from pupils that have those additional learning needs.

First Minister, whilst I appreciate very much the legislation that Welsh Government's put into place to ensure that families are able to benefit from the additional learning needs support that they should be getting, we still get many letters from constituents expressing the challenges they face on a daily basis in being able to ensure that their children can get access to that support. Last week, I had a constituent who contacted me and said they had a diagnosis for their child, but they were getting difficulties in getting the local authority to actually deliver the support that diagnosis identified. Now, one of the important things, therefore, we need to ensure is that, whilst we put the legislation in place, we are able to ensure and enforce that that legislation is delivered by local authorities so that families no longer have to face the challenges that the legislation was there to change. Would you therefore look in the Welsh Government and see how we can actually ensure local authorities deliver the support needed when a child has a diagnosis, has those needs identified but, in a situation like this—he's going into a new school in September and doesn't know whether the support that has been given in a statement will be given to him yet.

Well, Llywydd, as David Rees knows, I know the Act itself is to be phased in from September of this year, so the Act is not yet—September of next year, I beg your pardon. So, the Act is not yet delivering the benefits that it's designed to achieve and which were endorsed on the floor of the Assembly. There is a mandatory phased introduction of the Act from September 2020—that's why we are upskilling the profession in advance of it.

The point, I think, that I want to underline in what the Member says is that there is an existing regime, and local authorities must comply with that existing regime. They have legal duties that they must discharge, and we have asked the five transformation leads that we have appointed to help smooth the path to the new regime to emphasise to local authorities their continuing obligations to meet the needs of young people with additional learning needs under the existing system right through until the new regime begins to make its impact.