9. Will the Minister make a statement on what the Welsh Government is doing to support service children in schools? OAQ54365

The Welsh Government's supporting service children in education Wales fund helps schools provide additional support to mitigate the challenges that children of armed forces communities can face because of their family's military lifestyle. I have made available £250,000 for applications this academic year.

I'm grateful to the Minister for that response. You'll be aware, of course, of the calls from the Assembly's cross-party group on armed forces to establish a service pupil premium here in Wales, and I believe a service pupil premium would go a long way in supporting those children who are disadvantaged as a result of their parents' service in the armed forces, either due to their frequent relocations or the impact of active service. I know that additional support would be welcomed as the armed forces play a key role in your constituency, Minister, as well as in my own. Therefore, can you tell us whether the Welsh Government is considering introducing a service pupil premium here in Wales, and if not, can you tell us what additional specific support the Welsh Government can actually offer to service children in Welsh schools?

Presiding Officer, I am very alive to the issues faced by children of serving families, which is why we have made this fund available. That fund this year is supporting three projects in the county of Pembrokeshire, and I'm sure the Member would be glad of that. If he's not aware of the individual projects, I'm happy to write to him with details of the schools that are in receipt of that grant.

We continue to look at the needs of our entire cohort of children when deciding educational budgets, and he will be aware of the challenging financial situation that the Welsh Government has found itself in. I'm committed to doing what I can to find resources to support the projects that are ongoing at the moment, and crucially I have started the process by which we will systematically begin to collect data on armed service families' children in our education system. That is not collected at the moment. It's very difficult to keep track and provide the evidence that we would need to support additional investment in our schools. We have started that process now, where pupil level annual school census data will be amended so that schools can record children of military families, and at the same time we will be amending PLASC data so that families who have adopted children will also be recorded. It's a long and tortuous process—longer than I would have liked it—but that process has now begun, which will mean that we will have better data so that we can make informed policy decisions in the future.

Thank you, Minister.