Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 20 November 2019.
Yes, I recognise the points that Lynne Neagle has made, and that's one of the reasons why Welsh Government was so happy to acknowledge, recognise and accept all of the recommendations in the recent report that looked at school funding and is already starting to take forward some of that work in terms of the work that the leading education economist Luke Sibieta is doing in terms of the analysis of total spend in schools to ensure that we are allocating our spend to education in the way that is getting the most for those children and young people.
The education main expenditure group at the moment stands at £1.7 billion for 2019-20, and then we would obviously recognise that the vast majority of funding for schools, of course, goes through the regional grants straight to local authorities. But I think there are important things we can do to support children and young people alongside that as well—so, the work that we're doing to expand the food and fun programme throughout the summer, to ensure that children and young people don't fall backwards, compared to their peers, in some communities over the course of the summer, and also doubling the investment in the pupil development grant access fund to £5.1 million. I think it's really important, again, in terms of supporting families and trying to put more money into the pockets of those individual families. And taken together with the pupil development grant, it means that we're investing over £98 million in 2019-20 to support some of our most disadvantaged learners. That's important for exactly the reasons that Lynne Neagle said, because investing in children at the youngest age is the most important preventative spend that you can make, because putting children on the right path and ensuring that they have the opportunities to fulfil all of their potential is the best way to ensure that they have good lives ahead of them.