Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 18 March 2020.
Well, first of all, I'd like to join you in celebrating the successes of the schools that you've mentioned. As you know, I have a particular soft spot for Trinity Fields especially, which is one of our outstanding special schools, not just in your area, but actually across Wales.
I want to make it absolutely clear to our teaching professionals that we're not operating in normal times. You will be aware, after discussions over the weekend with Estyn, that all inspections have been suspended. We have also stood down all our challenge adviser work from the regional consortia at the beginning of this week to take that pressure off schools. I want to make it absolutely clear, whilst we have been continuing to record attendance data, we have done that to ensure that we have live information about what is actually happening on the ground, and that data will not be used for any kind of performance or accountability measures. We are not operating in normal times, and it would not be fair to our schools if we were to continue to operate our usual accountability regimes at this moment. I want to reassure the profession that I understand that, Estyn understands that, and the regional consortia and the local education authorities understand that. All rules are off. Should we be able to be in a position of bringing schools back, for instance, we would not expect schools to undertake testing—the assessments that are still done on paper, for instance. But I think that is probably a moot point now. But I want to reassure schools that we will not be using our usual methods at this time, because we are in extraordinary circumstances.