8. What further action will the Welsh Government take to ensure that the provision of education from September onwards is of a high standard? OQ55330

Llywydd, the Welsh Government is working with partners to ensure that the best practice of the past three months is adopted more widely in future. Estyn inspectors will visit schools in Wales from September onwards, as part of this system-wide effort.

First Minister, there is great concern regarding our children's life chances, particularly those in our most impoverished families. Too few pupils considered vulnerable have returned to school, and working at home has been very variable. It seems the return to school at the end of this month will typically be for a few hours once a week and may not include the extra fourth week. And of course, when the return to school in the autumn term begins, blended learning really must be of a high standard in all our schools—every one of our schools. So, First Minister, what action will Welsh Government take to ensure a Wales-wide response, with schools, unions and local education authorities stepping up to the plate within clear national requirements?

Llywydd, I thank John Griffiths for that. He is right that too few vulnerable children have come forward during the pandemic period, but we have gone from around 300 children in the very early weeks to over 1,500 in the latest week. So, we've had a steady increase in the number of children coming forward. Reopening all schools on 29 June will be another important step, because we know that vulnerable children are less likely to attend a school that is not their own. There are many reasons for that, and when their own school reopens, with familiar teachers and familiar faces, we are confident we will see more of those children back in education.

But I agree with John Griffiths that September needs to bring with it a very different school experience, and that learning from the success of the last weeks will be very important to that. Because, while variability has been a feature, it has also been a feature that there are many, many schools that have risen very powerfully to the challenge of providing remote learning blended with contact from the school remotely, as well, for children. What we want to do is to make sure that there is a national expectation that all schools learn from the experience of the best and put that to work for the benefit of children and young people from September. And as I said in my original answer, we'll be deploying Estyn as part of that effort to make sure that the fantastic things—and they are fantastic things—that so many heads and teachers have invented to assist children and young people in Wales are understood by the rest of the system, that they are adopted by the rest of the system, and that the education from September onwards is of as high a standard as we can make it in the circumstances that we will face at the time.