Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 12:47 pm on 8 July 2020.
You're correct to say that the Westminster Government have announced a £1 billion catch-up programme. I need to make sure that Members are aware that not all of that is new money, and we have been advised as a Welsh Government that, in this financial year, we could expect a consequential up to and no more, at best, than £30 million. The rest of the money that was announced is for the new financial year and is not available to the Welsh Government at this time. So, I just want to be clear about the parameters in which we are working.
As I think I said earlier, I hope to be in a position—again, by the end of this week—to outline a distinctly Welsh approach to mitigating the impact that the disease has had on our children's education. There are specific parts of the cohort that we know that this period of disruption has been particularly challenging for. We talked about children with additional learning need earlier. Obviously, those children from a disadvantaged economic background, we're always worried about the attainment gap for those particular children. So, we're looking to make it a school-based programme, which is very different from the approach taken in England where there is an emphasis on employing private tutors. I think any particular programme to support children's learning needs to be on the basis of those professionals that work with them day in, day out, know them best and can deal with the circumstances that those children find themselves in.
What's crucial about the time that children are spending in school at the moment is that that work is already beginning to be done to identify what the impact of this period of disruption has been on children, and for teachers to begin to plan for what they need to do next to move children along. For some children, it will be content that will be the main priority; for other children, it will be addressing their emotional health and well-being. This has been a deeply troubling time for all of us. Some of us will have lost friends or relatives, and will have known people who've been really, really unwell, and if that's true of us, then, of course, it will be true of our children. And making sure that our children are in a position to learn and to re-engage with their education is really, really important. That's why it's important that we took the step to give every child—not specific year groups, but every child—the chance to go back to school before September.