Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 1:10 pm on 8 July 2020.
Thank you, Minister, for that. I'm glad that you recognise that this is a really important tool in the armoury for getting all children back to school where possible and really maximising those opportunities. So, I'm disappointed to report that, in at least one of my primary schools, children have only been offered four hours maximum over this three-week period, simply because they've been put in a bubble of five children—this in a school that has got very generous outdoor education. It doesn't appear that use of the school playgrounds has been properly factored into the planning of what they can offer their children, particularly where a child doesn't have any outdoor play space at home.
I just want to draw all our attention to the importance of the work that's being done in Denmark. Its seven-point plan on reopening schools in the middle of April just emphasised the importance of making outdoor education not just a nice-to-have but a regular part of lesson plans. I hear the naysayers who say, 'Well, our weather doesn't permit that', but no, absolutely not. This is all about having the right equipment. It doesn't matter whether it's rain, wind or snow: as long as children have the right equipment, and the teachers, it's perfectly possible to continue outdoor education at all times of the year.
In your decision framework for schools for the next stage of reopening, you mentioned Denmark, but only in the context of their use of other buildings to increase capacity, and that surprised me in light of the really successful work that Denmark has done on returning children to school. So, what plans does the Welsh Government have to transform the teaching of education in the outdoors as the safest way of beating transmission of the disease? And will you consider, in order to maximise the opportunities you talked about earlier, using the school holidays to offer crash courses to teachers in forest school training? Because it clearly is that some people are needing it.