Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 12:37 pm on 8 July 2020.
Thank you for that, Suzy. I believe that blended learning will continue to play a part in Welsh education in a number of ways, but clearly, as you have quite rightly stated, my aim is to maximise face-to-face contact with children in their schools with their teachers, but we must capture the positives of the crisis that we have found ourselves in, and for some staff, and indeed for some children, the blended learning approach or distance learning approach actually has been beneficial to them. It builds, of course, on the important work that we have in the e-school project, something that the Presiding Officer will be very familiar with. That blended learning approach helps us overcome some of the logistical disadvantages children, especially in rural areas, may face because they find themselves in small classes. So, we need to capture the good that has come out of this crisis and which will help us inform policy as we go forward, and for some children, especially for those children perhaps who find school difficult or challenging, actually supporting their learning in a variety of ways is really important as we go forward.
I am very keen to understand what has been happening in individual schools. I have been very blunt about this: there has been a mixed performance. Some schools have been able to grasp this challenge better than others, and indeed some families have been able to interact with their schools better than others. As we discussed in the committee yesterday, we have tried to take very positive steps, successful steps, with regard to digital disadvantage, and good practice on behalf of teaching has been supported by guidance around continuity of learning from the Government, and that good practice that has been gleaned by both Estyn and the regional consortia is now being used to inform best practice across schools. We have also been able to provide, via the regional consortia, training for staff to get to grips with and to be able to use our digital learning platform Hwb to its greatest degree. Because of the situation that Anglesey found itself in, for instance, I was able to meet recently with the headteacher representatives of Ynys Môn, and they said that they had benefited hugely from the webinars and professional training that Welsh Government and the GwE consortium had made available to their staff to be able to support blended learning and distance learning to best effect.