Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 12:35 pm on 8 July 2020.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 12:35, 8 July 2020

Okay, that's an interesting comment, that last one, because certainly my understanding is that various regulations that have come through a different committee haven't necessarily had those rights assessments.

I wonder if you can help us on a similar issue, which is to do with blended learning, because there's some confusion about whether September will be a blended learning environment or not. My understanding is that you have brought some clarity to this by saying that face-to-face teaching, when children return in September, is what you're aiming for, and I'm hoping that that will reassure some worried parents. You're looking at it perhaps more as an additional tool, with it maybe in some individual cases meeting a child's needs better than school attendance alone.

Your officials told us yesterday that teachers are unfamiliar with this way of teaching, but have benefited very recently from advice based on information gathered by the consortia, which is some encouragement here I think, but my understanding is that that data gathering on what schools were doing since March was only really begun at the tail end of May, when consortia were prompted to do that work with their reports then being sent to you by 19 June, over two weeks ago. This has been quite a long period of time now, so I think you should be in a position to tell us today what those reports have told you not just about the quantity, but the quality of the offer being made by individual schools, the feedback from schools to pupils in terms of their learning as well as their well-being, and the speed at which schools have been able to identify and then address gaps in what they were doing as best they possibly could in their current circumstances.