3. Statement by the Minister for Education: School Reopening

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:58 pm on 15 September 2020.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 3:58, 15 September 2020

Thank you very much. You're absolutely correct: well-being is key. Learning cannot stick in a child who is distressed, and what we know is that the period of lockdown will have had an impact on all of our children, but that impact will be as various as our children are. Lockdown will have been a very unhappy period for some of our children, and that will need to be addressed. We know that for some of our learners, actually—and there have been some recent surveys that have said that teenagers actually have been less stressed being outside of school, so that reintegration into school has to be managed appropriately. And, if nothing else, it reinforces the importance of the whole-school approach, doesn't it, about making school a happy place to be for all of our learners. And that's why we do need to take this time at the beginning of term to give schools space to be able to address that, so that the rest of the academic year can go as well as it possibly can. And that's why we've made additional resources available, between myself and the health Minister, to have additional counselling sessions for those children where counselling is appropriate, and children in primary school, where traditional counselling is not an appropriate method for intervening with children, but family work and group work, which is much more appropriate, is made available. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, the Member is right: in our guidance, we say very clearly that active travel should be the first option for parents where it is practical to do so, if for no other reason than that is a perfect start to the day for a child—burning off a little bit of that excess energy, getting some fresh air and getting some exercise before the start of the school day. We will continue to work with colleagues in the transport department to get those messages across and to make sure that schools are well equipped for that. Across the way here, in Ysgol Hamadryad, we have our first active travel school, where cars are simply not allowed to travel to school. So, in certain circumstances, in certain communities, it can be done successfully and we need to keep working on creating the conditions—not just for now, but for the future—to encourage active travel.

With regard to digital exclusion, I will indeed raise the point with the Minister for local government about permanent connections to Gypsy and Traveller sites. But, as I said in answer to Suzy Davies, not only did we give out laptops and devices to children, we also actually distributed 10,848 MiFi devices. Sometimes, it's not just the lack of a device that's the problem; it's the connectivity. You may be in a Gypsy-Traveller site, or you may be in the countryside, where that connection is not available. Hence, we were able to assist, as I said, almost 11,000 children by providing them with connectivity during this time.