3. What steps are being taken to ensure that schools are adhering to social distancing guidelines? OQ55742

Thank you, David. The operational guidance for schools sets out the control measures that need to be put in place to minimise the risk of transmission, including social distancing. Local authorities continue to work with their schools to ensure that all measures are put in place as far as possible. 

Minister, we know that social distancing is our best defence in stopping transmission. Hygiene practice is also very important, but social distancing is really crucial. I think that we should be grateful to the professionalism of our teaching staff and the whole staff in complimenting schools, because we have not had the sort of transmission events that we've seen in higher education. Now, I realise that they are not comparable directly, but they are the same in that there are lots of young people gathering together. And, I think that it is really important that we maintain these best practices, and are thankful to all of the staff that have allowed us to maintain attendance rates in our schools in the high 80s. Obviously, we want to do even better than that to ensure that our young people get as full an education as possible. 

Thank you, David, for recognising the huge amount of effort that has gone into our school settings to make them as COVID secure as possible. Like you, what we need to do is continually keep under review our support and guidance available to schools in the light of experience. There are things that we can learn from this first half-term of the new academic year—hence, issuing new guidance last week—in light of the experiences that we have. But, overall, we have seen strong levels of adherence to social distancing in our schools, for which I am very, very grateful.

What's really important, as we head into half-term, is that young people remind themselves of the need to continue to social distance, not to gather in each other's homes over half-term, and to continue to follow the rules, because that gives us the best chance of minimising disruption to education going forward.

Minister, the operational guidance for schools and settings for the autumn term—version 3, published by the Welsh Government—was updated two days ago. This guidance states that local authorities should communicate the control measures to schools and settings, and that schools and settings should work with staff, parents, carers and learners so that the revised arrangements will work in practice. Minister, how will the Welsh Government seek to ensure that there is a consistency of approach across schools in Islwyn, and how will the Welsh Government be kept updated by Caerphilly county borough on the measures adopted across the authority and across the academic year 2020-21?

Well, we are in regular contact with local authorities. We are aware that, sometimes, there are differences in the approach taken by local authorities in supporting their schools. That's why Estyn is currently doing a piece of work to identify good practice in local authorities supporting individual settings to adhere to rules and to support education during this time.

We, as a Welsh Government, will look to use all of our platforms to reinforce those messages with parents, because they, too, have a crucial role to play in decisions that they are making about their lives, and how they support their children to make good decisions—especially older children, and how they make good decisions when they are outside school—to ensure that we can minimise disruption and bear down on community transmission rates.