7. Will the Minister make a statement on the changes in the new guidance regarding full school years being sent home to self-isolate? OQ55758

Additional guidance has been published in collaboration with Public Health Wales and test, trace, protect on the role of contact tracing when a positive COVID-19 case is identified in an education setting. This includes the identification of close contacts to limit, where possible, the number of pupils and staff who are asked to self-isolate as the result of a positive case.

Thank you. I don't underestimate the task for secondary school heads, in particular, of reconfiguring school layouts, timetables and attendance times in order to comply with the rules on social distancing and hygiene. But I don't think there can be any justification for hundreds of pupils being sent home to self-isolate just because one individual has tested positive. Five hundred and fifty three children were sent home from just two schools in Cardiff a week ago, and both of these where there was just one case. I don't think that's proportionate. Why are heads still in the position where they feel that they have no choice but to send so many pupils home? And do they need the protection of the law to give them the confidence to isolate smaller numbers?

Well, Suzy, you have just outlined beautifully the disruption that is happening on a daily basis, in some parts of Wales, to children's education. In the light of experience of this first half term, we have worked with TTP teams and health protection teams to reflect on the feedback given by headteachers to develop new guidance so that we can reduce the number of pupils and staff who are having to self-isolate. As you identified, one way in which we are looking to do this is by making sure that we can focus on schools having the processes in place to capture information so that we can have more confidence around what constitutes a close contact and to work with those schools to identify—perhaps, in the first instance, a bubble is sent home, but then to work as quickly as possible, following the bubble being sent home, to identify the close contacts within that particular group and then bring more of those children back into school within those 14 days of self-isolation.

So, you're right: we need to give support and confidence to headteachers to make these decisions. And, of course, headteachers need to work with us to have processes in place so that they can more easily and readily identify those children who will have had a close contact with a positive case, rather than asking entire year groups, or very large bubbles, to miss school.