Diolch, Lywydd dros dro. I think we're all liable to forget how difficult it can be to be a young person. There are so many pressures that society places on the young—yes exams, but also stresses and expectations about what they should look like, body image ideals permeated by adverts and Instagram, bullying, and pressure to get the right career placement or make the right decision on their Universities and Colleges Admissions Service form.

Growing up in our society is hard enough as it is, but this year, away from their friends and a normal school routine, our young people will have faced unprecedented strain and loneliness. Over the summer, 17 and 18-year-olds went through needless anxiety when they were told that an algorithm would be the best way of determining their future, even though that algorithm punished people for living in poor areas—an algorithm that placed a ceiling over their heads.

I was glad that the Welsh Government u-turned on that disastrous decision, and that young people were given their futures back. But we have to learn a lesson from what happened. That mistake cannot be repeated, and that is why our motion today is calling for a guarantee that examinations will not be held next year and will be replaced by a robust teacher assessment process. This is vital for the next few months.

But, as Plaid's shadow Minister for the future, I think that we need to assess what we want our children to get out of school. As the future generations commissioner has pointed out, skills like creativity, problem-solving and emotional intelligence will be even more important in the future because we'll likely have to work longer and adapt skill sets more rapidly. We need to find better ways of nurturing these skills that are transferrable instead of just awarding static finite marks on a piece of paper.

Is it really fair to give a mark to a 16-year-old that can either open doors or forever close them? Surely, education should be about linking children to their community and other generations, because learning has a social impact too. This week, Members from across this Senedd will be launching a new cross-party group on inter-generational solidarity, and I think that this is an area that our politics will have to return to.

Away from exams, our motion today speaks to the myriad pressures that our young people face. At the end of August, a report was published that asked children in 35 countries about how they felt about the future and themselves. The children in Wales had some of the lowest scores in terms of happiness. Worst of all, those sobering results weren't taken this year, during the pandemic, but two years ago. I dread to think how much worse the outlook could be if those same young people were surveyed today.

When the report was published, I wrote an open letter to the young people of Wales, saying that we shouldn't just note the findings, shake our heads and move on. They should shame us all. Young people are our future. They are our guiding light. It should stop us in our tracks that those young people's outlook on their own futures is so bleak, and we should act to change this.

Llywydd dros dro, our motion today is calling for mental health support, for counselling and therapy services to be made available for every school in Wales. Our motion also calls for well-being to be an essential part of the curriculum. Lessons in school shouldn't just be designed around academic achievement, but should build young people's resilience and foster those young people's connections to their communities. Just as importantly, school should be about finding and feeling joy.