Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:27 pm on 10 November 2020.
Thank you very much to David Rees for his questions. I think what is really important is that we are looking to design a system that is familiar to teachers. Now is not the time to create newfangled and new ways of doing things, when we all recognise the immense strain that individual teachers, schools and colleges are under at the moment. So, carrying out assessments, tasks of this kind and continuous assessment—these processes are well-known to schools and well understood by schools. So, there shouldn't be a need for a school to acquaint themselves with a completely new, different system—the principles that we're talking about here are well-known and well understood by our teaching workforce.
With regard to practical examinations, David, you are right. For some vocational qualifications, the ability to demonstrate your technical skill, expertise and your ability to undertake that role is a crucial part of gaining your accreditation to enter into a profession. We're very mindful of that, and you will be aware that those learners were prioritised in the late spring and early summer of last year to get them back into college before anybody else to allow them to complete their studies. And we will work with our colleges and our work-based learning providers to ensure that every step is made to allow students to finish and gain a qualification that allows them either to move on to further study or on into the world of work.
With regard to training, clearly, there will be a training need and our expectation is that it's a question of all hands to the pump in this scenario. So, we would be expecting our regional school improvement services, as well as the WJEC, to be able to provide training and advice to schools as to how they should administer any class-based assessments, and, as you said, any marking schemes, not just for the externally assessed assessments, but, actually, the entire moderating process and allocating grades, because that's a really difficult and challenging job to do. Last year, the criticism was—and quite rightly so—that we didn't put in place that opportunity to provide that support for schools. Schools were left pretty much on their own to get on with it. And we need to learn the lessons and ensure that there is an infrastructure around schools this time to support the implementation and operationalisation of this system. Thank you.