Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 2:31 pm on 25 November 2020.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 2:31, 25 November 2020

Well, thank you for the response, but it didn't really answer my questions about why, when you're out in the fresh air, you should wear a mask. If you'd turned around to me and said that there is a lot of evidence of pupils huddling up in the schoolyard and not behaving, then maybe I would have been prepared to hear your evidence for that. But yesterday, for example, I had communication from somebody—a parent—complaining that there were 30 children outside in, well, she called it a yard, the size of a hockey pitch, and they were all being told to wear face coverings. Now that, clearly, is not a great idea. So, I was hoping to hear something about the difficulties, perhaps, that teachers were experiencing in enforcing distancing in the yard, and why they're having difficulty doing that, because I don't see why they should.

The suggestion now, of course, is that lateral flow testing is the way forward. I don't want to talk about testing in general, but one specific case has come to me. I've had sight of one school's parental consent form, asking for their child to be tested. It doesn't say whether that child would still be permitted to attend the school if consent were not to be given. So I don't want to talk about testing in general, but in terms of parental refusal to give consent, will you be leaving this decision to schools, or will you be showing the leadership on this, and making the position plain about what schools should do in those circumstances?