7. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of ongoing school closures on educational standards in North Wales? OQ56079

Thank you very much, Mandy. COVID-19 has had a major impact on education, including necessitating the current move to online learning for the majority of our children. I commissioned Estyn to undertake a review of local authorities' and regional consortia's approaches to supporting learning and vulnerable learners during the pandemic, and that will be published later this week.

Minister, I've expressed my concerns about our young people previously, but I'm now being contacted by worried parents about the standard and consistency of the online learning that their children are receiving. Apart from what Llyr and Mark said earlier, the Welsh future generations commissioner has also said that a chief digital officer for education could be needed. Can you say what guidance schools have received about remote provision and what efforts are being made to ensure a consistent approach, so that it's not patchy and inconsistent, to ensure that kids in school A will get a comparable online education to the kids in school B? And will we be seeing a possible digital education officer in Wales any time soon?

We have got a chief digital officer for the Welsh Government, who, I understand, has been in correspondence with said commissioner around the approach that Wales is taking at this time. There is considerable guidance that has been published. That guidance is regularly updated to respond to the public health scenario that we find at this time. As I said, we also have additional guidance to support practitioners, not only from the Welsh Government but from Estyn and from the regional school improvement service. Perhaps more importantly than the guidance, there is practical support available, and in your region, I would commend the work that GwE has done to develop distance learning skills for our practitioners during the autumn term, which has been very well received.

Thank you very much, Minister.