Children Not in School

Part of 3. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 3:57 pm on 10 February 2021.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 3:57, 10 February 2021

Thank you, Nick, for your recognition of the real challenges that families have been facing at this time. I don't think anybody has not found home schooling or supporting remote learning at home particularly challenging. I'll hold my hands up myself; it is really, really difficult to do, and if you are working yourself, then it is particularly challenging. I want to say thank you to parents across Wales who have been working to support their children throughout this time. They've done a sterling job, and I know sometimes that has come at the expense of their own well-being. I'm very grateful to them.

Going forward, as part of our recovery programme, we need to address both the issue of interrupted learning from a content point of view, but we also need to ensure that our children's emotional health and well-being needs are also addressed, so that they're in a position to learn. Sometimes, the discussion around recovery is all about cramming in more opportunities for more lessons. But as Yeats is sometimes said to have said, education is not about pouring more into the pail, it is about lighting fires. Our approach to recovery will be about supporting learners to re-engage and to relight that fire as well as addressing the issues of content that they may have missed.