Thank you, Llywydd. As a Member of the Welsh Youth Parliament's life skills in the curriculum committee, we, fortunately, were able to complete the majority of our work before the pandemic struck. We consulted over 2,500 young people, parents and educators in summer shows and Welsh Youth Parliament committee events across Wales, publishing our findings and recommendations in our report, ‘Life Skills, Skills for Life’. With the new Curriculum for Wales on the way, our consultation offered a snapshot of the way that life skills and personal and social education are being taught in schools and colleges across Wales.

Our consultation pointed to several inconsistencies in young people’s experiences of learning about important subjects, such as political education, sex education, financial education and first aid, to name but a few. As the Welsh Government continued to refine the new curriculum, our recommendations included that they should provide a comprehensive list to educators in Wales of the life skills that must be taught within the six areas of learning and experience; ensure that schools in all parts of Wales have the resources to implement the new curriculum to its full potential; and ensure that teachers have the right training to be able to teach a number of new topics that will be new to them as part of the new curriculum.

Since presenting our recommendations to the Minister for Education in the Siambr in October 2019, we have been able to continue our scrutiny work in meetings with Government officials, practitioners who are developing the areas of learning and experience, and officials at Qualifications Wales who are reforming the assessment structure in Wales. We have also helped to develop the votes-at-16 educational resources in advance of this year’s Senedd election.

Whilst we, as a committee, appreciate the Welsh Government’s response to our recommendations and the reasons given for not accepting a few of them, we would like to take this opportunity to emphasise our remaining concerns. We accept the Welsh Government’s argument that it goes against the spirit of the new curriculum to publish a mandatory list of subjects for teachers to teach, and we acknowledge the Welsh Government’s concern that this would be a backwards step towards the old tick-box curriculum that the new curriculum aims to move away from.

However, we remain concerned as a committee that a lack of clear guidance could lead to greater inconsistency, and that the success of the areas of learning and experience as they currently stand is too dependent on how individual schools interpret them. Furthermore, digital poverty in Wales has become a prominent issue due to the pandemic—an issue that will only worsen and lessen the impact of the new curriculum without appropriate interventions. Therefore, we urge the Welsh Government to consider this issue further as it finalises the new curriculum.

We also urge them to commit funding to ensure that pupils in all parts of Wales have the opportunity to experience every element of the curriculum, and to invest in training and centralised resources for teachers. We firmly believe that this would lead to a meaningful learning experience for every pupil. Thank you.