6. What steps will the Minister take to promote pupil well-being in the return-to-school plans? OQ56453

On 15 March, we published our framework on embedding a whole-school approach to emotional and mental well-being. It places well-being at the heart of learning and, together with funding of £2.8 million to deliver well-being support to learners in the current year, to ensure that their return to education is all that it should be.

Thank you, Minister. I was delighted to see the framework published yesterday. And I hope to speak next week in the statement and to say some words about you then.

As you know, the Children, Young People and Education Committee recently held a brilliant session on the impact of COVID on the physical and mental health of children and young people, and I would like to thank Professor Ann John, Professor Alka Ahuja, Professor Adrian Edwards and Dr David Tuthill from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health for their very powerful evidence. We were given a very clear message about how vital the focus on well-being is in the return to school, but also how crucial it is that we give children and young people hope. Some of the narrative emerging in public discourse about ensuring children and young people can return to school has been very negative. Terms like 'COVID generation', and even terms like 'catch-up' are indicative of loss, when I think we should be celebrating the phenomenal resilience of children and young people, given what they've been through through this period. So, would you agree with me, Minister, that it is absolutely correct that we not just prioritise well-being as more and more children now return to school, but also that we reject any counsel of despair and make sure that we say to our children and young people, 'We know what you've been through, and our priority now is to help you recover from that in a positive and hopeful way'?

Thank you very much, Lynne. I, too, am absolutely delighted that the framework has now been published and will be there to support schools in this really, really important aspect of their work, because if we think about the interruption to education that we have all witnessed and our children and young people have experienced, we're not going to be able to move forward from that unless we address well-being, because we know that learning cannot stick without that. And I couldn't agree with you more that a constant reference to a deficit model will help no-one. In fact, it will just add additional stress to the teaching profession. It will add additional stress to our children and young people. So, learning interrupted, yes, but learning lost, never. I understand why parents are concerned, and I understand why older children and students would be concerned. But, as we've demonstrated, with the investment that we're already making, we have an education system and professionals who stand ready to ensure that they can move forward with real confidence in the next steps of their education. And if we engage continually in that mantra of despair, as you have described, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because children become what they are told, and therefore we need to change the dialogue and work with our educational professionals to help our children move forward with confidence.

I agree wholeheartedly with what Lynne Neagle has been saying about the importance of focusing on empowering young people and giving them hope. Young people have—. I'm trying to recalibrate the way I'm going to word this, actually, because I was going to say, 'They've missed out on so many experiences.' But, actually, young people have so many experiences that they need to regain, then, after the pandemic. Friendships and routines have been disrupted. Many young people have been suffering with isolation and loneliness. Could I ask you, Minister, when the guidance on the whole-school approach to well-being and mental health will be implemented in schools and when will young people be able to feel the benefits of that? I am particularly concerned about very young children—those who should have started school during the pandemic, but because they've got parents who are shielding, maybe they haven't been able to go into school. Those yearly years—the reception classes, the meithrin classes—are so fundamentally important to forming bonds between children. So, what support do you think could be made available to re-establish bonds between young children? And will there be particular help, particularly for children who haven't seen their friends in such a long time?

Thank you, Delyth. I think you have hit upon one of the aspects of the interruption to education that has really impacted upon children and young people, and that is a sense of isolation and the inability to spend time with their friends. And that's why schools the length and breadth of Wales have been focusing on that when they have seen the foundation phase return. And, indeed, that interaction and that pedagogy is at the heart of our foundation phase approach, and in that playing together once again, being together, chatting together, children are learning and acquiring the skills that they need for a confident future. That's why we have ensured that there is time and space within the curriculum for that to happen, and that's why we have made additional funding available together to ensure that there are adults there to support children as they re-engage with face-to-face learning and re-establish those relationships with their peers and with their teachers and teaching assistants.