Item 5 on the agenda this afternoon is a statement by the Minister for Education on mental health and well-being support in educational settings, and I call on the Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Colleagues, the last year has been tough for us all. Our way of life changed beyond all recognition as we learned to live with the ever-present danger of coronavirus. The cumulative effect on our wellbeing has been enormous, and even more so for our children and young people. The fear of illness, the impact of furlough or job losses on the adults around them, the separation from their wider family and friendship circles, and the impact on their normal routine, just being able to attend school—it will have all been very, very daunting. 

However, if there is one positive that we can take from the last year, let it be the issue of well-being, in particular that of children and young people, and the role of education in supporting them. It's now fully recognised. Emotional and mental health is now at the centre of education, and children's health and confidence is one of the four central purposes of education in Wales. Building learners' resilience is key to that.

Schools are not just there to churn out children with a grasp of algebra or the key dates in history. They are there to help build resilience, preparing them for a future in which all of our young people will meet challenges, meet successes, but sometimes meet disappointments. I'm really proud, as I'm sure other Members are, that this Parliament recently voted to support a new national curriculum that ensures that health and well-being have equal importance to more traditional subjects and areas of learning.

Earlier this month I launched our framework on embedding a whole-school approach to emotional and mental well-being, which will support the new curriculum. The statutory guidance will enable schools, as they review their well-being needs, to develop plans to build on their strengths and address any weaknesses and evaluate the impact of their work. 

Let me be clear: we are not looking to medicalise growing up or our education system. What we are asking teachers and school staff to do is what many already do naturally—the little things, which have the biggest impact on children's lives. For example, pre lockdown, Archbishop McGrath Catholic High School in Bridgend held a Friday running club for both staff and learners. This provided a shared opportunity for staff and learners of any ability to go for a run together in the local area during the lunchtime break. That promoted positive relationships and shared values and, of course, real benefits for learners and staff's health and well-being.

At its heart, our new framework is about building trusting relationships between learners and between learners and teachers, the wider school staff and, indeed, across the whole school community. And when there are occasions, as there inevitably will be, when teachers encounter something out of the ordinary and outside their particular skill set, then they will know where to go to access appropriate support in a timely fashion.

The NHS-led Together for Children and Young People programme is developing an early help and enhanced support framework. This describes the help available to build resilience and support mechanisms. Together with our whole school framework, this will ensure the whole system now works seamlessly to meet all children's well-being needs.

Supporting implementation of our whole-school framework, we have increased our funding in this area by 360 per cent over three years, with funding coming both from the education department and the health budget, demonstrating the cross-departmental commitment to this work, which has been absolutely crucial. We will use the additional funding next year, as we have in the last two years, to support schools, local authorities and others to deliver real improvements in well-being support; for example, by improving and expanding our school counselling service, which currently sees around 11,500 children and young people every year. 

We have been reviewing the impact of the additional £1.2 million we made available for the service in the current year. So far, of the 18 local authorities that have responded, they've informed us that our funding has enabled almost 13,500 additional counselling sessions to the end of March, enabling over 5,500 more children to receive support.

Now, whilst the framework is aimed at schools, the principles underpinning it have equal relevance in other settings, such as further and higher education. Supporting staff and student mental health and well-being is essential if we are to tackle the attainment gap and widen access to educational success. In the last two years alone we've invested over £56 million to support mental health and well-being in colleges and universities. Our universities are working with Public Health Wales and with the Welsh Government through the healthy and sustainable colleges and universities framework to ensure all aspects of university life are designed to provide the greatest level of support to students. This whole-university approach to mental health means ensuring that good mental health and well-being is a core part of all university activities as part of their offer to students and to faculty.

And we have commissioned Estyn to undertake a thematic review of FE learner well-being during the COVID pandemic. Funding will result in resources disseminated sector-wide during 2021, including commissioned toolkits to support whole-college approaches on substance misuse and adverse childhood experiences.

Deputy Presiding Officer, in conclusion, this Government is committed to ensuring well-being is at the heart of our whole education system, and I truly believe that Wales is now leading the way. I would like to conclude by placing on record my thanks to both the Chair and the members of the Children, Young People and Education Committee for their work in this area and also members of our task and finish group, which has helped shape our activity. Diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you for your statement, Minister. I think we'd all agree that this last year has been highlighting the human need for physical, mental, emotional and even spiritual well-being in order to function, let alone even live our best lives, and I think it's been especially true of our children and young people and their ability to learn, be it traditionally or in the myriad of ways that they've experienced during COVID. That includes their ability to be with their peers, not just adults, and a whole range of experiences, some of which may have been forgotten. So, my first question, I think, is: what plans have you considered for using the summer holidays to enhance well-being in a way that can be accessed by all children and young people? 

Members, of course, have been long concerned about the mental health and well-being support for our children and young people—it's not just this year—which is why some us have been a bit nervous about the future of the Together for Children and Young People programme, which has been such an important driver of change, albeit with clipped wings, if I can put it like that.

Minister, I'm happy to acknowledge the effort that you and your department have put into this framework and I'm pleased to hear that it can be read across to the FE and HE institutions, and I also welcome the early interventions that you reference in your statement, which I hope have been successful. So, my next questions, I suppose, are: how would you measure the adherence to the framework as we go forward, and how will you measure the success of the results of adhering to the framework?

You refer to counselling sessions, which is very welcome, but you commented in the past on counselling being unsuitable for younger children. Early intervention in education settings helps counteract the effects of adverse childhood experiences and reduces the need for support in later life, so what's being considered for our youngest children, and how does the framework empower staff to push back against that medicalised intervention that you mentioned in your statement and that concerns us all?

And then, finally, yes, this is an NHS-led programme, but it still feels pretty much like an education-led programme. The First Minister referred earlier today to the statement on mental health and well-being, jointly signed by both Eluned Morgan and Vaughan Gething. So, how strongly is the work of Together for Children and Young People and this framework featured there in that statement? What resources will flow into the framework from the health department? And do you agree that it will be impossible to measure the impact of that health department investment in this route to improving children's mental health and well-being, when we continue to have these combined impact assessments for the Welsh Government budget, which do not separate adults and children and which continue to disappoint both the CYPE committee and the children's commissioner? Diolch.

Deputy Presiding Officer, could I, first of all, thank Suzy Davies for her comments and questions? With regard to the summer, I think the holidays provide a wonderful opportunity to look to support a number of activities to ensure that our children, who have really missed that social contact that Suzy talked about, have an opportunity to do just that. The Member will be aware of our very successful Food and Fun activities that have run in local authorities across Wales since I came into office. We have doubled the amount of funding available to the Welsh Local Government Association to ensure that that programme reaches many more children, and I continue to explore, with my officials, how we can best use the summer holidays as part of our learning 2021 programme, not to have academic lessons but look to employ a range of approaches, both cultural, creative, sporting, access to the outdoors, working with partner organisations and the third sector, to enhance, even above and beyond the Food and Fun activities, because we recognise that, for many children, that interaction and that opportunity to develop their resilience and learn in a different way will be an important part of how we can respond positively to the impact the pandemic has had on their lives.

With regard to who will look at the framework, well, the framework will have an evaluation arm of its own, but crucially, when face-to-face inspections are ready to go again and are reintroduced at the appropriate time, the new inspection framework from Estyn itself will look at how schools are addressing issues around well-being so that there is an added incentive, if you like, for the schools to actively engage in the framework, because that is one way in which they will be able to demonstrate to inspectors how they are addressing these needs within their school. So, I have every confidence that the framework will be used. In fact, what the framework does allow is some clarity for schools that in the past have been bombarded by different approaches, different types of programmes, which can be really, really sometimes confusing, sometimes contradictory. The framework gives a clear plan, and we will be using resources to ensure that there are people in Public Health Wales to support the schools in the use of the framework. So, those individuals are being identified at the moment so that there will be support there for schools in how they use the framework and how they can shape their work from that perspective.

You're absolutely right: traditional school counselling is not appropriate for our youngest children. The whole premise of counselling is that you are able to make some changes in your own life, and the ability of a five-year-old or six-year-old to do that, of course—it's not appropriate. Therefore, although I used the example of traditional counselling in my opening statement, local authorities have been also using different approaches to support younger children, whether that be play-based approaches, for instance, or whether that be family therapy and family-based approaches, as well as then, in schools, ensuring that more and more of our practitioners have ACE awareness training. And the framework absolutely gives that freedom for schools to become trauma-informed practitioners. The use of nurture programmes within our primary sectors—all of which we know are particularly effective in our youngest children.

And, of course, some schools are choosing to use some of their pupil development grant to look at supporting children's education with innovative approaches. Only yesterday, I was in Roath Park Primary School, where they are engaging in a programme that brings a dog to school, a therapy dog, and the children actually engage, walking the dog in the local park, and the counsellor encourages the child to talk about their challenges with the dog and that interaction actually is proving very successful. I know that the school has used it to support a child who has been bereaved during the pandemic, not from COVID—unfortunately, the child's mum had terminal cancer and has passed away—and the dog has been really, really useful in a really non-challenging way for that child to express their feelings. And I did meet a child yesterday who has been out walking the dog, whose parents are front-line NHS workers, and the impact of the pandemic on that child has made him really anxious about his mum and dad's safety, because they're both medics and he's been really, really anxious about his mum and dad being safe and well. So, there are really innovative approaches and schools are taking this very seriously.

Finally, can I just say that there is absolute determination, both within the education department and the health department, to work jointly on this project? And the resources that we've been able to put into the programme have come from both budgets. I take your point about the transparency, sometimes, of the ability to follow the impact of those inputs, but we will continue, I'm sure, in the next Senedd—not you and I, but other people—to discuss how that greater transparency can be achieved. But I have been really pleased with the joint departmental working that we've been able to achieve and the ability to harness resources from both budget lines to be able to enhance these services.

Thank you for the statement. I'd like to focus on two specific issues. I know that you would agree that it's crucial that we use a preventative approach in dealing with mental health issues, and whilst, of course, we do need to respond to problems as they arise, it's also important to take action to prevent those problems from arising in the first instance.

So, we do need to tackle one of the fundamental causes of mental health problems, and poverty is one of those. It is important that we bear in mind that disadvantaged children and young people are more likely to suffer mental health problems and that tackling poverty, through a number of different ways, is an effective way of preventing mental health problems before they emerge. Research shows that children who go hungry are far more likely to suffer anxiety and stress at a serious level. And there's also a proven link between poverty and hunger in early life and depression and suicide in later life. And in addition to this, if we are to see healthy brain growth in children, we must provide specific nutritional needs for them. And this includes the provision of zinc, vitamin D, iron, selenium, protein, iodine and other key nutrients. As you will know, Plaid Cymru is in favour of expanding free school meals to 70,000 children, and ultimately to all children, in order to ensure the children eat a healthy meal at least once a day. So, my question is this: shouldn't free school meals be at the very heart of a mental health and well-being strategy for education settings for any Government because of all of the preventative benefits that they bring?

And the second area I want to look at is the post-16 sector. Mental health support is crucial in schools, but it's also crucial that there is appropriate provision in all post-16 settings too, and one area that is at risk of being ignored is work-based learning and the well-being of apprentices. Apprentices, as well as the additional stress of completing a qualification after completing their framework, also have that additional stress of future employment, and during COVID that anxiety, I'm sure, has been increased, with 1,690 apprentices placed on full furlough from the beginning of the year, adding to the pressure on them of course. So, my final question, and my second question is: is there sufficient support available for this specific group of learners?

Thank you, Siân, for those points. Whilst I in no way disagree with the importance of nutrition for children and the important role that that plays in their education, I think it is just a little naive to think that, and that alone, can tackle the challenges of promoting good well-being and mental health in our schools. Can I say, one of the things that we do know that causes a great deal of stress and mental ill health is a lack of qualifications, and therefore ensuring that children receive excellent tuition and make real academic progress in schools is vitally important? And I am delighted to say that I have just signed off to officials now the largest ever investment in the pupil development grant—the largest single, as I said, budget line that that particular programme has ever had. In talking to teachers about that, they are very concerned that that money continues to flow to school after the next election because it has been fundamental in their ability to support children from our poorest backgrounds.

With regard to the issue of free school meals, the Member is absolutely aware—I know she is—that we were the first part of the United Kingdom to commit to funding free school meals during school holidays, and that support will continue in this academic year through to Easter of next year. The resources that have been made available to our partners in local government not only look to cover the costs of free school lunches, but we know, for many of these families, they would have been in receipt of a free breakfast while at school as well, and hence the—. In terms of monetary amounts to families, again, it's the best in the United Kingdom. We have promised to keep under review eligibility criteria for free school meals, but our families that are most in need are supported by that programme. Those families are also supported, of course, by our PDG access account, and I'm very pleased again this year that we have increased the number of year groups that are available for support in that programme, so that families in secondary schools can now apply for every single year that their children are in secondary school. And, of course, whilst traditionally those resources have been used to purchase items of uniform, that programme also allows parents to purchase items of kit and equipment so that their children can go into school feeling absolutely confident that they have, as I said, the uniform and the equipment that they need so that they are not different from their peers and don't have a lack of resources holding them back.

With regard to the further education sector, the Member is absolutely right—we need to ensure there is a continuity of support for children and young people as they move through education, and that's why we have ensured, as I said in my statement, that we have invested heavily both in the FE sector and in the HE sector so that students are supported. Many of our work-based learning providers, of course, will have linkages with their local further education provider, as part of their apprenticeship, and we would expect those colleges that are working with work-based learning providers to ensure that those young people have the support that they need. I recognise that it's been a particularly challenging year for some of those students. Their ability to complete qualifications has been more difficult because they've not been able to be in their traditional workplaces or they've not been able to cover the hours that they need to gain their qualifications, and our expectation is that further education colleges will be doing all that they can to support them. We have put additional moneys in place for those vocational learners to be brought back to college as a priority group, and, indeed, to support them if their courses run over into the next academic year to ensure that they are supported throughout that.

As I said, we have also significantly increased the investment in mental health support for our universities, and, again, to highlight best practice, in north Wales, I was delighted to hear this morning in a meeting with Glyndŵr University in Wrexham of how they are working hard to become the first trauma-informed university, not just in Wales, but in the United Kingdom, recognising the need to support their learners and their students. So, this is not just a whole-school approach, it is a truly whole-system approach.

Minister, as this is likely to be our last exchange in this Senedd, I just wanted to take this opportunity to place on record my heartfelt thanks to you for your work in this area, which has delivered such substantial progress in this Senedd. Your engagement with my committee has been rooted in respect for the value and worth of Senedd committees, fuelled by your commitment to children and young people's mental health, and has been hugely constructive and productive. As you know, what has driven my work in this area is a determination to save young lives. I've got no doubt that the embedding of mental health on the face of the curriculum Bill, mandatory inclusive RSE for all pupils, and the whole-school approach for mental health will make a huge contribution to saving young lives in Wales, and there can be no more significant or important legacy than that, and I do thank you for that.

If I can just turn now to a question about the whole-school approach, and mindful of your answer to Suzy Davies, which was very encouraging about the role of Estyn in ensuring that the framework, which is an excellent framework, rooted in strong relationships, is implemented, can I just ask specifically about secondary schools? As you know, all too well, lots of primary schools are already really very good at this work, and we have much to be proud of, but we have a longer journey to go on with our secondary schools. What specific steps have you taken and put in place to ensure that we can make that seismic shift, really, in delivering this whole-school approach in our secondary schools? Thank you.

Thank you, Lynne, first of all for your kind words. I guess serving an apprenticeship before becoming a Minister for some 16 or 17 years on committees perhaps gives you a perspective that isn't always present, sometimes. By engaging with you and your committee, I think we have achieved more than if the Government had just tried to move along this path on its own. And can I say, a lot of that is down to you, to your personal commitment, which goes beyond simply a political commitment, to this agenda, and, of course, just that little bit of fear sometimes you put into me of the consequences of what might happen if we don't get things done. But that creative tension between the Senedd and the Government is something that we should look to enhance at all times, because it leads to better policy outcomes for the people of Wales. And, goodness me, for those of us who have been involved in this project since 1999, that's what we set out to achieve, and I'd like to think that's what we have done in our relationship, Lynne, over these last five years.

You were absolutely right to talk about the secondary sector. You will be aware of the thematic work that's already been done by Estyn that talks about the differentiation, often, between the primary and the secondary sector, and the need to ensure that our secondary practitioners are well acquainted with, if nothing else, the simple biological changes that our young people go through during adolescence and how we need to be mindful of that in our approaches in the secondary school system. And I, certainly, sitting on the task and finish group, learned a lot and, indeed, have adjusted my own parenting style at home with that deeper understanding.

Of course, the pressures on secondary schools are sometimes not of their making but they're of Government's making. And that's why it's really important that we not only change our curriculum, that we not only have a learning inspectorate and a different approach to inspections, but we as a Government need to change the way in which we hold schools accountable for their performance. In the past, we have held schools accountable for their performance—because they need to be held accountable, there is no getting away from that, the job that they do is too important not to be held accountable—but they've been held accountable on such a narrow, narrow set of measures. And, as important as those measures are, surely if COVID has taught us nothing else, it's that school is a much wider and a much bigger piece of children's lives than just the narrowness by which we've held schools to account. So, it's also about changing our accountability regimes as a Government as well in terms of what success looks like in a secondary school and what does good practice look like in a secondary school, and, clearly, ensuring that the whole-school approach is embedded in approaches in secondary school will be really important, going forward.

And can I just reassure people that, sometimes, there is a false and artificial argument put up that you can either have well-being excellence or you can have academic excellence. Oh, goodness me, it's so not the case. What all the studies show is that if you have good well-being in school, for both pupils and faculty, actually that leads to greater educational attainment. So, this isn't an either/or or a 'nice to have'; this is an absolutely essential building block for driving forward greater levels of educational attainment for all of our children.

And finally, David Rees. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Minister, can I put on record also my thanks for your stewardship of the education portfolio over the last five years? The statement you've just made demonstrates your commitment to the well-being and education of our young children, our young people, and I very much appreciate that. I look forward and I hope that what you've just said comes to fruition, because I have experience, unfortunately, as have my constituents, where the well-being of young children and the mental health of young children hasn't been addressed fully during this pandemic, particularly children in primary school. As we know, mental health issues can sometimes present themselves as behavioural issues as well, and therefore behavioural changes, often at home, not necessarily in school, can cause difficulties for families. I know of a parent who went to a school to ask for help with those behavioural changes as a consequence of some of the experiences of COVID and being home, and was told, 'We haven't got services available to you.' And that parent didn't have that help, and therefore we need to ensure that the services are available to help parents with children, in primary schools in particular, and also when they move into secondary schools—that transition period as well—to ensure that those services are there so parents don't face the challenges at home because the system has failed to deliver and support the child in the education settings. So, before you leave your post on 6 May, can you give me assurances that you will ensure that every local authority has in place sufficient resources to ensure that children who need that support and parents who ask for that support are not going to be denied it?

Thank you, David, for your kind words. Can I say I'm very sorry to hear of the experience that your constituent has had? If you would be good enough to let me have further details, then I can assure you that I will ask officials to pursue that with Neath Port Talbot local authority and I would be very pleased to do so, because what we do know is when parents ask for help, sometimes that puts us in a very vulnerable position as adults. We know that admitting sometimes that we are struggling or need help, especially when that is something as personal as parenting, can make you feel very, very vulnerable, and you are worried about being judged at the same time as being really worried about what is happening with your child. So, the initial response has to be the right response first time round, so that people are not discouraged from seeking help. I can't comment, because I don't know the full details of the case, but what we also have to recognise is that whilst we can realistically expect schools to manage a certain amount within the school setting, sometimes a family or a child may need help above and beyond the competencies that could be expected within school, and that's where local education authorities and local authorities in general, and sometimes in partnership with health services, need to have wraparound services that the school can refer to, because sometimes it is an outside agency above and beyond school that will need to be there to assist a parent or to assist a child.

So, as I said, I can't comment, because I don't know the full details, but that could be the case, that we needed other services brought in there to support the family. But, David, I can assure you that we continue to work with local authorities around ensuring, especially as we come out of the pandemic—and, goodness me, I hope we are coming out of the pandemic—that they will be ready to respond in a whole-systems approach, not just leave it all to schools, but to ensure that there is youth work, social services input, and partnerships with other organisations to support families if they need it. Because you're quite right—I don't believe in children as being inherently naughty; behaviour is triggered by something and we need to support that, and often disruption at home or things that have been going on at home result in behaviour in school, and we need to ensure that there is support for the family to address what's been going on so that those behaviour issues can be addressed. Many schools do it very well, but education, like democracy, David, is never done. So, there will always be more work for an education Minister, whoever that is lucky enough to be, to do.

Thank you very much, Minister.