I am in no doubt our new curriculum has the potential to transform learning, but only if we support our teachers to make it a success. We must recover and reform, and I'm determined that the emphasis on well-being and flexibility shown over the last year is built upon and closely aligned with the introduction of our new curriculum. Our education system has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility, and we must learn from that. 

I will be looking to take immediate action to support the profession and give them the space to focus on what they do best: teaching. That means tackling unnecessary bureaucracy, trusting in their professional judgment and supporting their well-being. I want the whole system to learn from what has worked in the last year and continue to build capacity to improve.

That's why I'm also announcing £6.25 million to help teachers in schools expand their capacity and capability to support learner well-being within teaching, promoting best practice and sharing that across schools, so that we help schools build resilience to COVID and expand on the positive changes to ways of working. This brings our investment to over £150 million in teaching support in schools and colleges in the last year. 

I will work in partnership with the profession, our education partners, trade unions and other stakeholders, to make sure we are aligned to these common priorities and move towards them together. I will listen to the voices of our learners, building on the valuable work of the Children's Commissioner for Wales's 'Coronavirus and Me' surveys, so our children and young people have a say in the policies that affect them most.

Our partners have already helped us to define the governing principles that I've set out today for our renewal and reform plans. In the coming weeks, I will publish a plan in detail that reflects those principles and builds on and supports the 1,800 extra full-time teaching staff recruited over the last year. The plan will also describe how we will work with our partners to enable learners to confidently progress through their education. And finally, it'll set out how we will evaluate the steps we propose, and how we will show that our plans are succeeding, both in supporting our learners and teachers and in renewing the education sector to progress to reform.  

Dirprwy Lywydd, this next year will be crucial to making sure we can achieve our high ambitions for learners in Wales. It is incumbent upon us not to allow the pandemic to dampen the aspirations nor narrow the horizons of our children and young people. The decisions we take here and now are integral to ensuring every single learner is supported to be the best they can be.

COVID-19 has not gone away, and as a Government we will continue to do everything we can to respond to the pandemic. But now is the time to support our practitioners and learners to make the progress they need, to build on the gains we have made in recent years, and to look forward and to seize the opportunities that lie ahead for education in Wales.