Welcome back. The next item on the agenda is a statement by the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language on renew and reform, supporting learners' well-being and progression. I call on the Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. As Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, my most urgent priority is clear, namely ensuring that every child and young person progresses to their full potential, in spite of the pandemic. Every decision I make as Minister will be guided by the needs of learners and their well-being, with a focus on narrowing educational inequalities and ensuring the best outcomes for all.

The last year has clearly been very important for our schools, our educational settings, our colleges and universities, and has shown how important they are for our children and young people. Education practitioners have heroically risen to the challenges of the pandemic, showing remarkable adaptability, commitment and resilience. I want to thank them for their dedication, innovation and swift response. Learners too have had to adapt, learning and working in very different ways. But the truth is that despite all of this, the pandemic has taken a significant toll on our young people, on the education profession that supports them, and on their families. Many of our children and staff have found it harder to manage their mental health and their relationships with others, and this has shone a light on the stubborn inequalities that still exist in parts of our educational system, gaps in attainment and in digital access that none of us should tolerate.

We must ensure that nobody is left behind. This will require an extraordinary effort from all parts of the Government and the education system to address both the immediate and longer term impacts of COVID on education. In recent years, we have made strong gains in supporting pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. We must build on this. We cannot allow the pandemic to narrow young people's aspirations.

As a Minister who will be working with the profession, every policy and decision I take will be done through the lens of whether it supports our most disadvantaged learners. Our aim is to ensure that learners progress to their full potential, no matter where they are right now. And this is not about telling learners that they are 'behind' or about packing in hours working on worksheets and tests. We cannot base our recovery from the pandemic on a deficit model. Instead, we need to reignite a passion for learning and make sure that all learners—in particular learners who have been most adversely impacted—feel supported every step of the way. We will put our learners first by supporting their health and well-being, their levels of motivation and confidence, and making sure that they continue to develop the key skills that enable them to learn. These are the foundations on which our learners will make the progress they need.

The packages of support that we are developing are designed to address the unique challenges faced by different learners. Every learner has had their own COVID experience, and the nature of our support will reflect that. Our support will focus on helping post-16 learners to progress to the next steps on their journey, providing the foundations that enable our most vulnerable and disadvantaged learners to achieve their potential, and supporting crucial development in early years learners.

And those youngest learners will be supported by the additional £13 million that I'm announcing today for schools and non-maintained settings, to help them provide extra teaching capacity to support the unique needs of early years learners. Opportunities for meaningful, quality interactions are essential, and enabling increased practitioner-to-learner ratios will help deliver the supported, active educational play and experiential learning that our youngest learners require. 

There have been particular challenges for our youngest learners who attend Welsh-medium schools where Welsh is not spoken at home. Teachers in Welsh-medium schools have worked extremely hard during the pandemic to support learners' progression in Welsh, and more importantly, their love of learning through the medium of Welsh. We will continue to support those teachers and learners, building on the support of the Recruit, Recover and Raise Standards programme, which has helped to increase capacity and to bring new and innovative approaches to meeting schools' linguistic needs.

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.

Before I call the next speaker, can I remind Members, both old and new, that the purpose of statements is to ask questions and not make long speeches? That's for debates, which will come later on in the Senedd; I'm sure everyone will partake in that. So, whilst there are five minutes allocated to the spokespeople for the main parties, everyone else has one minute. Please do keep to that and ask questions. And to the Ministers, can I remind them to be succinct in their answers as well? 

Thank you for your statement, Minister. Firstly, may I congratulate you on your appointment as education Minister? It's such a vitally important role; you really do have the future of our children in Wales in your hands now. And it's to this end that, as well as to scrutinise you and to hold you to account, we the Welsh Conservatives will look to work with you in any way we can, in a constructive manner, because the importance now on getting education right and the future of our children, after everything they've been through in the pandemic over the last year and a half—it's absolutely vital that we get it right, and it's vital that we work together across the Chamber in order to make this so. 

We need to ensure that our children get the very best start in life, that they get the fair, equal and progressive education system that they deserve, and that they get the support and opportunities to move on into their future lives. I too would like, like you outlined in your statement, to just quickly thank, if I may, Deputy Presiding Officer, all the educational staff that have looked after our children throughout this pandemic with the whole new ways of working, working from home. As a parent of an 11-year-old, I saw first-hand the difficulties in that, in reaching our children, and also delivering that education. So, hats off to them. They did such a fantastic job in such trying circumstances. 

Also, I'd like to just mention the pandemic and the impact that that had. It was massive. It obviously impacted everybody, but our young people gave up so much of their lives, and gave up so much to protect the vulnerable in our society, and they've missed out on some education because of it, but also the social aspect of school, which we now see, as you've outlined in your statement, as vital, and a vitally important part of our children's education system journey. So, I just wanted to ensure that we really do focus on that. 

In regard to the statement, with regard to funding, of course, we welcome your statement, and we welcome more funding coming to the education system. It's vital now that we're not just filling gaps with money, but we really look at how we can support our children long term, and our teachers long term now, and keep that funding going for as long as is necessary to help them get back on their feet—both pupils and teachers. We welcome the funding, but specifically, Minister, can you just outline how that funding is going to be used? Is it going to be used for new teachers, or is it, like in the last round of funding, going to be used for new teaching assistants? Obviously, there's a big difference between the two, and we've seen the number of teachers fall over the last few years. So, it would be good to bolster the number of teachers that we have. I'd appreciate clarity on that. 

Also, when it comes to teacher assessment grades, we need to look at the here and now, and that's what's most pressing in our schools at the moment. We have enormous amounts of pressure being put on our schools and our teachers to get this right, and it's important that we all work together to make sure that the teacher assessment grades are fair and right, but the pressure they're putting on doing the assessments and everything, and everything that goes with it to get to that point now, is massive.

I know you visited a school in my region recently, Monmouth Comprehensive School, and I know that the headteacher there was very concerned about the numbers he's got to deal with—having to deliver 30,000 teacher assessment grades and all that's involved in that. I just wanted to know what sorts of plans you've got in place to support our teachers in that regard. And also, do you think that that pressure, then, if you're looking into trying to deliver this new curriculum, on the timetable that we have—do you think those pressures are steering people off course in the time now that they should be using to prepare for delivering that new curriculum, in the timescales that we have? So I'm just wondering if you could answer a few of those questions.

Also, when it comes to Welsh-medium education, your statement acknowledges there have been particular challenges for the younger learners who attend Welsh-medium schools, where Welsh wasn't spoken at home. This is an issue that's been recently raised by Estyn in recent engagement with our schools, and many schools felt that, overall, there was some regression in our pupils' language skills. So, there is need, Minister, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, for more targeted help for these particular learners. I'd be interested to see what you have to say about that.

And also, when it comes to mental health, mental health has to be a—

Can I remind the Member that she's now had the five minutes? I will emulate my predecessor in making sure that people keep to the time.

Okay. Sorry. I'll just wind up. Obviously, mental health has to be an absolute priority, but in your statement you didn't actually cover the mental health of our teachers and how they're going to be supported. So, I'd appreciate your comments on that. Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Thank you for your words of congratulation, and for the tone in which you made your observations. I certainly will want to work constructively with all of the parties in this Chamber to deliver for our children and young people, right across Wales. I think if we focus on learner well-being and progression, supporting the well-being of the profession, in the way that the Member referenced at the end of her question, we will find plenty of common ground.

At the end of the last Senedd, we undertook an extensive exercise, as the Member will know, in looking at the impact of COVID across all aspects of our society. It was very clear then, as we discussed in this Chamber at the end of the last Senedd, that our children and young people would bear a significant burden of dealing with COVID unless we take particular steps to intervene. That's what motivates the statement that I've made today. I do agree with the Member that a long-term vision and a long-term commitment is absolutely essential. I think that is the motivation behind a number of the interventions that we have made to date, which do focus on the ability of learners to learn, but in a way that supports their broader well-being, gives them the skills that they need, or to relearn the skills that they may have not been able to exercise in the last year, so that their engagement with their learning is what it can be. I think there will need to be a very bespoke approach to learners, because not all learners' experience of the last year has been the same.

In relation to the funding that the Member asked me about, she'll remember the announcement at the end of the last Senedd term of £72 million worth of investment, which was mainly intended to support our three Rs funding, which has a particular focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged learners, and in addition to that, the funding of £33 million to support post-16 teaching in further education colleges and local authority sixth forms. And that, together with the funding today, we will be deploying to support learners in the future, in the period ahead.

With regard to the new funding, it serves two purposes. Firstly, to improve the ratios for early years learners. We know that building relationships, learning through play, is absolutely essential in the early years, and therefore the ratios are very important. So, the funding is designed to improve those ratios, and then also to provide resources so that teachers can support the well-being of learners through learning, and that that best practice is shared amongst our schools. So, it has those twin purposes.

The Member asked some very specific questions about the work in terms of centre-determined grades for the assessments this summer. I do absolutely recognise that teachers are playing an absolutely essential role in delivering that. We learnt that from last summer—how important it is to trust teachers' judgements in delivering the outcomes for our learners. I recognise that that involves them managing competing priorities in their work life. We've sought to support that through providing resources and materials, through providing some extra flexibility, in particular in relation to end-of-stage assessment and moderation in non-qualification years, and provided some additional funding so that schools can build some extra capacity into their provision. 

In relation to the curriculum, I don't want to lose the momentum that exists in the system towards implementing the curriculum. There is a great enthusiasm, I think, and what I think we have learnt from COVID is that learners need to be able to be adaptable and enterprising and respond to a changing world around them—and that crucial focus on learner well-being. Those are exactly the qualities that we need in our school system in order to flourish in the world of the new curriculum. So, I'm keen that we move forward, and that we build on what we've learnt over the course of the last year, and take that forward into the new curriculum. 

Finally, Dirprwy Lywydd, on the question of mental health, I think the question of learner and professional well-being is at the heart of this. The whole-school framework was published at the end of the last Senedd term. We've announced significant funding to take that forward in this Senedd term, and it remains a fundamental commitment on my part to deliver that in our schools. 

Many congratulations to you on your appointment. I look forward to working with you, Jeremy. You will know that I will be scrutinising your work in detail and I'll be challenging you where necessary in order to improve the experiences of children and young people in Wales and those who support them. I very much hope that you will be willing to meet regularly. Doing so with your predecessor was very valuable indeed. 

Thank you very much for your statement this afternoon. There is a great deal of work to be done in dealing with the impacts of the pandemic, as you have already said, but, unfortunately, COVID has not gone away, and there is a risk of a third wave, and that is becoming increasingly likely. That, of course, could lead to further disruption in education. Unfortunately, there are gaps in the data and information available in terms of the India variant in schools. We've heard that teaching unions in England are very concerned about the lack of transparency from the UK Government in terms of the impact and spread of that variant in school settings. If we are to see the variant starting to spread in Wales, then we need to understand it, before it becomes a problem and has an impact on education. So, my first question this afternoon is: has the Welsh Government seen data on the spread of the India variant and the impact, or likely impact, of that on schools in Wales? 

Schools have had to close their doors in certain areas of England recently, and this has also started to happen in Wales too, unfortunately. On Monday, we saw 335 pupils in West Park school in Porthcawl having to self-isolate, and there is a very real risk that we will see disruption similar to what we saw in previous lockdowns. So, I would like to know what the Welsh Government's plans are to mitigate the impacts of self-isolation and losses in terms of learning on the progression and well-being of pupils in Wales. We, of course, hope it doesn't happen, but we must have assurances that you have plans in place related to connectivity and dealing with issues around the equipment and space necessary for teaching and learning. And I do hope that there will be an opportunity for you this afternoon to outline exactly what that plan entails.

In your statement you set out a vision of supporting children and young people from deprived backgrounds, and I agree entirely with you on that. Child poverty continues to restrict the progress and well-being of our learners and is damaging to all aspects of child development here in Wales. It's perhaps greater than any other factor in that regard. 

I am going to turn now to the benefits of free school meals for all. We know that a nutritious school meal provided regularly can improve performance within schools and can also lead to improvements in child health more generally, but we also know that half of the children living in poverty in Wales are missing out on free school meals—over 70,000 children. The pandemic, of course, has exacerbated that poverty, including child poverty, and is therefore having an even greater impact on the education and well-being of our young people. So, my final question this afternoon is: will you do the just thing, namely expand the qualification for free school meals to children from families in receipt of universal credit? When will you outline your timetable for delivering that? Thank you.

Thank you very much to Siân Gwenllian for her questions and thank you for the offer to collaborate. I am certainly eager myself to collaborate and I intend to send out an invitation to party spokespeople on education and the Welsh language to meet regularly so that we can develop a pattern of open communication about the challenges that we all certainly want to work on in order to solve them.

In terms of the future pattern of the spread of the variant and the pandemic more generally, of course, none of us can forecast for sure what lies ahead in the coming months. What we can do here in Wales is look at the current pattern of the spread of the variant in England and learn lessons from what we observe there and the data that emanate from the transmission there. Therefore, we have an opportunity to learn from their experiences, because they see the spread occurring there before it happens here in Wales, and, of course, the impact of that on how the schools operate is vitally important. Of course, the Member will know that the advice that we receive from the incident management teams is that social spreading is behind the examples of transmission and the impact on the classroom and that is the pattern that we continue to see. But, of course, we will have contingency plans. I have already talked to some of the teaching unions about providing some sort of picture of what schools will look like in the autumn, but I think there is a clear understanding that it is difficult to forecast these patterns. But the assurance that I give is to work with the profession and with the local authorities to look transparently at the challenges ahead of us so that we have back-up plans in place that are appropriate for all eventualities. We would certainly want to provide support, as Siân Gwenllian said, to pupils who have to self-isolate—online provision, digital provision and more widespread provision.

In terms of school meals, I am already looking with officials at the options that we can consider. This year, around £23 million has been allocated for free school meals and the school holiday enrichment programme over the summer will be the most wide-ranging that we have ever run. But I accept that there is a commitment in our manifesto to look at the qualifications for free school meals and we will certainly be pursuing that.

Education Cabinet Minister—can I also begin by congratulating you on your appointment as Minister for Education and Welsh Language? I know that the children of Islwyn and Wales will have no greater champion and I thank you for your informative statement today. 

Islwyn schools, children, staff, families and governors have done all they can and more to maintain learning and resilience during this unprecedented pandemic. And today's announcement that an extra £13 million will be provided to support the unique needs of early years learners, plus an additional £6.25 million to help schools build resilience through COVID is very warmly welcomed.

Minister, will you join me in celebrating the mammoth efforts of schools across Islwyn, and in particular Trinant Primary School and their headteacher, Mrs Sian James, for their hugely innovative work as part of the FareShare Cymru community? And will you, as education Minister firstly, accept an invitation to visit Islwyn—early in your term of office—to visit Trinant Primary School and see for yourself that excellent work that they are doing to ensure that every child progresses to reach that full potential? And also, will you join with me in welcoming the ministerial portfolios of well-being and the arts and joined-up working in promoting pupil potential and well-being and, obviously, in particular now, as the Welsh Government look to roll out the music Wales manifesto pledge, fulfilling young people's potential and equality of educational access and predicated on an ability to play and not pay?

I thank Rhianon Passmore for that and for her continuing championing of the needs and interests of young people right across Wales, as well as her own constituency of Islwyn. I join with her in congratulating the educational workforce in the school that she mentioned and across Islwyn, indeed, across Wales, for the extraordinary efforts that they have shown over the course of the last 12 to 15 months, which have been, obviously, exceptionally challenging. But I think that teachers and the education workforce more broadly have shown great innovation, great compassion and great creativity in making sure that learners' experience is the best it can be in those extraordinarily challenging circumstances, and I shall be very grateful to accept an invitation if I receive one to visit the school.

She ended by talking about the area that I know has been incredibly close to her heart and that she's worked very hard to ensure we can all make progress on, and that's in relation to music provision in school. She and I have spoken a bit about this many times since we've both benefited from that, very much so, in our time at school. She will know the commitment that we have to introduce a national music service. It will be the privilege of my colleague Dawn Bowden to take that forward, but I look forward very much to working with her. I believe that the Member is meeting with her very shortly, and I shall be meeting with my colleague very shortly after that to support her and her work in taking that forward.

Minister, one of the important factors in helping young children to recover from the pandemic is the learning environment. It's also very important, of course, for their well-being and the well-being of staff. But concerns have been raised by many young people and their parents with me regarding the ongoing requirement to wear face masks and face coverings in secondary schools in Wales. Given that there has been a significant change across the border in England and that that requirement no longer is there, what consideration has the Welsh Government given to looking at this particular requirement again, especially given that concerns have been raised by the children's commissioner about the impact that face coverings can have on young people's well-being in terms of the discomfort that people can experience, the skin rashes and conditions that people are having, and the fact that, of course, those who wear spectacles can often have difficulty seeing through those spectacles because of the steam that can be created? I think it is something that does need to be looked at.

I thank Darren Millar for that important question. The point in his question that I think struck me as essential is to listen to the voices of children and young people who are affected by this, and I met with the children's commissioner recently, and, obviously, this was one of the issues that we discussed. A recent focus group of learners held on our behalf by Children in Wales gave their views about wearing face masks or face coverings, which were mixed views, I think, and some of it reflects what the Member describes, some of it reflected concerns about wanting to continue wearing them. So, I think it's a mixed picture.

In terms of the comparison with England, as the Member will know, we look at these questions in the three-weekly cycle that we have set. The Government needs to look at all interventions on that basis; that's what the law tells us to do, and that is what we do. Whilst we know that the numbers of transmission in Wales are better than they have been for a long time and are in a good place, we also know about the impact of the variant of concern that we've been talking about earlier in this session. And so, we have to look at the picture, I think, in the round. But the assurance that I can give to the Member is that we do look at it in the round, we are conscious of the adverse impacts that this has as well as the precautionary impact that it has, and that we will work with the technical advisory group and their expertise, the public health advice that we get, to make sure that the judgments we make in this area are robust and, we think, reflect the risk analysis as it is. As I say, it's something we keep entirely under review, and we will work with the profession, local authorities and listen to the voices of young people in making those decisions.

Vikki Howells.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Congratulations to you on your appointment, and congratulations to you, Cabinet Secretary for education, as well. Thank you for your statement today, the content and tone of which, I am sure, will be welcomed by teachers, students and parents across Wales. And as a former teacher, I know only too well the burden that bureaucracy places upon our teaching staff, and how that burden detracts from the time our teachers are able to spend on preparing and delivering high-quality lessons, as well as impacting on time spent offering crucial pastoral care and support to their students, too. So, on behalf of teachers everywhere, can I thank you, Minister, for acknowledging the issue of bureaucracy in your very first statement as education Minister and for committing to tackling unnecessary bureaucracy within the profession, too? I'm absolutely convinced that doing so is key to raising not just morale among the profession, but also raising standards across the board by freeing teachers up to teach. Therefore, can I ask, Minister, what conversations you have had, or are planning to have, with the teaching unions regarding how best to identify and strip away these layers of bureaucracy, and what examples of best practice you may be looking at from other countries around the world regarding how this can be done?

Linked to this, you rightly point out that our education system has shown remarkable resilience and flexibility over the course of the pandemic and that we must learn from this. Minister, how do you intend to draw together the best practices demonstrated over the past year, roll them out across Wales and, crucially, embed them into established teaching and learning practices?

Finally, Minister, I am pleased to see that—

The Member has had three questions and we've gone past the time, so I think that we will ask the questions. 

Diolch.

I thank Vikki Howells for the questions that she has asked. I think it is important to recognise that we need to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the question of the bureaucracy or some of the burdens in terms of administration that we place on the profession and to look at that creatively and see what we can lift in terms of that unnecessary bureaucracy, if you like. There is a managing workload and reducing bureaucracy group, which has been established within the Welsh Government to look at the issues, both as a result of the pandemic but also in the longer term in the way that her question was anticipating. I think it is important that we make sure that we listen to our professionals, and the group itself includes members from teachers' trade unions, local authorities and practitioners, and it is their work that will help inform our ambition in this space.

The other point I just want to make is that I think it's incredibly important for us to look at best practice wherever we can find it, whether it's in other parts of the UK or further afield, and it's certainly one of my ambitions that we continue to do that as we take this work forward. 

And finally, Sam Rowlands. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and congratulations to you, Minister, on your appointment, and thank you for your statement this afternoon. I'd like to first of all just join with you in thanking our hard-working professionals and also our learners for all their efforts in these last 14, 15 months or so, through very difficult circumstances. Your statement is specifically about the well-being of and the support for learners and their progression as well, and clearly a significant part of that progression over the next five years of this Senedd term is the implementation of the new curriculum. I've been contacted by a number of people who have concerns around the funding to deliver that new curriculum that is around the corner. So, the question is: what further funding will you make available to schools and to educationalists to ensure that the new curriculum is delivered in the best possible way?

Thank you to the Member for his question. Well, we will make sure that our schools are funded in order to be able to continue the good work that they are doing now and to be able to introduce the curriculum in a way that benefits learners right across Wales. As I mentioned in my reply to the earlier question, I think we've learnt over the last year how important it is that we make sure that our learners' well-being is at the heart of everything that we do and also that our learners are equipped to be adaptable and responsive to changes in the world around them. So, we will want to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure that the introduction of the curriculum happens smoothly and effectively and to the benefit of our learners right across Wales. 

The Llywydd took the Chair.