Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 1:27 pm on 16 June 2021.
Well, I thank Joyce Watson for her positive review of the publication this morning. As her question implied, one of the key areas of focus for the Government in the 'Renew and reform' proposals, which I've published this morning following my statement in the Chamber before the half term recess, is indeed a focus on disadvantaged and vulnerable learners, because everything we know from the experience of COVID suggests that they have suffered disproportionate impacts from perhaps not being in the customary educational setting.
Amongst the things we'll want to be doing with the funding that I've announced this morning—and I should stress that this has all been done in conjunction, of course, with schools and with education professionals; it's very much a question of co-designing, if you like, the interventions that this funding is intended to support. But whether that's around reviewing the use of the pupil deprivation grant to make sure that's targeted in the way it can be; whether it's the provision of extra coaching support, personalised learning programmes; whether it's supporting practitioners through additional professional learning to understand better how best to support disadvantaged learners to deal with the impact of COVID; whether it's additional funding for the additional learning needs transformation scheme programme that we have. There's a range of specific ways in which this funding will be deployed. And I echo the point that she made: I was very pleased to hear that the EPI acknowledged specifically that the funding we've been investing in Wales has had a beneficial impact. That is designed to have that sort of impact on our disadvantaged learners.