7. What steps will the Welsh Government take to increase the emphasis on sport and physical education in the curriculum? OQ56790

The new Curriculum for Wales includes health and well-being as one of the six areas of learning and experience. This is fundamental to enable successful learning, and developing physical health is specified within the statutory 'what matters' code.

Thank you, Minister, for your answer. I raised yesterday in the business statement that we're seeing a rise in young people accessing mental health support across Wales. As you and I know, sport plays a very key role in helping young people's physical and mental health. It installs discipline, teaches teamwork and helps people to live active and healthy lives. So, Minister, will you look, in the future, at making more funding available for sport in schools and prioritise efforts to focus on allowing sport to play a bigger role in the curriculum, and work with external organisations so that they can come in to get more sport in schools?

Well, I thank the Member for that question. Physical education, of course, is one of our foundation subjects in the current curriculum, but obviously I appreciate that the pandemic has had an impact on learners' access to aspects of that for various periods of time. The new curriculum, as his question implies, will offer much greater flexibility, in fact, in the area of learning and experience that I mentioned in my first answer. The point of that is to help learners to understand the factors that affect their physical health and well-being, and that includes mental well-being as well. 

The reforms gives us a bit more flexibility, really, to look at how we provide sporting opportunities in a school setting, including an enhanced school day and opening up school facilities for community use for that purpose. I mentioned in reply to an earlier question the work we're doing in relation to active education pilots, which the Member might find interesting, which involves working with Sport Wales as well as the Arts Council of Wales to provide a range of sporting and cultural activity to supplement the school day in the way that I think he would wish to see.

Finally, question 8, Tom Giffard.