The Learning Environment in Schools

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 5 October 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:12, 5 October 2021

I thank the Member for that very important question. I can't imagine that there is any Member, in the Chamber or online, Llywydd, who have not seen the impact that the twenty-first schools programme has made in the area that they represent. It is an outstanding programme and is making exactly the sort of difference that Buffy Williams referred to in all parts of Wales. RCT has been, as we would expect, a very progressive council in this area, very ambitious for what the programme can do: £173 million spent in RCT alone during band A of the programme; £252 million to be spent during band B, and that includes, as Members will have heard, Ysgol Gyfun Cwm Rhondda. Very good news to know that the council confirmed that and the other school yesterday.

Llywydd, just in the way that Buffy Williams suggested, it isn't just the number of schools that are being improved or built under the scheme—170 in band A, 200 in band B—it's the quality of the buildings and it's those other agendas that those twenty-first century schools and colleges are now able to advance: the active travel agenda, the climate and biodiversity loss agenda, making them genuinely community schools, so that they have that impact on inequality in different parts of Wales. It is a tremendous programme and we are of course fully committed to it during this Senedd term.