7. Will the Minister provide an update on education catch-up post pandemic? OQ56966

The well-being and progression of our learners is my top priority. The renew and reform plan sets out how we will support those learners most affected by the pandemic. We've allocated over £160 million to this support this financial year—more spend per learner than anywhere in the UK. 

Thank you for that answer, Minister. I'm obviously very pleased that the Welsh Government does have a plan, but it's very important that we, as Members of the Senedd, should be able to monitor the implementation of that plan and monitor progress against it. Can I ask, will you be publishing key milestones and making regular reports available to Members of the Senedd to ensure that we can have a handle on getting to grips with the catch-up programme that needs to take place for those young people, for those children, across Wales who lost out so dearly on their education during the pandemic?

Could I encourage the Member, perhaps to reflect on the terminology 'catch-up'? I'm not sure that's the best way of motivating our learners in the context of the year/18 months that most of them have had. I know that other parts of the UK have chosen that, but I think providing our learners with a more supportive way of describing the way we're trying to help them is probably ultimately going to be more effective.

On the specific point that he makes, though, about progress against the renew and reform plan, I'll refer him, I think, to the update that I published in September around the implementation of renew and reform, which involves the commitment of additional resources in the space of Welsh language immersion, support for newly qualified teachers and support for learning recovery. So, that, I think, gives him the most recent position in terms of how the funding is being deployed in schools. I know that he will welcome the fact that the underpinning principle for this programme is to ensure that schools themselves make the best possible judgments to support the learners. They are best placed to understand the needs of their particular cohorts, and so that's the underpinning principle, if you like, of this funding stream. But I will also be evaluating—in fact, it's already under way—the impact of the scheme, and I'll be happy, of course, to share the output of that with Members in due course.

Minister, I've been contacted by the father of an additional learning needs pupil who's suffered months of lost education and, of course, all-important development during the pandemic, and, unlike with his other children, there's been no opportunity to continue his son's very specialist education at home. The local authority hasn't offered any coaching or training for parents to do this outside of normal working hours. Can I therefore ask what specific education recovery provisions are being made for pupils with additional learning needs, who could only receive limited home learning during lockdown? Also, can the Welsh Government make provision for free LAMP PCR non-intrusive saliva home testing kits and periodic school testing for additional learning needs children who cannot undertake intrusive swab testing? Many additional learning needs pupils are being sent home and having to isolate, missing even more school, as they are unable to use the invasive testing methods in order to return to school safely. Diolch.

I thank the Member for those two important questions. On the second point, I'll write to her specifically about that, if I may. On the first point, the renew and reform programme that I've just identified is specifically weighted to reflect the needs of additional learning needs pupils in schools, so the funding that follows that and the allocation to schools specifically reflect that and should be available to make specific provision for additional learning needs pupils. I recognise the challenges that she describes for the constituent that has written to her. That is one of the reasons why the funding is allocated in exactly that way.