Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 19 October 2021.
I thank Peter Fox for that, Llywydd, and I agree with him about the contribution that teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants make in the classroom, and the burden that responding to the pandemic has placed on them, alongside all the other people who work in our education service. Now, the Welsh Government provides funding to a UK charity. It's called Education Support, and it is an organisation dedicated to supporting the mental health and well-being of people in the classroom. And we have always been very clear from the Welsh Government that, by that, we mean all classroom staff and, indeed, all school staff here in Wales.
The programmes of help offered by Education Support have had a new element of flexibility built into them in order to respond to the pandemic, and we are very keen indeed to make sure that that package of support is well advertised to staff here in Wales so that they are able to take advantage of it. Within that package of support, there is some additional and bespoke material that is particularly designed to reflect the experiences of teaching assistants. So, I agree very much with what Peter Fox said, that there is more that can be done locally and nationally to advertise the help that is available, to make sure that people know that it is there, to know that thought has been given to making sure that it is relevant to them and useable to them, and then to make sure that, as that resource is further developed, we take into account the experiences that people will report and have gone through in recent times.