Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 19 October 2021.
I thank the Member for those further points. The experiences that he recounted, I think, are very familiar to anybody who has had conversations with young people about their experience during the pandemic, and the anxieties that it has caused them to experience for their future. Llywydd, you were kind enough to arrange a number of opportunities for me and other Ministers to meet with representatives from the Youth Parliament in recent times, and the mental health and well-being of young people was always one of the foremost issues that they wanted to discuss in those forums. I think that Estyn has adapted its way of working very much to take into account both the practical impact that the pandemic has had on the way that teachers have to go about their work, but also to take into account the impact that these experiences have had upon young people, their ability to learn and the way in which they bring those other aspects of their lives with them into the school and into the classroom. And, in the information that I have had about the changes that Estyn has made to its own ways of working, and the focus of the inspections and other work they do in school, I think, can give us some confidence that the very proper points that the organisation in Flintshire has raised are being taken into account seriously in the work that they do.