Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Laura Anne Jones.

Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, you'll be aware of the awful case that occurred in Solihull in the west midlands, where six-year-old Arthur Hughes lost his life after a cruel and callous series of abuse. Despite concerns being raised, young Arthur's life was cut short, due to significant failings across the board. From an educational perspective, Minister, we are now acutely aware from the experience that we've had during the pandemic that school is for children far more than just education—it provides a very important, wider social role, with a safe place for children, ensuring that they get food and support. It's also somewhere that behaviours and physical abuse can be picked up. And as we've seen from Arthur's harrowing case, if he had been in school, potentially, this abuse could have been picked up sooner.

Parents are understandably concerned, Minister, about this harrowing case, and are looking to you and the Government now for reassurance that the robustness of safeguarding procedures in schools, and the standards for safeguarding for vulnerable children across Wales, are now being met. Minister, we also need to ensure that we have—

Can you ask the question now, please?

—additional training for teachers to identify potential signs of abuse. So, can you reassure us, Minister, today that lessons will be learnt from this case, including the severe impact that lockdowns and no school have on our children, particularly vulnerable children?

Well, can I first associate myself with her comments in relation to the tragic case of Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, which she started her question with, which is, I think, a very, very sad and very sobering lesson for all parts of the UK? All education settings in Wales have a legal duty to ensure that children have access to a safe learning environment, and I expect and understand, of course, across the system, that these responsibilities are taken seriously. The Welsh Government has issued statutory guidance, 'Keeping learners safe', to support schools in creating and maintaining a safe learning environment for children. Each school must identify a designated safeguarding person, who will ensure that staff, learners and parents feel confident that they can raise issues or concerns about the safety or well-being of learners, and that they will be taken seriously. And anyone in an education setting, employed by the local authority, must report to the authority where there is a reasonable cause to believe that a child is at risk of abuse, neglect or any other kind of harm. All authorities in Wales have a designated lead officer for safeguarding in education, and the Hwb hosts a series of e-learning modules, which have been developed by the Welsh Government, to support staff in education settings to understand those safeguarding responsibilities and how best to deploy them.

Thank you, Minister. Minister, the Estyn report released earlier this week is quite damning, I'm sure you'll agree. It was hard enough when we were at school, socially, but now for young people they have far more to cope with, with the added pressures of phones and social media, and it makes me glad not to be in school anymore, but, as a parent, it does worry me daily.

The Estyn report that has just been released is hugely distressing and has highlighted the tragic situation that students find themselves in with a prevalence of peer-on-peer sexual harassment in schools. With it being reported that children as young as 11 are being pressurised for explicit pictures, with the incidence of sexual harassment in schools going up, and the increase in the number of people not reporting it going up, serious questions have to be asked, Minister, and of this Government's abject failure to tackle this. These findings are nothing new, but they are getting worse. So, why don't young people feel that they can report it? We need proactive measures in place, Minister, across all schools in Wales to ensure that instances such as these are dealt with with respect, and that our young people can feel that they've been listened to, as well as to drive out these behaviours in schools through our new curriculum in the future. What urgent action are you taking now, Minister, to address this, so that young people who experience abuse of this kind right now are getting the help that they need?

I agree with the Member about how serious the matter is, and I agree with her that the Estyn report makes very distressing reading indeed, and I want to thank all children and young people who took part in that report. It will not have been an easy thing for them to do, but their doing so is brave, and they've, in those honest conversations, enabled us to understand better the situation in many of our schools. The report makes a number of recommendations of which three fall to the Welsh Government, and we will be accepting each of the recommendations. I was pleased to have commissioned this report, because I recognised that we needed to understand better the situation on the ground. I wouldn't agree with her characterisation of the Government's position; I think the Government has acted throughout expeditiously and in a very full way. And she will recall the discussion we had at the point when I commissioned the report, which listed the work already under way at that point, both in working with our schools, working with our local education authorities, and providing additional resources to support our schools. 

One of the key findings in the Estyn report in relation to the Welsh Government's responsibilities relates to the new relationships and sexuality education code, and encourages the Government to take full account of the Estyn report in designing and devising that code, which I can confirm that we have. The Chamber will have an opportunity to consider this, of course, next week. But one of the points I want to make absolutely clear is that we can't, as it were, simply rely on the new curriculum, which will be rolled out over many years, to be the solution here. I want to make sure that the thinking and the learning and the resources, which are available as part of the RSE code in the new curriculum, also help us in the existing curriculum, as that will be with us for some time. So, there is already work under way in that space. 

Finally, in relation to the recommendation around capturing data about bullying and harassment in schools, we're already looking at what we can do to amend our anti-bullying and harassment guidelines to take account of what Estyn recommends today. 

Thank you, Minister. Questions have already been asked on this today, but I would like to press you further, if I may, on whether schools are going to close early for the Christmas break. Some schools are preparing by having their Christmas activities this week rather than next week; some schools have said they're going to close; some schools have said they're definitely not going to close. It's different all over Wales. Surely there needs to be an all-Wales approach to this, Minister? And we need some sort of clarity today, because parents need to prepare childcare, teachers need to prepare lessons. It's absolutely urgent that you give a line on this as soon as possible on what is happening. I understand that these are fine margins, and it's a difficult decision to make, but this has to come to a head now, Minister. We need to know today or by Friday what's happening so that people can prepare. Please, can you outline what you're doing today?

Well, I don't think that the Member asserting a lack of clarity when I've spelled out the position a few moments ago is especially helpful, if I can put it like that. As I've said—[Interruption.] As I've said, as a consequence of the variant, we are all looking across Government at what actions need to be taken on a daily basis. I know that she shares with me the importance of making sure that children can remain in school as far as possible, as long as possible and as safely as possible. I know that she shares that view. The consequence of that is that right across the 10 authorities that will be going beyond the end of next week, that is time that has been planned in for teaching to take account of the lost teaching time so far. So, those authorities, authorities right across Wales, and the Welsh Government, share that ambition of making sure that young people can remain in class doing that. And that is the basis upon which we are planning now. 

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Cefin Campbell. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Yesterday, I met with the committee of Cardiff University Welsh Students' Union, which have been campaigning for many years to have a full-time sabbatical Welsh language officer within the union. Swansea, Bangor and Aberystwyth universities have had similar positions in place for many years, but here in Cardiff, where there are over 3,000 Welsh speakers and Welsh learners—the highest number of Welsh speakers in any of our universities—there is no sabbatical position. According to the president of the Welsh student union, such an officer could provide important services to students through the medium of Welsh, arrange events to raise awareness of the language, ensure that the voice of Welsh speakers could be heard within the union, and also provide a space for young people to come together to use the language on a social level. It also ensures that democracy is respected because the students had voted more than once in the past in favour of having this kind of sabbatical officer. So, does the Minister agree with me that it is about time that Welsh students were given fair play here in the university of our capital city, and would he be willing to write to the board of trustees, who will meet next Thursday apparently, in order to support the Welsh students' campaign?

I thank the Member for that important question. In a university that has the highest number of Welsh speakers of all the Welsh universities, it is appropriate that students have employed representation in the union, and that would correspond to the representation that we see in other universities in Wales, as the Member mentioned in his contribution. This is a matter for the union's board of trustees. However, if the motion to establish a full-time post for the Welsh language is passed unanimously, as I understand it has been, it would be reasonable to expect that that decision is realised. 

Thank you very much. With the new curriculum in the pipeline, and the target to reach a million Welsh speakers by 2050 and the Welsh education Bill on the horizon, it's clear that there are major changes afoot in the education sector in terms of Welsh-medium provision. As we've already heard you mention in the Chamber, Minister, children have lost out on a great deal of their education during the pandemic, and parents have had to play a more central role in their education as a result of that. In order to promote the use of the Welsh language during the pandemic, which, unfortunately, is ongoing, and through then until 2050, we will need to ensure that parents have the right skills to ensure that children are able to make the best use of the Welsh language at home. So, I would like to ask you what specific support will be provided to parents to enable them to play their part in supporting Welsh-medium education and in promoting the use of the Welsh language at home?

This is a very important question, and, in a variety of ways, the Government is already providing support. One of the priorities that we have is ensuring that Welsh language transmission happens at home. And that is more of a challenge than we'd hoped and expected. So, specific support is available in that context. Also, as you know, in terms of the early years, we have a variety of schemes supporting parents to speak Welsh with their children and, when we have non-Welsh speaking parents, to ensure that they have access and opportunities to be involved and have experience of cylchoedd meithrin and so forth through the medium of Welsh. So, a variety of things are already in the pipeline. 

But what we've also seen is access across Wales to online courses from the National Centre for Learning Welsh. Those figures have increased significantly, and the provision has been broadened as well in the wake of that. So, as the question suggests, we have lessons that we can learn for the future in terms of what we've seen over the last year to 18 months, to see how we can expand the provision further. 

Thank you very much. Over the summer, the culture committee, which is responsible for the Welsh language, among other things, consulted on what its priorities should be for the sixth Senedd. One of those priorities was to recognise that schoolchildren during the pandemic had faced extended periods away from school, as I mentioned in my previous question, and, as a result of that, their education has suffered. Because of the problem in terms of the Welsh language specifically, there was little interaction between children and their parents in terms of the use of the Welsh language, particularly those children from non-Welsh-speaking households. So, following calls for further investment in the late immersion provision in Welsh, there was an announcement made by the Government on a proposal of £2.2 million to expand that provision and that was warmly welcomed, certainly by us here in Plaid Cymru. So, I would like to ask the Minister how this funding has been used, and what impact it has had on education recovery, particularly Welsh-medium education. Also, in looking to the future, what further plans does the Minister have to support the Welsh language through education recovery programmes?

In terms of investing to support those who had missed opportunities to use the Welsh language, perhaps where Welsh is not used in the home, an element of the recovery funding announced for next year has been prioritised for learners and Welsh speakers in order to ensure that further support is available to them to start speaking Welsh again. So, that funding stream is already in place to ensure further support for pupils.

In terms of the immersion funding, we had bids from all parts of Wales for that funding, and it's being used in new areas to expand and create provision that hasn't existed previously, or hasn't been there for many years. In other parts of Wales, it is being used to extend what is already provided, and in authorities where they haven't quite reached the point on their linguistic journey where providing immersion works for them, they intend to use that funding to develop skills and expertise to move further along that journey. I'm very passionate about what we can do to ensure access for all children across Wales who require it, and I hope to be able to persuade the finance Minister as regards ensuring that the investment can continue in the years to come.