2. Will the Minister make a statement on safety in and around school premises? OQ57506

All education settings in Wales have a legal duty to ensure that children have access to a safe learning environment. Safeguarding of learners is of paramount importance, and our statutory guidance, 'Keeping learners safe', sets out actions and expectations placed on schools to ensure the safety of children.

Thank you very much for that response, Minister. It's precisely what I would have expected you to say. One thing I am concerned about is the focus that we seem to have in Wales on protecting younger children going in and out of the school premises in terms of safer routes to school and the active travel routes that are being developed. I've seen significant investment in those in recent years in my own constituency, and they've been very successful, including here in the town of Abergele. However, there's not been the same sort of focus on safety around secondary schools, and I wonder to what extent the Minister has considered trying to bring forward schemes that promote safety in terms of particularly younger pupils getting in and out of secondary schools. So, for example, if I can refer to the situation in Abergele, there have been some significant improvements and investments in active travel routes and safer community routes to get children to and from three schools that share the same site. But just across the road, there's a secondary school that has lots of traffic going in and out around school drop-off and pick-up times, and there's not been any attention paid to improving that situation. Can you tell us what work you might be able to do with Cabinet colleagues to look at bringing forward schemes that address these concerns? Thank you.

Darren Millar makes a very important point about this, and it's a topic that I've discussed with the Deputy Minister for Climate Change in this context as well. It is absolutely essential that we make active travel to and from schools as convenient and as safe as possible for as many learners as possible, for reasons that I know he will share. The Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 obviously provides for the underpinning requirements in relation to this, and the design guidance sets out standards that routes are expected to meet. Of course, as part of that, the availability of safe drop-off and pick-up points, for example, as well as other arrangements, are integral to that. But I will discuss further with the Deputy Minister what more perhaps we could do in this area. I'm happy to update the Member in due course.

Minister, last week, my team arranged a very interesting meeting between the residents of Gwaelod-y-garth in north-west Cardiff and Rod King—I'm sure you're familiar with him—an expert on road safety and the founder of 20's Plenty for Us. Now, Mr King was full of praise for the road-safety policies of the Welsh Government, but one point he made was that drivers needed to be more aware of when they are driving into a community that they see an area as a community with people not just homes and buildings. Now, outside the school in Gwaelod-y-Garth, there is a 20 mph zone. Now, the major concern of residents of Gwaelod-y-Garth is that the rest of the village is not a 20 mph zone and that vehicles tend to speed up in those areas. So, what discussions are you having with your colleagues, and, perhaps, the Deputy Minister, who is still on our screens, and Cardiff Council, in order to ensure that a 20 mph zone is introduced for the whole of the village, so that children walking and cycling back and forth to school can do so safely? Thank you.

I thank Rhys ab Owen for that. I myself haven't had any discussions on the specific circumstances he described. As he said, the Deputy Minister for Climate Change is listening to this discussion, and I can have further discussions with him on this. But this is exactly why the plans that the Welsh Government has to provide speed restrictions is so very important, so that we do safeguard as many of our communities as possible, where the schools are protected. But as he said, that needs to be done more broadly too.