I hope you don't mind if I start my contribution by thanking Members from across the Siambr for their kind words and well wishes during my recent stay in hospital. It meant a lot to me, and it's very good to be back today.

It's also good to be back participating in a Welsh Conservative debate today on the impact of COVID on education. Parents, pupils and, in particular, teaching staff have really risen to the challenge of working differently and competing with ever-changing rules and regulations to meet that difficult balance between providing an excellent education and keeping themselves and others safe. And so have communities. And I wanted to take the opportunity to praise the work of local volunteers and community groups in helping out at short notice when the pandemic first hit to make the reality of virtual learning happen. A key example would be the Porthcawl COVID-19 action group in my region who sourced and donated computers and laptops to school-aged pupils who would perhaps have otherwise been unable to access online classes. So, a big thank you to them and to the other groups that I know across Wales who helped ensure that young people got an education, despite the restrictions that were brought about by the pandemic.

But I wanted to focus my remarks today on the impact of school closures. Because we all know the value of a single school day. The lessons learnt, whether they're on the curriculum or not, are invaluable and incomparable, and last year in Wales, pupils lost, as Laura Anne Jones said, 66 of those days due to COVID-19 measures in place in Wales, which is more time in the classroom lost than in any other part of the UK. And as we mentioned in our motion, Estyn have made clear that that meant that learners' maths, reading, Welsh language and social skills have all suffered as a result of school closures. But the truth is we just don't know yet how significant the impact will be in the long term. Because even despite the fantastic efforts of parents, teachers and pupils, learning virtually just isn't the same as being in a classroom.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predicted that current learners are likely to earn less, and estimated that this difference could be up to £40,000. This lost learning across the 66 days has resulted in long-term prospects of children being affected significantly. They've also predicted that the financial cost of students in Wales sufficiently catching up with the schooling they've missed would be around £1.4 billion, but even then, that would likely result in students being overburdened with work and necessary pressure to catch up on the skills and work that they had not the chance to learn in the first instance.

Now, frankly, you can't put a price on the influence of a good teacher in the classroom and the ways in which they can not only educate, but shape a life and a future in a way that just isn't possible over Zoom. And while most parents have stepped up to the plate in helping their children as best as they can to make sure they're not losing out by not being in school, the reality is that these are the same people that are very often dealing with a number of other changes and challenges in their professional life and their societal and family commitments as a result of the wider impacts of COVID. Even though many parents and carers did manage to juggle working from home with childcare and education that would have otherwise been provided by schools prior to the pandemic, not all young learners were that lucky. And these were often the same learners who perhaps would benefit most from a regular school day and the influence of a good teacher. 

But it isn't just learning the societal skills that we have. The schools are often the only places where young people engage in sport and exercise. We've discussed a number of times in the Siambr the benefits of sport and exercise, both for physical and mental health, but also developmentally and the importance of things like team work and bonding. These are just some of the reasons why it's so important going forward. We need to ensure that we don't ever end up in a situation where schools are again forced to close because of COVID. Advances in treatments and the phenomenal UK-wide vaccine roll-out have mitigated the impact of COVID, and many teaching staff now just want to teach pupils in their classroom, because they too realise the impact that school closures have had.

But also for our current generation, for the pupils that have already been affected, we simply can't afford a generation of COVID children whose education has been significantly impacted by the pressures of coronavirus. That's why we need a plan from the Welsh Government to take action to overcome the impact the pandemic has already had on Welsh learners, and that's why I'm asking Members from across the Chamber to back our motion today.