2. How is the Welsh Government supporting A-level students this year given the impact of the pandemic on their education? OQ57864

The WJEC have announced adaptations to exams, with reductions to content and advance information to help learners prepare. We've provided £24 million of exam-year funding to provide attendance, teaching, revision and transition support to enable A-level students to progress. A communications campaign signposting learners to useful revision and well-being resources has begun.

Thank you, Minister, for your answer. I recently met with A-level students at Llanidloes High School in my own constituency following one particular student contacting me. I met up with a number of students. They outlined their concerns to me. I followed up with mentioning much of what you've just said now, Minister—I talked about the support package you announced before Christmas. But one particular student came back to me, and I'll relay what he said. I'm hoping you can help answer him directly. What this particular student says is 'educational support should be equally available and accessible to all students, regardless of who the Government deems more disadvantaged.' I think he's making that point because you're very much targeting disadvantaged pupils. Well, they want to know who is disadvantaged and how you define that.

The student goes on to say, 'How are the Welsh Government engaging with the ways factors, such as attendance, affect pupils negatively?' And he goes on to talk about there could be 100 per cent attendance from pupils themselves, but it could be that teachers are not in due to the pandemic, and how does that affect their educational learning as well. He also talks about how 'the content changing or being cut does not provide many marks, based on our knowledge of past papers.' And these are factors that the Welsh Government don't seem to be taking into consideration when offering support. So, I'm hoping, Minister, that you can help directly reply to this particular student that has these particular concerns and the particular points that they've mentioned to me.

Yes, of course I can. The support that is available is available to students in all parts of Wales, and is available equally. And I would ask your student to look at the Power Up website, which the Welsh Government launched some weeks ago, which has a suite of resources to support learners with their examinations as well as a comprehensive indication of what the changes are to course content, what the advance notice is of each of the areas of examination, and the suite of resources available to support them with well-being and mental health issues, and that is available to every single learner in Wales.

The grade boundaries for examinations this summer, as the Member knows, will be at a point between 2019 and 2021, and that will apply to all students equally. The £7.5 million of funding allocated to support learners to develop their core skills in qualifications such as maths and English are available to all students. In particular—as his constituent mentioned the concern in relation to those who've lost out in terms of school attendance—£7 million of the funding I announced before Christmas will be to support those whose attendance has been particularly low, and a further £9.5 million will be to support all students transitioning from school to further education or sixth-form colleges. So, that suite of support is available to all students in Wales. There is additional support available to students who have particular needs, but that builds very much on the approach that this Government has taken throughout, which is providing a universal level of support, but targeting additional support at those who need it most.

My question was going to be very similar to Russell George's, so I'll adjust it slightly to say that I've had the same kind of representations. One constituent particularly has asked for exams not to take place this year. Now, that's not a view that I actually support, because I think if we're going to move away from exams it needs to be done in a strategic and planned way. But certainly it represents the anxiety that that parent is feeling for their children, and how their children are feeling. So, you've outlined some of the additional support. In future, would you be considering looking at exams as an approach to assessment, and maybe, in those subjects that don't lend themselves to exams, moving to a more balanced form of assessment that might take some of the stress out of that time of the year for students?

Well, on the point in relation to exams, I do understand, obviously, that there'll be students this year sitting external exams for the first time, and some of the support that I've outlined in my answer to Russell George is intended specifically to support those students. The challenge that we have been wrestling with throughout, really, is the loss of teaching time. That's the fundamental question that learners are themselves struggling with, and the judgment to pursue exams this year was partly reflecting the position across the UK, and I didn't want learners in Wales to be disadvantaged by that, but, equally, the experience of centre-determined grades for last year meant even less teaching time was available, because teachers' time was taken up in actually making the assessment. So, that's part of the thinking behind the decision to pursue exams for this summer.

The longer term question is an important question. I do think that, in the last two years, we've understood that different means of assessment have a different contribution to make. As he will know, Qualifications Wales are undertaking a review at the moment of examinations generally at GCSE. Some of that is around course content, but actually there's a very important discussion to be had about the balance between examination and non-examination, and also the points in the year at which assessments take place, and I hope that that process, that review process, which is open for everyone to contribute to, will lead to ambitious reform in that space.