Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Education and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 2:23 pm on 30 March 2022.
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.