Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 24 May 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:58, 24 May 2022

Llywydd, I absolutely understand when teachers say that they may lack confidence to know how to respond in what are complex territories, and where you may be anxious that you would inadvertently say the wrong thing and make the wrong response, and that you need to be better informed and trained in order to make sure that you can do that. It is absolutely part of our intention as a Government to make sure that all front-line staff, not just in teaching but elsewhere, can have that, so that the confidence issue can be addressed.

I respond less sympathetically to the issue of time. Dealing with racist behaviour or bullying behaviour is not something that you do additionally on top of your ordinary job, and that you need another hour at the end of the day to do it; it's part of what a teacher does all the time in every classroom every day in Wales. It has to be just part of the way in which we would expect anybody confronted with something that is clearly not acceptable and should not be happening—they have to be in a position that they respond to it as they see it in front of them. That's the sort of climate that we want to create in our classrooms in Wales, where everybody is able to have that safe and supported environment, where all our young people feel confident to be there, where teachers are prepared to intervene where they need to, in order to put things right when they see things going wrong. That should be just woven through the whole of the school day from start to finish, and I don't think it's reducible to an argument about not having enough time to do it.