Item 6 on the agenda is a statement by the Minister for Education and Welsh Language—Curriculum for Wales roll-out. I call on the Minister to make a statement. Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. After several years in the making, we're on the verge of a momentous change to education as pupils begin to learn under our new Curriculum for Wales. Made with the profession in Wales for Wales, the new curriculum will begin to be taught from next term. All primary schools and almost half of our secondary schools will introduce the Curriculum for Wales in September, which means that 95 per cent of our schools overall will be taking the next step on the curriculum journey. The remaining schools will join the journey in September next year, and many are trialling the new curriculum approaches in the meantime. By September next year, all learners in year 8 and below will be taught under the Curriculum for Wales.

It has been a demanding year, Dirprwy Lywydd. I remain deeply grateful to our schools, settings and teaching staff for their dedication and relentless focus on improving the outcomes for their learners. Nowhere is this more evident than in looking at the Curriculum for Wales. While the pandemic has affected preparations, there remains a strong commitment to reform throughout the sector, as well as a desire to maintain momentum. There is every reason to be positive about the progress made to date, while recognising at the same time that there is more to do over the coming period.

The Curriculum for Wales specifically challenges the curriculum of every school and setting to raise the aspirations for all learners. Schools and settings are working carefully to ensure that their principles for curriculum and assessment design are meeting the needs of all learners within their setting. Our focus has been and always will be to raise the attainment of every learner, especially our most disadvantaged learners, to ensure they can reach their potential, and that will be the focus of the future as well.

Last week, I published the first annual report on the Curriculum for Wales, to provide Members with an update, setting out the overall picture of the current position of roll-out of reform, the Welsh Government's efforts to support roll-out, and looking forward to the next steps for reform. The report makes important findings about where we are currently, including that funded non-maintained nursery settings are progressing well and have made particularly good progress since the turn of the year. Over more recent months, schools are making faster progress towards designing their curriculum, nearly all schools and settings are identifying their own unique factors and how these contribute to the four purposes and developing understanding of curriculum design considerations, including mandatory elements and school linguistic policy in relation to the Welsh language. Most schools and settings are considering the role of progression, assessment and pedagogy in their local curriculum and context, and designing, planning and trialling their proposed curriculum model, evaluating initial designs and developing medium-term plans. Encouragingly, more schools are happy to discuss trialling approaches and then refine them if they do not work, and almost half of secondary schools, as I said, as well as a number of special schools and pupil referral units, are adopting the Curriculum for Wales for their year 7 learners in September—a year earlier than required. The report also outlines our steps as a Government to help prepare schools for roll-out, to consolidate their efforts as they begin to implement the curriculum and to enable them to continuously improve their curriculum. 

Last week, we published the latest package of supporting materials on curriculum design, assessment and evaluating learner progress to support the process of curriculum development and to build clear links with schools' plans for school improvement. These materials will continue to evolve in line with schools' needs. Before the end of term, we will publish Assessing for the Future development workshops, giving schools an ongoing resource to develop their understanding of how learners progress and how to assess that progress.

This month, we have also published guidance for developers of resources and supporting materials. This has been co-constructed with schools and will give clear guidance to developers on what schools need and how to ensure resources are consistent with the Curriculum for Wales. This will help to ensure that the whole system can co-ordinate its efforts in supporting curriculum roll-out.

The national network will continue to ensure schools and settings have opportunities to share their experiences of roll-out, putting them at the heart of our ongoing efforts to develop further support for the system. The network will also deliver Camau i'r Dyfodol, which will play a critical part in sharing practice and expertise on progression, which is key to raising standards. I'd like to thank everybody who has committed and invested their time in the national network conversations, helping to inform Welsh Government policy and schools' practice. The time invested by professionals in the network has already had an important, tangible impact, directly shaping guidance and supporting materials for schools, contributing to Camau i'r Dyfodol and Assessing for the Future and informing professional learning to support Welsh history, for example. These conversations are a community or a cymuned, and, by continuing to work in co-construction, we ensure that we provide schools and settings with the support that they need.

Looking forward, there is still much to do to secure our learners' well-being and their progression to their full potential, but we are firmly on the right course. As schools and settings begin to implement the curriculum, we will learn new lessons on how to improve the practice in schools and the support that they have access to. The process of embedding our new curriculum and continuously improving it in schools and settings will truly begin in earnest from September. We must make sure that our transformational curriculum delivers for the next generation. To achieve this, our professional learning offer must be accessible to all. Last week, I updated Members on how we are working to finalise our national entitlement for professional learning, from which school leaders, teachers and teaching assistants will all benefit—a truly national offer, and one that will be much easier to navigate.

Dirprwy Lywydd, the new curriculum moves away from just having narrow subjects to having six broader areas of learning and experience. Learning will be purpose-based; through the four purposes, we articulate the kind of citizens that Wales wants and needs. It will help develop higher standards of literacy and numeracy, supporting learners to become more digitally and bilingually competent and to evolve into enterprising, creative and critical thinkers.

We can be proud that the curriculum represents the very best of our education profession's efforts. Rather than being the end of the reform journey, September represents a significant milestone. As a Government, we will continue to take action and support the profession so that every learner, whatever their background, can benefit from a broad and balanced curriculum of knowledge, skills and experience that will achieve high standards and aspirations for all.

Minister, I just want to start by thanking you for your statement today. We all want the new curriculum, of course, to work. I also want to place on record, if I may, Deputy Presiding Officer, our thanks to school staff for their resilience and hard work in all that they do, but particularly in their efforts to prepare for the new curriculum.

Minister, only almost half of our secondary schools are implementing the new curriculum in September to the original timeline. And I'm still hearing that many schools do not feel that they have been given the adequate time and support necessary also to feel prepared enough to bring in the new curriculum, as some may have wanted to, in September. Regardless of some of the aims that you've outlined in your statement, there has clearly been inadequate professional support to date for teachers, whose job it is to turn the curriculum's vision into a reality. Minister, this is a seismic change for Welsh education, and, to be successful, it absolutely needs to be in conjunction with our teachers, and preparation needs to reflect their differing needs.

All curriculum documentation and guidance must be easy to digest and easily accessible to the people it's designed to support. Too much of what I've read in relation to the curriculum has been confusing, convoluted and often contradictory. Also, it is clear that we have let too many teachers go it alone on curriculum reform, and, outside the pioneer model, left the profession to sink or swim on the basis of what they've managed to digest. Some of the things you've outlined in the statement go some way to addressing this, but is tapered support something that you have considered, Minister, for professional learning, available for teachers as they move forward to full delivery of the new curriculum, like a sort of phasing-in, with specific support for each stage that a teacher gets to as they grow in confidence and knowledge in doing things in a new way? I'm thinking particularly of teachers used to the old curriculum—or the current curriculum, sorry—having been taught using that curriculum and taught it for so many years, but, obviously, it would apply to all teachers going forward.

Also, by devolving a large amount of responsibility for professional learning to regional consortia and local authorities, the Welsh Government has opened the door to a whole host of competing solutions for the same problems. And, although we welcome the flexibility, of course, in the new curriculum, for the roll-out to be successful we must ensure a level of consistency across Wales. The national network has been a good way to share best practice, as you said in your statement, but due to the level of flexibility, Minister, and the fact that you've devolved decision making to schools, LEAs and consortia, how will you ensure that a similar standard, a level of high-quality education is delivered in the same way across Wales?

It is still not clear also how you're going to measure success right from the beginning, from the word go, in September. We will need to know what the barometer of how you'll be measuring the failure or success of the new curriculum will look like, please. Also, if only half of the secondary schools are implementing the curriculum in September, how can schools that do not implement it be compared and assessed alongside them? And what if a student moves from a school using the new curriculum to one that does not and vice versa? Have we looked into that? Also, we need to know how we're going to assess, measure and support students under the new curriculum who are going to either be more able or learners who are struggling that need extra support, as we don't want these students to get lost in the challenges of delivering the new curriculum.

I see in your statement that you are to publish Assessing for the Future workshops, giving schools some guidance as to how they're going to assess progress. But, Minister, can you give parents, teachers, and us in the Senedd an answer today on how you will measure, monitor and compare the roll-out of implementation of the new curriculum as we go along, and could you promise this Senedd today that we'll have regular updates on the progress made? Thank you.

I thank the Member and I thank her for the welcome that she gave for the statement, and I detect the enthusiasm that she has for the curriculum, despite the challenges that she sets for me. So, I welcome that commitment to the new curriculum, which she clearly has.

In relation to the points that she raised, they fall into a number of categories: one was in relation to the availability of professional learning. We spend significant amounts of money as a Government in commissioning and funding the commissioning of professional learning, and there is a very significant body of resource and material and training available to teachers, at all levels of their journey, as she was describing in her question. She will know that two of the measures that I announced earlier this year, in fact, go to the heart of the challenges that she sets in her questions. The first is around ensuring that a teacher in any part of Wales is able to make the best use of resources that are being created in any other parts of Wales, through school improvement services, be they in consortia or in local authority services themselves. And so, from the beginning of next term, there will be a common access arrangement, so that it doesn't, as it were, matter in which consortium area you find yourself practising, you will have access to that national offer of professional learning.

And the second way in which we are already addressing the point that the Member raised in her questions is around the entitlement that will be launched, again at the start of the next term, and that will spell out for teachers, at different points of their professional journey, what their entitlement is for professional learning and where to find it. And alongside that piece of work, there is a project already under way—it's been under way for some time—to improve the navigability, the searchability, the ability to discover professional learning on Hwb, where most teachers are currently able to access the materials that we commission and that the consortia commission as well. And, you know, she will know that the ethos of professional learning in Wales is that that is a journey that each individual practitioner is on, but our task as a Government, which the entitlement gets to grips with, is to provide the architecture of that, so that it can be done as simply as possible and as accessibly as possible for individual practitioners.

She raised a number of questions around the balance between a national framework and local decision making, and I think that's been part of the debate about the curriculum from the very start. This is a curriculum that has a high level of devolution, if you like, to schools. In a sense, we're freeing schools up to be able to give learners their individual learning journey, and that is the excitement at the heart of the curriculum, but it also involves, obviously, a common set of purposes, a common set of expectations. The cross-curricular requirements are the same in all parts of Wales, and the moderation, the cluster working and the connection between schools in a network will go to that standardisation of a consistent standard across the system, but allowing that local creativity and flourishing and the connection between schools and their communities.

She asked about the evaluation and what the measures are for success, and she will have seen, I'm sure, the recent publication that set out advice to us as a Government around how we can ensure that we have the tools, if you like, to evaluate over the long term. This is a long-term change to our systems, isn't it, as she would recognise? So, in the autumn term, I'll be saying a lot more about what we are doing in that space, some of it is about commissioning new data, but some of it is also about making sure we have the research capacity and ongoing research projects to be able to evaluate in real time. The beauty of the curriculum is its capacity to evolve and respond to what we learn through that process, but also through the work of the national network, which is already having a very tangible effect on the evolution of the curriculum. Estyn, as well, has an important role as the school inspectorate in assessing the capacity of schools to deliver the curriculum, develop their curriculum, but also their capacity for self-improvement, which she will know from last week's statement is an essential part of our success.

I welcome the challenge, but I welcome the underlying commitment to the curriculum that her questions obviously reveal.

Minister, I would like to thank you for the statement today. As you know, we are excited but supportive of a new curriculum and, as was highlighted by the fifth Senedd's committee report, with Lynne Neagle as Chair, it is very much an opportunity for it to be the biggest change since the dawn of devolution in terms of our education system, and there's much to welcome.

I think some of the concerns are well rehearsed. We've had this debate over the past year in terms of the concerns raised by the teaching unions just purely around the capacity of the workforce to deliver. I would just like to build upon Laura Anne Jones's point in terms of that consistency across Wales, because, as Lynne Neagle also said as Chair, we recognise that the new curriculum will not be uniform across all schools, but it must be consistent.

I recognise that there are some things that you've emphasised in your response there, but one of the things that we have been told by teaching unions and so on, and by teachers, is the concern currently around just attendance at school, which we've also mentioned, and, therefore, the fact that those in school, yes, will benefit from the new curriculum, but there are huge challenges at the moment just in terms of that attendance, post COVID, for a whole array of reasons. How do we ensure that the most disadvantaged and those that are being impacted by the cost-of-living crisis at present will still receive that benefit if they're not even able to get to school? I was very concerned last week, in the First Minister's response to my question about the cost of transport to school, to have the response that, 'Well, we're prioritising free school meals.' But, for me, surely we need to be looking as well at ensuring that pupils are in school, so that they can receive the benefit of free school meals, but also to be able to benefit from the new curriculum. Therefore, how is this being tied into the very real concerns at present about attendance at schools and some of the challenges there, so we ensure there's not that inequity of access to the new curriculum?

I would very much like to echo your comments in terms of how challenging it has been for staff and record our thanks as well to all staff that are embracing this and working hard to make sure that the new curriculum works. I was really pleased, as well, that you emphasised that this is not the end of the process, that it's a milestone, and also that commitment that things will evolve and respond. I think it is something that we need to welcome, and, certainly, as an opposition party, yes, our role is to challenge, but I also welcome learning as we go on as well, and I hope we will have that honesty as things progress in terms of what's working and what's not, so that we can see some of the places that need further investment, or if we are seeing that disadvantaged communities are not able to take full advantage of the curriculum, or we're seeing that some pupils are missing out, that we can have that regular review and be able to adapt accordingly.

Similarly, one of the things that has been emphasised is the precarious financial position facing schools, especially in light of some of the areas that are being invested in now. So, just in terms of that concern around lack of transparency and inconsistencies in the distribution of funding to schools, in particular around the schools' core budgets, is this something that concerns you in terms of delivery of the new curriculum, or are you confident that those concerns have been addressed so that every school that is implementing the new curriculum will be able to do so and will have the resources to do so?

So, I hope you take that as a positive response. Obviously, we want to see things work, but we also want to ensure that children and young people are able to be in school to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the new curriculum, and also that we continue to support staff. Obviously, as we see now, COVID is another factor that has not gone away; we're seeing impacts again on schools, and it will continue to impact on teachers and teaching assistants being in school. So, therefore, how are we going to support the workforce over the coming months, so that they see that we are being a supportive Government and opposition parties, as this will take time to embed and evolve? Diolch.

I thank the Member for those questions. On the point about the response of the teaching workforce to the curriculum, I think it's one that she would recognise is one of excitement and commitment to the principles of the new curriculum, and the desire, together with all of us in this Chamber, to see it succeed, and that's been what's motivated the phenomenal hard work over many years of the profession to be ready for this exciting next stage in the journey from September, which I know that she will also welcome.

I share her concern in relation to the attendance challenge, which she described very clearly in her question. She's absolutely right to say that in order to benefit fully from the advantages of the new curriculum pupils need to be in school, which is why we're prioritising our response to ensuring that pupils are in school. She'll know the investment we've made in relation to family engagement officers, and we had a very fruitful discussion in the committee the other day in relation to some of the other interventions that we're putting in place. She will also know, I think, that even for those parents and carers who have made the choice to home-educate their children, we're looking at ways to make available to them access to the Hwb network, so that they have a suite of resources, many of which obviously will have been tailored to the approaches of the new curriculum. So, we will always try and find ways of minimising those differences, but there is a practical limitation to that, which is why I'm so keen to make sure that, perhaps, in particular those who have made a recent decision to stay at home, as a consequence of the COVID pandemic, that we encourage those back into school to take full advantage of this fantastic new chapter in our education story here in Wales.

She asked an important question about how we use the evolution of the curriculum as a means of learning ourselves, and I can give her the assurance that the report that I published last week about curriculum preparedness will be one of many dozens of reports, I hope—one each year—which will give the Senedd a formal opportunity to assess where we are, but there will be, I'm sure, many, many opportunities between those reports for me to account for progress, which I'm sure will be rapid and sustained.

The national network, I think, in terms of the evolution of the curriculum, is a very important dimension of the landscape going forward. That's already, as I indicated in my statement, had a really tangible impact on how we've worked on and developed some of the resources available to teachers and some of the approaches, and I think that will only intensify. We have a session coming up in the coming few months on oracy and reading, and there will be a series of network discussions that will be a feature of the system going forward. It does involve practitioners giving up their time; we provide funding to schools to enable that to happen. But, it's really important that I'm able to continuously demonstrate the value of giving up time, and I will be looking for ways to do that because it's crucial to the success of that part of the system itself. 

She made a number of points about funding. I'll just remind her that this year's local government settlement, which is how schools are generally funded, is the most extensive settlement in many, many years. Obviously, the economic climate is changing and has changed since then, but that is the starting point for our school funding discussion. I think she was making a point about consistency, fundamentally, and, I think, referring to the Luke Sibieta work—I took that implication from her question.

She will also know, I think, that from the perspective of curriculum preparedness, we've obviously provided direct funding into the system from the Welsh Government, and we are providing £21 million to schools this year for curriculum preparation, in addition, of course, to the many millions we spend on professional learning, from which teachers have an opportunity to access that very directly. So, I hope she finds those answers reassuring, and I welcome her commitment and support to the curriculum.

Minister, thank you for your statement here today. It was a real pleasure to accompany you last week on a visit to Pontypridd High School in my constituency to showcase the brilliant work that the school has been doing in conjunction with the Moondance Cancer Initiative, raising awareness of bowel cancer using a multipronged approach running through many different subject areas in the curriculum. So, Minister, would you agree with me, as the curriculum rolls out, that initiatives such as this have the potential to save many lives in Wales each year, and, moreover, are perfectly suited to the cross-cutting, broad and purpose-based nature of the new curriculum, which you've outlined so clearly in your statement here today?

I thank Vikki Howells for drawing to my attention the fantastic work that Pontypridd High School is leading on in conjunction with other schools in the area and with the involvement of Public Health Wales and the broader community. I know my colleague the health Minister will be interested in hearing more about this development, which is a fantastic example of working between the education system and the health service in that context, where pupils are able to learn, in this context about bowel cancer, and that information being available to parents and the community at large as well through the work of Public Health Wales. I myself thought there are clearly health benefits from this approach, which are pretty clear, it seemed to me. But from a curriculum perspective, there's a very exciting opportunity, I think, here. What we heard in the discussion was the school taking an issue that was particular to the local community, where there was a particular resonance, which pupils and their families would feel a relationship to, and using that to learn about science and about behaviours, which, I think, in a way, completely exemplifies the flexibility and the innovation in the new curriculum. And, just to say, I congratulate the school very much for its leadership in this, and I thank Vikki Howells for drawing it to my attention.

Thank you to the Minister for the statement. I want to refer to paragraph 4 of your statement today, which talks about raising ambition. I assume that this includes Welsh language skills too, which is to be welcomed, of course, but I have to raise my concern about the situation in Bridgend county council. Once again I find myself getting up in this Chamber to raise concerns about the situation of Welsh language education in the county. For years, campaigners have been lobbying the county on this point and, time and time again, they have faced numerous cases of opposition. There is an attempt to turn the current site of Bro Ogwr into an English-medium school. There's also an intention to turn Pencoed and Coity into English-medium schools. And I'm a governor, by the way, at Pencoed. There's also an attempt to open a third school in Pencoed, but councillors tell me that that will again be an English-medium school, at a time when children in Pencoed are already missing out on Welsh-medium education. In terms of Welsh-medium education, we're still awaiting a date for a new Welsh school in Porthcawl, and that's not good enough. So, would the Minister agree to look into the decisions made by officials and elected members in Bridgend, which seem to be militating against your vision and your Government's vision in this area?

The Member knows that I have a complete commitment to ensure that every child in Wales has equitable access to Welsh-medium education and that all children who want Welsh-medium education can have that. That's very clear, and there's no doubt about that. In terms of specific issues about the choices that the council is making regarding the question that the Member asked, he knows that he needs to direct those questions to the council. But, from my perspective as a Minister, I want to see progress in terms of the WESPs in all counties in Wales, including Bridgend, and my intention is to have conversations with the leaders of every council to outline my expectations of what's happening. I want to see early progress in all of those ambitious commitments that are happening in Bridgend, as in all parts of Wales.

Diolch to the Minister for today's statement. It's great to hear that 95 per cent of schools in Wales will be taking the next step on their curriculum journey. The world has changed considerably over a very short period of time, and will continue to change. It's only right that we continue to transform education to keep up with this change, moving away from the narrow subjects and granting greater autonomy is a change the teachers at Ysgol Nantgwyn, where I visited recently, welcome wholeheartedly. But there are very real concerns around pupil absence as a result of the pandemic. This curriculum will only achieve high standards and aspiration for all if children are taking part, and I believe that technology has a major role to play in this. So, Minister, what work is under way to tackle pupil absence rates, and do you agree that, for the curriculum to work for the whole of Wales, we need a fit-for-purpose digital infrastructure?

I thank the Member for those questions. She will know from my earlier answers that there's a significant amount of work under way in order to encourage pupils back to school. Some of that is around the funding of family engagement officers, but we are also looking at the recommendations that were made to us as a Government in the recent report that we've published by Meilyr Rowlands, some of which encourages us to look again at the framework that we have used to guide schools in this area right across Wales, which we will be undertaking.

In parallel with that, we'll also be looking at our guidance in relation to exclusions and looking at a holistic approach to the guidance that we make available to schools. Every school in Wales recognises how important this issue is, and I'm confident that schools recognise that the best means of doing that is to rebuild those relationships with parents and carers who don't feel they're able to send their children to school at the moment, and to remind them of the value to those families and to the children of being in school. I actually think that the new curriculum provides a really great opportunity in order to do that even more successfully in the future, and the reason for that is that the whole idea at the heart of the curriculum is to start the learner's journey from somewhere that is familiar, and to take that learner on a journey of discovery that can be limitless. I think that is an exciting way of re-engaging learners with the world of the school and with their learning. 

On the question of technology, I agree with her—that is very important. She will know of the £150 million-worth of investment that we have made in order to ensure that every child in Wales has access to digital technology. The Hwb network, which is the backbone of the curriculum, now has 50 log-ons per second, which is a phenomenal example of success, and we want to do more in this space. Again, at the heart of the curriculum is making sure that all our learners are digitally literate, and that I think is a very exciting opportunity both for every learner in Wales, but also for us as a nation. 

And finally, Rhianon Passmore. 

Diolch, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, I very much welcome this statement today, the enthusiasm across the Chamber for the new curriculum, the innovation behind the areas of learning, and the honest recognition that change means challenge within our schools. My question very simply, really, is, within your statement, pertaining to the role of the education regional consortia in supporting excellence within our professional teaching and education workforce, and that real need to promote the ambition that others have spoken about within our schools through the new curriculum. 

I thank the Member for that question. The consortia and school improvement services have a very important role in the new curriculum, as she will know from the statement I made last week, supporting schools on their improvement journey, whatever that journey is, providing that service to schools, that service to governing bodies as they are accountable for their school's journey. That's really important. But also, I'm sure the Member will be excited by the point I made at the very start, which is that, right across Wales, consortia are creating huge amounts of professional learning resource material and training, and from next term, wherever you are in Wales, wherever you're practising as a teacher, you'll be able to access all the material available in any part of Wales, which I think is one of the many ways in which we are demonstrating that this is truly a curriculum for Wales.

Thank you, Minister.