6. Statement by the Minister for Education and Welsh Language: Tackling the impact of poverty on attainment

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:24 pm on 28 March 2023.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 4:24, 28 March 2023

I thank the Member for her observations and the questions that she has asked. She makes an important point, I think, about the ability of schools on their own to address the full impact of poverty on educational attainment. Schools are in their communities, they're in their society, and there are things that schools can do, and there are things that schools can't do, in terms of addressing that broader range of challenges.

But what the statement I've described today does is—to answer the Member's question, I think—to set out a whole-system approach that starts at early years and extends through school, college, work-based learning, higher education, and, importantly, lifelong learning as well, to bring a whole-system focus on how we tackle the impact of poverty on attainment.

She made the point that PDG, pupil development grant, has been cut. That is factually incorrect; it’s been increased both in cash terms and in real terms, and that is for the very simple reason that it’s a very effective way of targeting funding at schools to reflect the cohort of pupils living in disadvantage.

She makes an important practical point about how best to spread best practice through the system. I don’t actually recognise the point she made—she mentioned a website; I’m not sure which website she was referring to, but I don’t recognise quite the point that she was making. Although, as it happens, in the discussions that I had most recently with the attainment champions that I’ve appointed, one of the issues we were exploring is how we can make sure that heads in schools right across Wales who want rapid access to good case studies of what has been effective in other schools—how we best make sure that is easily accessed and made quick use of. So, there is definitely work that we will want to do, together with our attainment champions and also the National Academy for Educational Leadership, in that space. But she asked me what measures we are going to take; I had taken, I think, about 10 minutes to spell out the wide range of measures that we are taking, so I think I can do no better than refer her to my statement.