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 4:43 pm on 28 March 2023.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 4:43, 28 March 2023

I thank Vikki Howells for those two questions. On the first question, one of the aspects of the job, which is a great pleasure actually, is being able to visit the initial teacher education partnerships across Wales, both remotely in the past, but now also in person, and talk to the cohort of students going through the postgraduate certificate in education about their experiences and answering questions from them. I always take the opportunity of those fantastic meetings to highlight just how important I think it is that every single child, whatever their background, is entitled to the full range of care and commitment from every single teacher, and that is a very widely shared principle and passion, I think, amongst teachers qualifying in Wales.

But the question she asks is important: what are we doing structurally to make sure that that is a strong feature of initial teacher education and placement? She will know perhaps from previous discussions that we are currently refreshing the criteria for accreditation of ITE programmes in preparation for the next round of reaccreditation, so this is a timely discussion in that sense, and we are strengthening the requirement for all student teachers to be aware of and have experience of tackling the impact of poverty on attainment and how they can address that through strategies. Obviously, questions around placement are important in that sense. Clearly, that's already an expectation from ITE, but we plan to beef that up in the next round of accreditation.

Secondly, yes, we are making sure we can satisfy ourselves that the funding available for the school holiday provision is being spent as effectively as possible. I fund some of that from my portfolio; Julie Morgan funds related interventions from her portfolio. For this summer coming, we're making sure that both programmes, if you like, speak to each other and can co-ordinate, but in the future we will be looking at whether we can do something more systematic to ensure that there's wider coverage, less duplication and a consistent offer in as much of Wales as we can manage.