2. What is the Welsh Government doing to support teaching assistants in schools? OQ60498

We are committed to continuing to enable teaching assistants to improve their skills and to help them to engage with professional learning. We are working closely with our partners to facilitate clearer learning pathways, including pathways to achieve the status of higher level teaching assistant.

I thank the Minister for his answer. We had a long discussion about this in committee this morning, about teaching assistants. But a lot of the teaching assistants who I speak to—. They are vital in delivering the new Curriculum for Wales, but a lot of them do say they don't get enough training on delivery of the curriculum or upskilling themselves to be able to help the teachers in the classroom. So, I'd be interested to know what the Welsh Government is doing to upskill our teaching assistants in the classroom, and educate them on the new curriculum and how they can best deliver that to the pupils in our classrooms.

I thank James Evans for that question. We did have, I thought, a very productive discussion in the committee this morning in relation to this. He will recall that I outlined to him how important this is to me. Can I also take the opportunity of thanking Unison, who presented me recently with the response to their survey, which sought to take the views of teaching assistants in relation to training generally, but training in relation to the curriculum specifically? As I mentioned this morning, we have introduced the new national entitlement to professional learning, which is an entitlement that teaching assistants have, as teachers have. That's probably a year in now, and there have been high levels of engagement with it, but we obviously want to promote that even further, in particular to teaching assistants. He will also be aware of the teaching assistant learning pathway, which is designed to support the professional learning of all teaching assistants, and he will know of the investment that we make every year into that pathway.

In my discussions with teaching assistants and their representatives in relation to this, what has emerged is that the training that is available to professionals generally in relation to the curriculum is often targeted at and communicated to teachers but not to teaching assistants. So, in those discussions, I've already committed to looking again at how we promote, sometimes how we describe, the resources that are available, so that they are readily identifiable by teaching assistants as being something that they will benefit from as well as teachers. So, there are practical things that we can do in that way, and we have also been discussing how much more we can do to make sure that INSET days are deployed to provide training for teaching assistants alongside teachers. There is some good practice, but there is more that we can do. We can support schools to roll that out further, and I think that would be a very important priority.

Minister, teaching assistants, as we know, play a really important role in schools, and we also know that they often form very close relationships with children, often working with them on a one-to-one basis, which is crucial. Lots of teaching assistants tell me they absolutely love their jobs—working hard every day to improve the lives of our young people in Wales. Everyone agrees that they are valued as an integral part of the school workforce, and an important role as part of a high-quality education profession. Teaching assistants have long been highlighting concerns in relation to their roles in schools, though, so I'm pleased that, as part of the Welsh Government's social partnership approach, their concerns are currently being considered by a group made up of Welsh Government officials, local authorities, who employ teaching assistants, and education trade unions. I know, for example, that GMB and Unison—and I'm a member of both of those trade unions—have played a big part in this work. As you've identified, knowing your rights, Minister, and knowing the terms and conditions and your entitlements is crucial. You've launched this Hwb website, and I was wondering if you could give us an update on how that social partnership work is going, and also the engagement that you've had through that information on Hwb.

I thank Sarah Murphy for that question. Can I actually echo the point that she made about how central teaching assistants are to the provision of education in our schools? They do incredible work. When I became Minister, I met early on with groups of teaching assistants, via both Unison and GMB, to discuss with them their first-hand experiences, and some of the concerns that, as Sarah Murphy said, they'd been sharing for some time. From those meetings, we developed a broad-based work programme to try and move forward some of the issues that they had been flagging, as I say, for some time.

There's a piece of work that has been led very substantially by teaching assistants themselves, working with heads, on job roles, to try and move to a position where there's a more common set of job roles across the 22 authorities in Wales. I thank the authorities that have engaged with them in that process as well. But alongside that, there's work on guidance in relation to deployment, guidance in relation to professional learning, a representation or a voice for teaching assistants on the governing bodies of schools, and I think, in each of these areas, we've been able to make quite substantial progress.

We had a meeting only yesterday of the social partners to discuss the progress, in particular, that had been done in relation to job roles, and I think it was, if I may say, an exemplar illustration of how you can make real strides forward to try to resolve some of these challenges when you're able to work in that open, collaborative, respectful way that social partnership provides. I look forward to completing this comprehensive work programme in the same way.