More than £10m will be made available to extend a Welsh
Government programme that provides support to the most
disadvantaged learners in Wales, Education Minister confirmed today.
Speaking on a visit to Cardiff primary school Ysgol Glan Morfa,
the Minister confirmed that funding for Wales’s Pupil Development
Grant Access scheme would be doubled to cover additional years in
2020/21 and that the grant’s terms would be extended to allow the
purchasing of laptops and tablets in response to the coronavirus
pandemic.
The funding of £10.3m – an increase from £5.1m in 2019/20 - will
allow the Welsh Government to extend the scheme to provide
support for those in years 1, 5, 8, 9 and 11, at a rate of £125
per learner.
Introduced in 2018, PDG-Access helps families cover the costs of
school uniforms and sports kits, as well as equipment for
activities outside of the school, including sports clubs and
trips for outdoor learning.
It is funding that goes directly to the families who need it most
to help with some of the costs of the school day.
To complement the scheme, the Welsh Government commissioned
Children in Wales to produce a set of guides for schools covering
key aspects of the cost of the school day. The guides focus on
opportunities to change culture in schools around disadvantage
and provide strategies for addressing particular challenges
around the cost of the school day. The Price of Pupil Poverty
guides are available on the Welsh Government website and
encourage their use in schools and settings.
Education Minister said: “I believe strongly in the importance of the
Pupil Development Grant as it is crucial to delivering the
future success of our learners.
“As I have set out in ‘Our National Mission’, I want Wales to
have strong and inclusive schools committed to excellence,
equity and well-being; a system there to support our most
disadvantaged learners.
“We know that the cost of the school day is an important issues
to many families in Wales. I am delighted that we have been
able to extend the policy to provide support to other year
groups and also to allow families to purchase laptops and
tablets which will support remote learning in these
unprecedented times.”
Schools in Wales are already well provisioned, with access to
digital services and infrastructure through the Hwb EdTech
programme, with more than 130,000 end-user devices distributed to
schools.
You can read more about Wales’s response to learning throughout
the pandemic here: https://gov.wales/50-online-learning-logins-second-and-other-ways-show-how-wales-leading-way-digital-services-support
