 Alprinad, fel pal. Good afternoon everybody. Today I'd like to turn our attention to the higher education sector and university students. Students have suffered a huge amount of disruption this year, especially as the effects of the pandemic have increased as we've moved into the winter months. I strongly believe that being able to engage with your teachers, lecturers, professors and peers face to face is the best possible way to learn where it is possible to do so. But despite the tremendous work of our universities, their staff, students and volunteers, with additional testing and plans in place to make learning as safe as possible, the new COVID strain has unfortunately made it necessary to ask the majority of students to study at home for the time being. This means that tens of thousands of students are now helping to keep Wales safe by staying away from campus. Throughout the pandemic, I have regularly discussed these issues with students and their unions. NUS Wales in particular have represented the concerns and day-to-day issues facing students in a constructive and thoughtful manner. And I know that, as well as the challenges the current situation has presented in terms of learning, it has also created new financial pressures on students. Many of our students have needed to pay for their term time accommodation, while for very important public health reasons have not been actually able to live there. And a large proportion of students have also been unable to access part-time jobs that they would usually rely on. As a Government, we recognise how challenging this is, and I'm pleased that Wales continues to lead the way, as all of our universities have already offered student refunds to students living in halls of residence, which will be of great help to them. But, of course, there are students living in private rented accommodation, and with lectures moving online, it's also important that students have adequate access to online learning technologies. And that's why I'm very pleased to announce today that the Welsh Government will provide an additional £40 million for universities to support students facing financial hardship, helping the students most affected by this pandemic. Universities will be asked to prioritise funding towards the most vulnerable students, as well as strengthening advice and support services. The funding is, in addition, to over £40 million that the Welsh Government has already provided to help universities this financial year, which included £10 million towards student hardship, mental health support and student unions. Education creates opportunities, it changes lives, it makes our society fairer and is vital to long-term economic prosperity. For all students from Wales, whether you study here or elsewhere in the United Kingdom, we have worked to create the most generous student support package in Europe, and that living costs, support in grants and loans is guaranteed and is not changing. I don't want to see anybody drop out from education this year because of many problems. We've made real gains in recent years and narrowing the attainment gap and it's now vital that we do not let the pandemic put those improvements into reverse. Before I take questions from colleagues in the media, I also want to provide an update for school and college age assessments this summer. My main focus has been on ensuring our approach supports learner well-being and progression. I spent much of last week speaking directly to learners to discuss their experiences and their concerns. The design and delivery group that I set up is working at PACE and met twice last week to look at how we can adapt our approach to be responsive to the continuing disruption. I will receive the design and delivery group's policy proposals early this week, which I will then discuss with Qualifications Wales and the WJEC. I will provide further details on Wednesday afternoon. Thank you once again for your efforts in keeping Wales safe and now we will turn back to questions. And today I believe we are starting with Bethan Lewis at the BBC. Good afternoon Bethan. Good afternoon Minister. Can I ask first of all about the vaccination programme? The First Minister said this morning that a reason for not using more of the vaccine supply immediately was to prevent vaccinators standing around with nothing to do. Why is avoiding that an issue when surely the overriding priority here is to get people protected as soon as possible? Well thank you Bethan. First of all it's really important to say that all of our vaccinators who are working in our vaccination centres, increasingly working out of VP surgeries under other aspects of primary care are working flat out as is the Welsh Government to speed up the vaccination programme. We are not holding back on any supplies of the Pfizer vaccine or the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. We are distributing Pfizer in a careful way to ensure that there is the infrastructure in Wales to deliver it safely and most efficiently avoiding wastage because it is such a precious resource. Last week if I just stood here we would have been talking about 22 mass vaccination centres that are delivering Pfizer. By the end of this week we will have 45 mass vaccination centres delivering Pfizer and 95% of our stocks of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine have already been administered. If I can turn to universities, obviously you are announcing support for hardship for students today. As you said most students at Welsh universities won't be back for face-to-face teaching now for some weeks into February possibly later. Doesn't that strengthen the case for refunds for tuition fees and are you considering that? Let's be clear Bethan is that our universities are working really really hard and have done successfully in the first part of the academic year to deliver a high quality blended learning approach. Many of them have employed additional staff to be able to do that and have maximised face-to-face contact where it is safe to do so. At this moment clearly we have to be mindful of the public health situation and it's only right that those who need to be on campus are the students that are on campus at the moment. If students have concerns about the quality of the blended learning and the distance learning they are receiving from their university I would urge them to discuss that with their local NUS and their university because they are entitled to a quality experience even though at this stage I acknowledge it is a different experience than perhaps they would have envisaged. The money we are announcing today is to financially support students both in terms of their own individual financial situation but also to use additional resources for universities to support them practically in terms of digital exclusion, mental health and practical support. We don't want anybody dropping out of this critical phase either because of financial hardship or because of a lack of support hence the investment today. We'll now move to Adrian Masters at ITV Wales. Thank you Minister. We've been talking to students who are living in private rented accommodation. Can you tell them how much of this funding is to help them and if this funding is not to help them what are you doing to help those who are living in private rented accommodation? Well thank you Adrian obviously you're right to make that distinction. As I said in my opening remarks all Welsh universities have pledged support for those students living in their halls of residence who aren't able to take up those spaces at the moment. The situation is more complicated for those in private rented accommodation that's why we are channeling these financial resources into individual universities hardship funds and students who are finding it difficult to pay their rent at the moment will be able to bake an application. We're urging universities to ensure that those students who are suffering most financially are those that are helped first. Thank you and can you can you answer at this stage do you think students will be fully back at campuses within the next six months? If not and if it's a possibility that that's not the case is it best to level with students and their families now to say that they won't be returning in a full usual way anytime soon? Well Adrian I wish I had a crystal ball and be able to make those cast iron guarantees which I know many people really really want to have. I think the principles that are guiding me is that we want to minimise disruption to education and maximise face to face tuition whether that be in our schools whether that be in our colleges or indeed in our universities but we we do need to be open to you know new approaches you know sage challenges us to do this doesn't don't they when they say we have to move away from this there I'll debate about everybody being back or nobody being in at all and I'm very keen to have conversations with our universities with with unions that represent those working in universities to look at more creative ways and I know for instance some universities are already looking at whether we can change the academic year in some way it's lengthening the academic year to catch up with some of the face-to-face teaching that has been lost at this particular point of the year and I'm very you know very interested in engaging people engaging with people to look at creative solutions in all aspects of education so that we can maximise that face to face contact which is so important. We'll now go to thank you Adrian and we'll now go to Abbey Whittock at Wales online. Good afternoon Abbey. Good afternoon Minister if I can just turn back to schools England has announced it's looking at bringing forward exam results for GCSEs and A levels AS levels to July saying it would give students more time to appeal those results if they want to and avoid the problems from last year. You've announced August results dates in Wales will that now be looked at again and look forward isn't there a suggestion perhaps that if we don't that our students here might be at a disadvantage if results come out in England a month ahead. Well Abbey as I said in my opening remarks issues relating to assessments for school and college students this summer are currently being discussed certainly parity and fairness for students within Wales and indeed with other parts of the United Kingdom is a top priority for our students in Wales and we'll be we'll form part of the consideration as is a fair appeals process so all of those issues are being considered at the moment. So it is being considered that they might be bought forward then the results okay another matchup on schools and education in general at university as well as you've just mentioned you're concerned about the attainment gap. Obviously a lot of teachers are worried about that but you can expect as a school has warned about that teachers are telling me some problems will go on for years because of this what plans are being made and what thoughts are being had about how to start addressing that attainment gap because surely that work should be being planned now. Well absolutely Abbey I mean the first and most important thing that we can do to address the attainment gap is to get as many children back into school for face to face teaching as is possible and as I said in answer to an earlier question you know I'm keen to explore all the possibilities of how we can how we can do that and how we can maximise those opportunities. As you know last summer we looked up the possibility of changing the academic academic year and at that time I wasn't able to gain support for those proposals but the best way we can address the attainment gap is getting children back to face to face teaching and working creatively to look at those opportunities. We have already invested in excess of £29 million this year on issues of catch up and we will continue to work with local education authorities to plan additional resources and suitable catch up programmes because you're right the disruption to education that we've experienced so far cannot be made up in a single academic year and we need to have a collective endeavour now to get children back to school when it is safe to do so in a creative way as well as looking at then catch up to to address learning loss that has already occurred. We'll now go to Lydia Griffiths at S4C. Good afternoon Lydia, Pranadah. Pranadah, myddiog. If I could just focus on schools firstly. In June 2020 University College London conducted research that's highlighted that Wales performed poorly compared to other parts of the UK in terms of the amount of online learning its pupils completed while schools were closed. Without proper access to appropriate technology pupils could be subject to a huge disadvantage here in Wales. Now enough of lockdown, how do you plan to address this issue? Well thank you for that. Well in a report last year by the Education Policy Institute that independent think tank said that Wales had led the way in supporting digitally excluded students. Since the pandemic we have supplied in excess of 100,000 devices to schools. Schools are busy lending those devices out. We have a further 35,000 devices that are due to be delivered in the next few weeks and we've also had the advantage of the hub learning platform which has not been available to the parts of the United Kingdom as well as free access to Microsoft software and Adobe software. So I think we're in a really good place to be able to support digital learning. We have provided since the first lockdown a comprehensive package of professional learning for staff recognizing this is a big step change for our professionals to move from one type of pedagogy to the distance learning we have and I'm really encouraged by the words of the inspector who tells me that we've seen a step change in the quality of that learning experience but in terms of digital devices I would refer you to the EPI report that said Wales had performed exceptionally well in the UK in addressing digital exclusion. I'd also just like to ask you about the work being done on the Turing scheme from what you've seen so far are you confident that it'll be an adequate replacement of the Erasmus programme and if not would the Welsh Government consider rejoining Erasmus as other subsorin nations have done? I am absolutely confident that the Turing scheme is a poor replacement for Erasmus plus and students in Wales both higher education students, FE students, school students and those young people that were previously supported on Erasmus plus via youth work organizations will be lesser from not having full access to Erasmus plus. It has always been the policy of the Welsh Government that we should remain a part of Erasmus plus and it's deeply, deeply disappointing that the UK Government has chosen not to do that. I am working alongside my colleagues in Scotland and Northern Ireland to see whether Wales can via the United Kingdom retain its membership of Erasmus plus. We're looking to influence the Turing scheme to improve upon it and only this morning I had meetings, a quadrilatical meeting with ministers from across the UK to address the gap in youth service provision which at the moment is simply not covered by Turing so it is a very, very poor replacement. It's deeply disappointing and I will be exploring all possible avenues to ensure that Welsh young people do not lose out as a result of this decision which the UK Government did not have to make. Daniel Bevan at LBC please. Thank you Minister, good afternoon. You've said that you're not holding back on any doses of the vaccine but figures today released at midday show a significant drop in the number of vaccines given day to day over the weekend and you've known about the difficulties the fires of vaccine has in its transport and of course its temperature storage since long before it was approved. How is this anything other than mismanagement on the Welsh Government's behalf? Well then as of 10 p.m. last night some 5% of the Welsh population had received a first dose of either the Pfizer or the AstraZeneca vaccine that's 152,000 Welsh residents that have received that protection. All front line staff of the Welsh ambulance trust have now been vaccinated where significantly increasing the number of mass vaccination centres. Now you're absolutely right the Pfizer vaccine as soon as we get legal notification that we could move from a double dose regime to a single dose regime we've been ramping up the capacity to deliver that vaccine as quickly as possible and I am confident that we remain on track to ensure that all those in the top four vaccination groups that's everybody from age 70 above and those that were previously shielding will be vaccinated by mid-February. Thank you and you've hinted once again today about a possible phased return for schools. What's the latest on a school return and also is it potential is there potential that face-to-face teaching could still not return till after the February after? Well as you know first of all we need to ensure that the virus is under control and case numbers in the community are dropping because that's a really really important factor for enabling more children to go back to face-to-face education. I have had very productive conversations with our local education authorities last week who like me are determined to be as flexible and creative as possible to maximise face-to-face tuition looking at parts of the cohort who may be able to go back sooner rather than later what more we can do to make our schools and colleges more COVID secure. Can we have rotor systems and can we again look at the pattern of school holidays to get as much face-to-face tuition as possible? I'm very keen to have all opportunities on the table because getting children back to school is an absolute priority for me and we will continue right the way across education with as I said LEAs, reunions to explore every single possibility to get children back to school as quickly as it is safe to do so and it is possible to do so. We'll now move to Rod Minchin at PA. Hello Minister. Can you explain to me the rationale behind delaying given the Pfizer vaccine? Are surely vaccinations as many people as possible in Wales as quickly as possible should be the priority? Believe me we are not delaying the use of the Pfizer vaccine to anybody in Wales and we are as keen as anybody to get that those vaccinations out as I said in answer to earlier questions. As soon as we became aware of the government on the 4th of January that we could move from a double dose regime to a single dose we have been ramping up the capacity to deliver that vaccination as quickly as we possibly can. Now because of the limitations on storage of moving of the Pfizer vaccine the most efficient way of doing that is via mass vaccination centres and as I said this time last week we had 22 of those in Wales by the end of this week we will have 45 and if I think to my own constituency in Powys which of course is very large geographical area it has very dispersed populations they are they are running multiple lane vaccinations out of three centres to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible and they are doing that not only during the week but through the weekend and you know I'm sure we're all very grateful for those that are working so hard to do that clearly we need to go even faster but we need to do that in a way that maximises that precious resource and doesn't lead to the wastage of any vaccines. Okay thank you. What supplies of vaccines are doing Wales over the coming weeks? Well my understanding is that at present that we have supplies of vaccine, Pfizer vaccine that will take us forward you'll be aware that there are some issues with the production of Pfizer vaccine emanating out of Europe which we need to be mindful of that's why it's really important we can supplement Pfizer vaccines with the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine and we expect to see increasing supplies of Oxford AstraZeneca coming to Wales this week and next week of the supplies of Oxford that we at AstraZeneca we already have some 95% of that stock has already been used. We will now move to Olivia Grist at Bro Radio. Good afternoon Education Minister and some students have taken on accommodation contracts assuming they would have worked to cover the extra costs as not all students are covered by student loans. They will now find themselves in a much harder financial position as these jobs are no longer available. The student hardship fund you've mentioned requires students to show their student finance letters with how much student loan they will receive which was calculated based on their household income last year. So how is this going to work when many people's financial situations have since changed? Well thank you for that. We acknowledge that for some students their financial situation will be vastly different from what they would have expected it to be. Let me be absolutely clear for those students Welsh domicile students whether they're studying in Wales or studying in other parts of the United Kingdom if they are on the new reformed programme of student support they will be receiving in excess of £9,000 for living costs whether that be a loan or whether that be a grant. The average Welsh student this year will be in receipt of a non-repayable grant of an excess of £7,000 but again we recognise that other people would have been working that's why we have made this £40 million available but clearly we need that resource to go to those students that need it the most and I'm sure universities are well prepared to have those conversations to understand how students' finances are shaping up in this particular moment in time. Thank you and what would your advice be for students who are now debating whether or not to go to university in September? Oh my goodness me I appreciate that these times are uncertain and there will be you know lots and lots and lots of concerns but going to university even in these uncertain times is still a great proposition in the longer in the longer term so what I would say to students is to work with your school or with your college to understand you know what courses best meet your needs. Lots of universities are finding new and innovative ways to be able to provide opportunities that aren't available because people can't travel for open days etc talk to university to students who are already there and apply because it's still a great time to invest in your future. Can we now go to Andrew Forgrave at the Daily Post? Good afternoon Minister. Can I ask a question about supermarkets please? I think a lot of people would have backed the move by the Welsh Government to tighten up the rules for running supermarkets last week but could you explain more about the rationale behind that decision? Was it purely driven by public sentiment or was it motivated by hard data showing that our supermarkets were more dangerous places to visit and could you share some of that data if so please? Well thank you for that. I think the Welsh Government's actions last week are motivated by a variety of factors. Certainly from TTP reports from local incident management teams there is evidence of viral spread in supermarket settings. That is especially true now we find ourselves with the new variant of the virus which is more transmissible than the previous version. Concerns are certainly being expressed by my constituents and by the general public who obviously want to feel safe when they go shopping and obviously from those who work in the sector. So there are a number of factors but there is evidence from TTP that supermarkets can be a source of transmission and that's why it's really really important to remember that if you're travelling to the supermarket to do your essential shop to try and do that in a way that is mindful of all the rules. Keeping your distance from other shoppers using the sanitation facilities that need to be available at each supermarket, queuing in a respectful way, respectful of people's space and being really respectful to those that work in the supermarket. What's really upsetting is to hear supermarket workers who have received abuse from members of the public when they're trying to offer advice about how to shop safely. They're trying to do their job, they're trying to keep you safe. So please if you're approached by a supermarket worker please do try and take their advice and shop as safely as you can. Thank you very much indeed for that. Second question is about child binding. The national minimum standards for child binding were recently relaxed to enable child binders to have expanded groups. I think it went up from six to ten. Yes, some child binders have expressed concern and we've certainly heard concerns being expressed by some child binders that there is an element of double standards operating here in that the Welsh Government is trying to keep the schools safe in order to reduce transmission and yet it is allowing the size of child binding groups to be expanded. Did you have an answer to that? Well first of all can I thank those that are working so hard to look after children at this time and of course for child binders they are looking after our youngest children. Thankfully the virus does not disproportionately affect our children and indeed the number of cases in our very youngest children are thankfully very very low. I should point out that there's not a double standard. Our schools are open at the moment to provide education for our critical workers and are most vulnerable but clearly that's to a reduced number of children. Any relaxation to the ratios will have been following advice from public health and our scientists and we wouldn't in no way want to endanger either child binders or all those children that are in their care. I think we're going to finish off today with Danielle Herbert at Atrium News. Good afternoon Danielle. Good afternoon Minister. University students across Wales have been petitioning for a no detriment policy to be put in place this academic year due to the disruption caused by COVID-19. Would the government support a Wales-wide safety net to support students through their studies this year? Well Danielle we would expect every university to have in place fair and proportionate assessment regimes that allow students to demonstrate their skills their knowledge and their ability and to progress and we will continue to work with HFQ to monitor the situation but assessment regimes should be fair and should reflect the disruption to face-to-face learning that has gone on. Thank you and my second question. With some Welsh universities choosing for teaching to remain online this year do you think it's realistic for students to be expected to produce the same standard of work as when face-to-face teaching was resumed particularly on practical courses? Well that's why we have allowed some flexibility for universities to be able to bring students back to campus for whom their course has a large practical element or whose course requires them to do so many hours of practical work to gain their professional accreditation. Without doubt it is more challenging to study for some courses online than than others and that's why we have given universities the flexibility to bring students back to campus should their course require it. In terms of quality it certainly is a different experience and I and nothing can truly replace a face-to-face contact that's why we are keen to work with universities should the public health scenario improve to get more students back to campus if that is possible to do so but nonetheless that online blended learning approach should be of high quality and as I said earlier if students are concerned that they're not getting the face the the quality that they had envisaged then they need to raise that with their university but I am encouraged about the innovative solutions and proposals we're beginning to look at to see how we can address that to improve the student experience and I'm very grateful for the flexibility that is being shown and the imagination that is being shown and needs to be shown at this time to minimise disruption to education. Thank you minister. No thank you and thank you all to our colleagues in the media that brings us to a close for today and as I said earlier thank you for doing everything that you can to keep Wales safe at this moment. Diolch yn fawr.