 Prôr, hon. Pobl! Rydw i weld yn fawr. Rydw i'n fawr, a'n gweithio i chi'n gweithio yng Nghymru fel y maen nhw, y hwnnw i'n gweithio i'r gweithio i'w fflockdown. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio i chi gael gwisitwch ar gyfer y Prifysgol ymlaen ystod yma, y lluniau'r hynny'n cymrydiau i'r oedd ychydigol yn fawr sydd iawn i chi i gael o ysgrifennu i'r amser ac i'r newydd. Maen nhw'n ddweud bod chi cael gyllunio'r sgol beth o'i ysgriffaen mewn gyfer y gweithlo'r ddomyn. Mae'n du o'r cwm fryingwun maen nhw'n gweithio'r tiffodol yw dros 10 a 12 ydych yn arbennig ar eu cwmpasau collegau. Mae'r cwm yn ddwyddo i'ch gweithio'r Cwyrdd hefyd, oherwydd i'r cyfryd ffordd, dwi'n ddwy i'r lleol, ac mae'r hoffodau o gweithio'r dd� changer llunio'r arweithio, ein sgol i'n ddod addressio'r llunio, will return fully after Easter. Now I am very conscious that I have spent the last few briefings talking about schools and colleges, but I can see from many of you on social media that you would like to know what this all means for our university students, so I would like to focus on them today. As always, I am delighted to be joined by Dr Chris Jones, Wales's Deputy Chief Medical Officer, and Dr Jones will now talk through our public health indicators with the focus on our higher education sector, Dr Jones. Thank you Minister. A summary of considerations for allowing a return of higher education students to in-person education for the summer term was presented to the Welsh Government technical advisory cell on Friday the 12th of March, and I would like to share some of the key points with you today. So for higher education institutions, all the papers indicate that good adherence to the non-pharmaceutical interventions that we are familiar with, washing our hands, keeping our distance and wearing a mask are the best strategies for minimising cases, especially adherence to self-isolation when that's appropriate. All our universities have implemented robust interventions and we have not seen significant transmission in the teaching and learning environment. So as the minister has said previously, our universities are now as COVID secure as possible. There is also strong evidence that the majority of students because of their age are less susceptible to severe clinical disease than older people. I'm also pleased to say that there appears to be little evidence of community transmission from student populations in Wales and that data indicates low case rates in the student population in Wales. I'm now going to turn to show you two slides. The first is the incident rates for coronavirus that we publish every day, and as you can see there continues to be a steady and consistent fall in the weekly rates of new cases of coronavirus. Here in Wales we've fallen from the peak of over 600 cases per 100,000 people back in December to around 40 cases per 100,000 people today. This is really encouraging, particularly given the presence of the new variant and is the very positive result of everyone's efforts and sacrifices. The next slide provides an update on the progress of our vaccination programme. I'm very pleased to report that now more than 1.1 million people in Wales have had their first dose of the vaccine and that over 264,000 have also had their second dose. So this means that over 35% of Wales population have had their first dose vaccination and nearly 10% are fully protected after two doses. I can also report that we're still on track to reach the next milestone of offering vaccination to everyone in priority groups five to nine by mid-April, providing vaccine supplies remain on course. Minister. Thank you, Dr Jones. So what does this really mean for our university students? Firstly, we have to remember that our university campuses have been open since early January and students and staff who need to make use of their campuses to complete their qualifications have been able to do so. On Friday, the First Minister announced that Wales has moved from stay at home to stay local. Our key message for students and staff in higher education is the same. Stay local and work or study from home if you can. Only attend your place of work or study if you cannot work from home. However, in line with our commitment to prioritise education, the rules do allow a person to travel outside their local area for education reasons. Students and staff who need to make use of on-campus learning or work can access campus facilities such as academic libraries, study spaces, studios or laboratories. So, from the 12th of April, it is our expectation that all students can return for blended learning for the duration of the summer term. And indeed, universities have planned for more teaching and learning to continue in the summer term than is usually normal in the academic cycle. To support in-person teaching to resume as safely as possible, we have also strengthened the availability of testing at universities. Students will be offered tests before they return to university and twice weekly lateral flow testing will be available for all students and for staff who cannot regularly work from home. I am so very grateful to students for maintaining high levels of compliance in difficult circumstances. No other generation has been asked to endure such a different university experience, and I know that your university experience this year has been very different from your expectations and that you've missed out on many of the social aspects of life at university. But in making those sacrifices, in doing what you have done, you have helped to keep the virus under control. You've reduced the risk of catching and spreading the virus and this will have certainly have saved lives. If we all continue to work together and to remember to follow the basic rules to protect ourselves and each other, I hope that we will be able to keep taking steps forward at each three-week review throughout the spring. So thank you, thank you for your help and your patience. We've been able to keep Wales safe, but we've also kept Wales learning. Diolch yn fawr. We'll now turn to questions, as always, from our colleagues in the media and we're going to begin this afternoon with Bethan Lewis at BBC Wales. Good afternoon Bethan. Good afternoon Minister. More pupils are going back to school today, but schools overall are very different places to what they were a year ago with contact groups and from now face coverings in class for over 11s. Those are difficult to introduce, they're also difficult to lift those measures. What criteria do you have in place? What process is there for eventually lifting those measures? Could you both respond to that question please? Of course Bethan, and as always we will rely on the well-established mechanisms we have for advising ministers in this regard. So that is the collective work of SAGE and SPYM, working and providing advice at a UK level. That advice then becoming to be scrutinised here in Wales by our technical advisory cell and that cell has a subgroup that specifically looks at issues relating to children and education and they then provide advice for ministers. So we will keep these measures under review. We recognise that they are significant and could tell that normal educational experience and as soon as the advice is that we can move away from some of them then we will do so. The evidence is changing all of their time. If you look at for instance in America most recently over the weekend they've been talking to moving to a three foot environment within schools so we keep looking at that international evidence as do our colleagues in SAGE but Dr Jones I don't know if there's anything further you'd like to add. I mean I think it's accepted that say for public restrictions and controls it's to some extent easier to put them in place than it is to relax them and I think that will be the case for some of the schools measures as well because many of those were put in place even before we had the more transmissible version of the virus. So I don't think we're going to be able to say that there's going to be a given level of infection or transmission that will trigger a change. I think it will be continuing advice as the minister says based on levels of transmission levels of vaccination just a lot of different indicators taken in the round but as always we're going to be very keen to keep control of this pandemic. We do not want to release any measures that are going to increase the transmissibility and place the public under greater risk. Back to you Bethan. Thank you. On a different issue minister have schools got a bigger role to play in addressing some of the issues raised by the death of Sarah Everard? Oh my goodness Bethan can I take this opportunity to put on record my deepest sympathies to the family of Sarah what they are enduring is unimaginable but can I say that I believe that we are really well placed in the education system in Wales to address these points? Only last week we saw the passage in our national parliament in our senate of our groundbreaking new curriculum which will mean that every child in Wales will be entitled to relationship education and I honestly believe that exposure to high quality education that looks at respect, consent, our roles as individuals in a safe and secure relationship is really important and will create the societal change that we need for the longer term and I'm really pleased that in Wales we've taken that opportunity and really pleased to see commentators throughout the United Kingdom referencing our new curriculum as a really really valuable contribution to this wider debate we have to have about keeping women and girls safe. We'll now go to James Crichton Smith at ITV Wales. Thank you minister. What was your reaction when you saw the scenes on Clapham Common at the weekend and how it was policed? James I don't think anybody that watched those scenes can't have been shocked by what they saw but can I say how grateful I am to women and men in Wales who over this weekend also carried out vigils to mark the death of Sarah and the wider issues that that death makes us confront as a society and the police that oversaw those gatherings in a really respectful way. We have to remember we're still in the middle of the pandemic and we need people to be cognisant of that but I would commend both those that wanted to have their voices heard this weekend in Wales and the police for the sensitive way that that was handled. Thank you and for many women gyms offer a safe place to exercise in light of the concerns raised around women's safety will you consider opening gyms sooner rather than later? Well James isn't that the crux of what we're trying to address here? Isn't it a damning indictment that women don't feel safe to be able to exercise alone and the answer yes is to as soon as we're able to open gyms because they are important places for many people but the Welsh Government has recognised this only a couple of weeks ago when we changed the rules to allow two people to exercise together because it was precisely representations that were made by many women who felt that they could not take advantage of the ability to get out and exercise especially in the winter months when the evenings obviously draw in much earlier but the fact that we have to say we have to open gyms up because that's the only way of keeping women safe tells you how far we've got to go as a society to make sure that women can't women have to make those different choices that perhaps men have to make because of fears and concerns. I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add Dr James about gyms. Well James the decision about when to open gyms is a ministerial decision and generally is considered as part of the kind of wider package of measures that may be brought into place at any one time. Gyms are not entirely without their risks those risks can be mitigated to some extent but gyms are also quite a variable entity with some very big environments with good ventilation and good social distancing and others much smaller where these things are difficult to put in place but in the end these will be decisions for ministers and I'm sure they'll consider the context that's emerged over the weekend following Sarah's tragic death. And then moving to Abbey Whittig at Wales online. Good afternoon, sorry Abbey. Good afternoon minister. This is a question for both of you really, I don't know who wants to answer it first but obviously as older pupils returned this morning following you know the younger pupils they've already been seven primaries in south Wales have told children to self-isolate two in Denbyshire are we simply going to go back to the last term in out of school or are you confident that the masks and the testing in in high schools is going to be enough and returning to primary schools there was a primary school in Denbyshire that shut entirely after one case two weeks ago is that appropriate for a school to shut entirely every single class just for one case? Well Abbey what we have seen is a small number of cases appear in school this was this is not a surprise this is not unexpected and local test and test trace and protect teams and local public health officials are advising schools and local education authorities of the steps that are necessary. We have put in place additional safeguards to make schools as COVID secure as possible but as I've always said there are also issues around the behaviour around schools that's why it's really really important as we move forward that parents don't misinterpret the fact that more children are able to go back to face-to-face learning as a return to normal. There is nothing in our experience over the last three weeks when foundation phase pupils have been in that has made us think that we cannot proceed with the important steps that we're taking today but clearly one of the reasons why we're having a phased approach to schools face-to-face learning return is that we can monitor the data really really carefully. Well I think my answer must be very similar to that of the ministers really the cautious and incremental approach we've taken to getting children back to schools reflects the fact that we know that schools create the circumstances for some transmission so since primary since the foundation years returned we have seen some cases in schools we have seen some clusters around schools some of those clusters are related to clearly to events outside schools household transmission events but overall I can assure you that there is no particular signal in relation to primary schools and overall the rates of infection in the youngest pupils are very low. Back to you Abby. Thank you. Minister you've talked before about the need for some sort of catch-up or re-engagement for pupils after all this disruption. I just wondered if you could update us on what plans and discussions there have been around the academic year next year and the summer holidays and I'm thinking in relation to the question asked earlier are we still expecting pupils in schools and perhaps students in universities to be wearing masks and taking tests from September is next academic year going to look similar? Well Abby with regards to ensuring that we address the interruption to children's learning you'll be aware that recently I made an announcement of an additional £78 million to schools and colleges to ensure that they have the staffing structure and the resources that they need for the next academic year to support children with their learning. There are no immediate plans to change holiday school dates for this academic year as to what schools will look like in September oh my goodness me Abby I have learnt over this last year not to make predictions. Clearly we will want schools to to be as back to normal the old normal as possible but it's impossible at this point to say where where we will be with some of the COVID security measures that we've had to put in place. As I said in answer to Bethan earlier these issues are kept under constant review and we will take all the steps necessary to as I said throughout this pandemic to maximise face to face teaching and to minimise disruption and whilst these measures can help us minimise that disruption they will they will continue but clearly if they are no longer necessary then I will be the first to be very very glad to see us to advise schools of that fact. Shall we now go to Peter Gillibrand at LBC? Good afternoon Peter. Good afternoon Minister, Joachim Vowd. You've spoken a bit about the tragic case of Sarah Everard and it's raised a lot of questions about the safety of female students, young women. Are you going to start fresh conversations with universities so that students feel safe when they come to study in Wales? Thank you very much Peter. We need to have a general conversation as a society as a whole of what steps we can take to make sure that girls and young women and women as a whole can feel safe in their communities. Peter I know as one of myself and as the mother of three teenage girls that the lived experience of many many women demonstrates the need for us to make safe changes as a society and clearly being safe and a sense of well-being is a prerequisite to a good educational experience whether that be in high school or whether that be in university. That's one of the reasons why we're changing our curriculum. That's one of the reasons why we're introducing a whole systems approach to supporting well-being both in our schools, our colleges and our universities. That's why we've made additional resources available to universities and I can absolutely guarantee you Peter that ensuring that we have a really good student experience is the bedrock of a successful higher education system in Wales and I have to say previous surveys carried out of student satisfaction in Welsh universities have shown that Wales has the best levels of satisfaction anywhere in the United Kingdom but we cannot rest on our laurels. One incident is too much and you can be assured that we'll continue to have conversations with our vice-chancelors and with our NUS here in Wales to ensure that students have the experience and nobody's education is blighted by a fear of or the actual perpetration of crime. Joch, Gwynni Dogg. This one maybe is more for the deputy chief medical officer. Over the last year we've had, well more than a year pretty much now, we've had a big focus on case rates and going up and down. When will the vaccination effect take over the focus on case rates? Basically when do we need to stop looking at the case rates seeing as more and more people now are getting vaccinated and as you mentioned there more and more are getting fully vaccinated against this the pandemic. Dr Jones. Yes, thank you. I mean the vaccination programme clearly is rolling out at remarkable pace and it is one of the most successful vaccination programmes in the world, in the UK and Wales is kind of right up there in terms of its rate of reach through the population. All adults should be offered the vaccination by the end of July is the current target but that still will mean that they will not be total control of the pandemic at that point because the vaccines are not 100% effective, not everyone will have the vaccine or can have the vaccine and for a long time until we get to July very few people will have had both doses. So even after July and after July there will still be half a million children who actually are not vaccinated. So even once the vaccine programme has completed the rollout through all adults there will still be a risk from coronavirus. The vaccine programme is increasingly important to us and provides increasing protection but it won't be a complete level of protection and it won't enable us to be completely free of concern. The virus is not going to disappear as a result of this programme. Thank you Dr Jones. Now over to the national and Nicholas Thomas. Thank you minister. Question first for Dr Jones please. England's chief medical officer has warned another surge of infections will be likely later this year at some point. How likely do you think that another wave of infections would be and given the success or the progress of the vaccination programme that you've just talked about, how protected will we be not just from the virus but also from the need to have full lockdown restrictions like we've had over the past year? Yes, we recognise that this is an extremely transmissible infection and we also realise that relaxing restrictions will increase potentially the risk of transmission. It feels like controlling this pandemic is like trying to control the speed of a car in which the accelerator is stuck to the floor and the only way you can control the speed is by applying the brake which is what we do with lockdown measures but as soon as you relax your foot on the brake the car will accelerate off again and we do know that if we relax too much too quickly we will see a surge in cases and another wave and that is why Welsh Government and the ministers in Wales are showing considerable caution and trying to assess the effect of any changes that they make. The vaccination programme as I've indicated is important in this but it's not going to provide us with complete protection. This is still going to be a problem going forwards. We will certainly have to watch out for the risk of a further surge after the summer and we'll also have to consider whether still some of the social behaviours that we require, hand hygiene, social distancing, mask use may still be needed in the autumn. Back to you, Nicholas. Thank you very much. To go back now to the issue of violence against women, the First Minister said over the weekend that we have so much more to do to end violence and abuse against women, let us ignite the fire for change. Minister, you've already touched on how education can play a role in this but what else is the Welsh Government doing now to fuel that fire and turn those words into action? Well, as you said, education has a really, really important role to play to this but we really need a whole government approach both in the areas where powers are devolved and of course as a government it's many years now since we passed land breaking legislation with regards to violence against women but it's also about the promotion of equal rights for all of our citizens and I'm sure members will have seen recently a new advertising campaign asking people to speak out when they see people treating other human beings in a way that is simply unacceptable but there are lots of things that we can do collectively across the piece from ensuring that access to housing, the environment in which we're living in promotes safety but as education minister I truly believe that ensuring that we are raising our children with respect for one another, understanding what a healthy relationship looks like and when to seek help if you're concerned but also when to speak out and that's what we really need people to do because so many of these incidents that blight women's daily lives it can be challenged and we really need people and allies to challenge those behaviours when maybe it's a crass joke or a you know really pointed comment you know it's that it's that low level of daily experience that young women and girls are living and women are living their lives by you know that's the start and we all have a role to play and it can't be about government it's about all of us knowing that we have a role to challenge and take steps in our own daily lives that can can make a difference and last but not least we're going to the leader and Andrew Nuttall Thank you minister so as we are now sort of approaching the one-year mark from the week when school closed in the nation sort of lockdown do you have a message to concern students right across the educational spectrum from primary schools like up to universities and their families who have struggled but the homeschooling and any other aspects like exams people were worried that exams may sort of determine their future now no doubt spanning into years beyond COVID how far into the future have you sort of planned to incorporate the impact of the pandemic into education in Wales? Thank you Andrew well indeed it is a year ago this very week when I made a statement to the senate on that we would have to close schools for face to face teaching and it has been an unprecedented year but throughout that period I have been overwhelmed by the commitment of our teaching professionals at all levels to support children and students to carry on learning the absolute resilience of children and young people themselves and the forbearance of parents who have supported their children throughout this entire period my message to them is thank you for everything that you've done and as we return to more children and students getting back into classrooms and lecture theatres is that we stand ready to support you at this time to re-engage with your learning and to ensure that you have a bright future this isn't a council of despair we are moving forward with a profession that knows how to address the interruption to education it's our job as a Welsh Government to support them to do that that's why we've been announced an additional £78 million but I just want to say thank you for what you have done and to look forward with confidence knowing that the educational professionals the length and breadth of the nation stand ready to ensure that you have a bright future thank you and given that all pupils are hopefully back in their classrooms after the Easter break on April 12 do you think that teachers and teaching assistants and the school staff are safe to return as well if they've not had any sort of vaccination order just partially on their journey to be fully vaccinated do you think that vaccination should play a role in when school should fully be open? Well of course there's been a huge amount of debate about which groups in society should receive a vaccination first and in what order and as you know the initial groups of 1-9 that are set out by the JCVI aim at preventing harm to those people who are most likely to suffer really badly from Covid end up in our hospitals and for whom there is the highest risk of dying and fortunately all the studies that have been carried out to date suggest that as a professional group teachers and teaching assistants are not at risk as a result of their profession of course individually there will be teachers and teaching assistants that have been vaccinated because they they're either their age group or because of a clinical condition that they have JCVI have subsequently looked at where we move from the middle of April with a next cohort and again they've been very clear that we should do this on an aged based profile because that's the best way for for addressing risk and critically it is the best way of getting the vaccination programme rolled out quickly. The NHS know generally how old we are and as Dr Jones reminds me on a regular basis the NHS is not good at knowing what we all do for a living and therefore we can get to more teachers and teaching assistants more quickly if we do it by age than if if we actually disrupt the programme by trying to do it trying to identify professions but Dr Jones we've discussed this on many occasions. We haven't asked this a lot and I thought your answer was excellent Minister. Thank you very much well given that commendation by the Deputy Chief Medical Officer I think we should bring today's press conference to a close thank you once again for for everything that you're doing as we take these very important but cautious next steps as we begin to unlock. Diolch yn fawr. Thanks Dr Jones.