Thank you, Chair. Can I thank you, Kirsty, for your statement and the really difficult decisions that you've been having to make? You've already indicated in your statement this morning that these decisions are not taken lightly, and we understand that that is the case across Government. So, thank you for what you've been doing. You've outlined a little bit further there in your statement to us this morning about the new purpose. I take from what you're saying that you haven't really developed that yet in terms of exactly what that is going to look like. You've talked about the children of key workers, free school meals, additional learning needs. Is there anything else you can tell us about that at the moment and how you might staff the schools in those particular areas?
Thank you, Dawn. So, you're absolutely right, our priority now is to operationalise, with colleagues in local government and schools, a practical response. And I have to say, we're working to timescales that I would have hoped to have avoided, but given the fact that we're having to make these decisions quite quickly, I hope that you will understand that perhaps where we start on Monday might change when we have more time and more opportunities to develop programmes going forward. Steve will be able to give you more details of the practical work that has already been going on, but our expectation will be that schools will be playing an important part in providing safe and secure places for children of those on the front-line response to dealing with the coronavirus to attend, and work is already under way with local authorities and individual schools on what that will look like for the emergency situation on Monday. Our other priority is indeed free school meals, and, again, where we eventually end up might be a different place to where we are on Monday. Again, we're responding to the emergency situation that there will be families that were expecting a free school meal on Monday, and, again, individual schools and local authorities are developing those plans at pace to be able to provide an emergency response as we work out a longer term plan to deal with the situation. The same thing also goes for additional learning needs, and attending to the needs of that particular group of learners. So, those conversations began a few days ago. I had the opportunity to meet with the First Minister and Andrew Morgan, the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association, yesterday to talk about what local government could do, and what they were already doing. Those plans in some places are already quite developed, and are now working at pace, but I hope you will understand that where we start on Monday is the emergency response, and that work will develop as we go forward. But, Steve, perhaps you could—? Because Steve was the one making all those phone calls and doing the practical operational stuff, rather than me. Steve.
In short, the new purpose is to meet the needs of particular groups of children and young people. In some cases, some of the response to supporting free school meals, in the short term in particular, we may use the schools as part of that, and I'm certain that will happen in some cases. The second area is looking at how we support the children of key workers. Now, there is still work to be done on identifying exactly the categories of key workers, but I think it's really encouraging that in my discussions yesterday—I spoke with all 22 directors of education, and the examples we're picking up in their work with schools is they're already ahead of the curve in working with schools. So, schools have identified the number of children with health workers. It will grow, and we will need to look at that range. Then, the third area is vulnerable children. They're vulnerable sometimes in terms of education other than at school, vulnerable in terms of mental health, and for those children, as well as having an experience that we want to be planned, some have compared it to a snow day, particularly on Monday, when you're putting something together in the short term, but it will not be a formal curriculum that those children would normally go through. So, the range of activities—some will be focused on educational activities, some will be cultural, some will be sporting, and that plan will be developed on the basis of the age range of children, which in some cases may go from extremely young children up to those at the age of 16 in our all-through schools, but there will be a planned set of activities to cater for those children. What we are doing currently—I have staff back at Cathays Park who are in touch and working with directors of education to ensure that schools over the next two days will have been able to identify, at least at the earlier stage, in terms of health workers, the type and numbers of people. There are already schools who have informed us, and local authorities, of their plans for these activities to be starting next week, which is quite amazing, actually, given where we are. But we are expecting, and we're writing to schools today, that during the course of next week, headteachers to be in schools, and with their staff, taking into consideration the health guidance as to which staff should or should not be in, and in that period from next Monday through the two-week period, to Easter, we expect staff to be both planning for delivery post Easter, but also, as I said, building on and reflecting the good practice that's already in place for schools that have engaged in activities, and I'm sure a number of them will be inviting and enabling those children to come in on Monday. So, Monday will be a challenge for some, and not all will be delivering it, but we will be working so that we can get as much as possible delivered for those groups over the next two weeks, and particularly to have resilient programmes post Easter for the groups of children in those three categories that I said.
Those that have been identified. Can I just clarify one thing? One of the identified vulnerable groups would clearly be children on the at-risk register. They would be included.