Madam,

I would just like to express my disappointment that William Powell was not re-elected as the AM for Mid Wales. As chairman of the Petitions Committee, his support has been invaluable for our fight against the term-time absence rulings, which is still ongoing. Of course, now we will almost have to begin again with his replacement and that always makes matters more challenging.

We have had excellent support from the Petitions Committee and from Mr Powell personally, who appreciated it was a contentious issue for many parents and grandparents right across Wales. They guided us through the steps we needed to take for them to consider our petition and then discussed it very seriously at several meetings.

Not only that, but they also wrote to the education minister, the Children’s Commissioner, and the local authorities to express concern with the current situation, as well as gathering huge amounts of information from each consortia about the codes of conducts and situations with the way in which the absence rulings were being implemented in each area.

As a campaign group, we have endeavoured to support that extensive work by conducting our own research where possible and getting as much media coverage for our campaign as we could. The result of that hard work and the invaluable support from William Powell and the Petitions Committee has just begun to come to fruition.

At the end of last year, the Education Minister, Huw Lewis, wrote to all consortia and local authorities to state that they absolutely must not enforce blanket bans and that the discretion should remain with the head teachers. He also wrote a letter to head teachers, which is available online, and clearly states that they must consider each request on an individual basis.

We are not quite there yet as, although a number of schools are now allowing absence on a case-by-case basis, many are still ignoring those guidelines.

I am delighted that his colleague, Kirsty Williams has been elected as education minister, and hope we can still count on his continued support and that of Mrs Williams to stop the blanket bans altogether.

Yours etc

Bethany Walpole-Wroe

Cwrtnewydd

Lampeter