Ms Yvonne Keating:

The initial data represent thousands of schools and findings from whole-school evaluations undertaken between April 2016 and December 2019. In addition, inspection data are available from child protection and safeguarding inspections. If the Senator wishes, I can give a flavour of some of the findings emerging from those data. For example, during those child protection and safeguarding inspections, more than 2,000 parents completed a survey dealing with several anti-bullying aspects. The main findings regarding anti-bullying were that almost all parents indicated they had been informed of the anti-bullying policy of the school and almost all indicated as well they knew who to approach in their school if their child experienced bullying. Slightly less than one tenth of the parents surveyed reported they were not confident the school would act promptly and effectively if they had a concern about bullying. While most parents indicated their children learned about bullying and about relationships and sexuality education, RSE, in school, nonetheless a significant minority of parents were not aware of their children's learning. For example, almost one fifth of parents did not know or responded "No" when asked if their child had learned about RSE in school. One tenth of the parents also did not know or said "No" when asked if their child had learned about bullying in school, and the same proportion did not know or responded "No" when asked if their child had done the Stay Safe programme in primary school.

Findings are also emerging from the whole-school evaluation surveys of parents, teachers and pupils. I do not know if time will permit me to give details. What I have said, however, will give the members of the committee some indication of the types of analysis the inspectorate have been doing regarding these findings. These will be reported on further-----