Tuesday, February 03, 2015
The great Welsh education debate
Well, not so much a debate as a bloody great row. The Western Mail has the latest on the shouting match that has erupted as a result of the Secretary of State for Wales' comments on the Welsh Government's failure to improve our education system. Anybody would think there is an election coming.
It all started when Mr. Crabb described Labour’s stewardship of Wales’ schools as a “much bigger scandal” than its handling of the health system. He said that Wales had slid down the international Pisa rankings and cautioned that basic skills such as reading, maths and foreign languages need to be improved in schools, while he also said there had been a worrying drop in the number of pupils and university students studying IT and computer science.
The Secretary of State is absolutely right of course and the classic Welsh Labour response of claiming that he and his fellow Tories are conducting a 'war on Wales' has no credibility.
It is perfectly legitimate to hold the Welsh Government to account for their performance in the same way as Welsh Ministers seek to scrutinise what their UK counterparts do in whilst answering questions in the Assembly chamber on a daily basis.
My only concern is that amongst all the shouting and point-scoring, it is the pupils and learners who are being forgotten. They are our number one concern and it is they who are affected the most by the Welsh Government's failure to deliver.
It all started when Mr. Crabb described Labour’s stewardship of Wales’ schools as a “much bigger scandal” than its handling of the health system. He said that Wales had slid down the international Pisa rankings and cautioned that basic skills such as reading, maths and foreign languages need to be improved in schools, while he also said there had been a worrying drop in the number of pupils and university students studying IT and computer science.
The Secretary of State is absolutely right of course and the classic Welsh Labour response of claiming that he and his fellow Tories are conducting a 'war on Wales' has no credibility.
It is perfectly legitimate to hold the Welsh Government to account for their performance in the same way as Welsh Ministers seek to scrutinise what their UK counterparts do in whilst answering questions in the Assembly chamber on a daily basis.
My only concern is that amongst all the shouting and point-scoring, it is the pupils and learners who are being forgotten. They are our number one concern and it is they who are affected the most by the Welsh Government's failure to deliver.
