Kirsty Williams: I think what’s absolutely crucial is that we take into consideration what young people themselves will find useful. And I’m sure all of us will be aware of situations where people have found themselves perhaps doing the photocopying for a week, and that isn’t necessarily the most useful or stimulating or inspiring kind of placement. So, we do have to focus on the quality of those...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Llyr, as we rehearsed in the committee this morning, one of my priorities is to ensure that we have an excellent and outstanding workforce in all aspects of education, and workload concerns are very real. They vary greatly across the education workforce; they’re not just confined to teachers in schools, as you have recognised. Different issues and priorities arise depending on a...
Kirsty Williams: Well, Llyr, I don’t disagree with your analysis of the impact of days lost to teaching. The issue is what to do about it. As I said in my first answer to you, we have a variety of work streams looking to try and avoid that problem in the first place—i.e. not to be reliant on supply teachers, but, actually, to keep teachers well, resilient and in front of our children in the classroom. I,...
Kirsty Williams: Let us be absolutely clear: in radically reforming the way in which we support children with additional learning needs, that is integral to our national mission of raising standards in Welsh schools and closing the attainment gap. The performance of those children is crucial if we are to see the changes in Welsh education that we need. Now, undoubtedly, there is a resource implication for...
Kirsty Williams: The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales made that announcement. As Darren Millar would well know as the spokesperson for his party, HEFCW is an arm’s-length body and the delivery of that particular announcement was nothing to do with me.
Kirsty Williams: Darren, let’s be clear: education as a whole in Wales faces a very difficult time given the constraints of the budget that the Welsh Government has available to it, and very difficult decisions have to be made. But I’m sure, having taken such a great interest in the press notice, you will have read the words of David Blaney, the chief executive, who has explained that these cuts are a...
Kirsty Williams: Darren, let’s be absolutely clear what I was able to do on coming into Government: it was to find the additional £20 million that had been taken out of the budget whilst I was in opposition, and we’ve been able to make that money available to higher education. But, seriously, I will take no lectures from a Conservative politician with regard to the funding of higher education. You have,...
Kirsty Williams: Presiding Officer, I try to prepare for these sessions, but I have to admit that, for the first time since I’ve stood at this dispatch box, I will have to write to the Member with those specific details. But what I can tell the Member happily is that the number of schools that find themselves in a red category, whether that be secondary or primary, is going down—and that is to be celebrated.
Kirsty Williams: The work that goes on to help schools on their improvement journey is tailor-made to the individual circumstances of each school. The Member asked the question, ‘Can we be confident that that level of support is sufficient to move a school forward?’ The answer to that is ‘yes’, and the reason I can say that is because I have visited schools that, just a short four years ago, were in...
Kirsty Williams: I certainly am not taking a softly softly approach, but I can tell you what will not work is simply me stamping my foot here in this Chamber. School improvement is a collective endeavour that is the responsibility of individual school leaders, the staff within those schools, the governing bodies, local education authorities, the regional consortia, and, indeed, this Welsh Government. I have...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Lynne. I have set out our national mission to improve education attainment through a programme of education reforms. These include the development of a new curriculum and assessment reform, improved initial teacher education, teachers’ professional development and building leadership capacity, and, crucially, reducing the attainment gap for our poorer children.
Kirsty Williams: Thank you. I know that some people have concerns about changing the name of the pupil deprivation grant to ‘pupil development grant’, but let me be clear: the reason for doing so is because I do not want to focus on the barriers that children face to their learning. I want to focus on their ability and having high expectations and ambitions for those children. The PDG will continue to...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Suzy. I do think lifesaving skills are crucially important to young people, and I have a particular interest in looking at the availability of defibrillators in both primary and secondary schools. And I have asked officials, actually, to do a mapping exercise for me, to find out how many of our schools currently have those facilities and where there are gaps and what opportunities...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Oscar. Our aim is to build capacity and reduce excessive workload, leading to improved standards through reducing bureaucracy, improved policy delivery and better ways of working. There is no single solution to this complex issue, and it requires a multiple-stream approach, incorporating a number of separate work streams, which Welsh Government is currently undertaking.
Kirsty Williams: As I said earlier in questions to Llyr, workload is a real issue for the teaching profession and is a real concern to me. We are using the data, as I said, from the workforce survey to try and refine our approaches in this area. We’re also, as I said earlier, having detailed discussions with the education workforce unions. Let me be clear on some of the things that I have done. We have...
Kirsty Williams: What needs to be absolutely clear—and I took the opportunity to visit Finland in January, myself, to look at education policy and practice in their schools—is that the Finnish Government are very concerned about Finland. Relative to them—it would be great if we had performance that way—but relative to them, the Finnish system is dropping down the PISA league table. It is not...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Janet. The new curriculum for Wales will be based on the fundamental review of existing arrangements that was undertaken by Professor Graham Donaldson. The recommendations are radical, with wide-ranging implications for our education system. Work is now well under way to develop a new curriculum in response to ‘Successful Futures’.
Kirsty Williams: Well, Janet, I will give more than consideration, and you will know that because I answered a written question on 31 May, which confirmed to you that in developing the area of learning and experience relating to language, literacy and communications, British Sign Language was being considered alongside other languages in the development work of that particular group. It has been included....
Kirsty Williams: Well, Presiding Officer, I don’t think that there is anything particularly engaging or enthusing about some of the yah-boo stuff that goes on in this Chamber. What I recognise that young people are interested in is finding solutions to the problems that they face in their lives and in their communities. Equipping those young people with the ability to hold politicians to account, to...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you very much, Mark. Local authorities are responsible for school funding in Wales, and last year, gross schools expenditure was budgeted to be £2.5 billion overall. That is 0.9 per cent higher than in 2015-16. Local authorities delegated more than £2.1 billion of that funding to schools.
