David Rees: ..., the need for a treatment fund extends beyond the cancer drugs issue and should incorporate a wide range of treatments, including new forms of radiotherapy, which I know the Cabinet Secretary for Education championed in the last Assembly—CyberKnife stereotactic body radiotherapy, and proton beam therapy, and an information event is actually being sponsored by Bethan Jenkins tomorrow on...
David Rees: ...we must remember that the challenges of an ageing population are not unique to health and social care services. We must take a more rounded approach to our decision making, encompassing housing and education and particularly lifelong learning and improved literacy and numeracy skills, encouraging collaborative working across our public services. We must further look to the future, ensuring...
David Rees: ...into the twenty-first century? Cabinet Secretary, I just want to ask one thing. I’ll be quick. The business plan, when we look at these things, is important, because sometimes we’re taking schools out of communities. We need to ensure those communities are not damaged in any way, but also that we provide safe routes to schools for some of those children as well. So, as part of the...
David Rees: ...have actually struggled to get services for their children, sometimes because local authorities are not listening to experts such as therapists and clinicians, and they’re seeing behaviour in a school where perhaps a child with high-level ASD is actually not demonstrating that behaviour in a normal school environment. Will you look at the guidelines to ensure that local authorities...
David Rees: In comprehensive schools. I went to a comprehensive—
David Rees: I taught in a comprehensive, I knew the pupils and, what’s more, the education they received was second to none. It’s not about grammar school education, it’s about the delivery of education.
David Rees: ...questions today, so I’ll try and keep mine as short as possible. My constituents in Aberavon are faced by very many difficulties. In fact, we undertook a survey of those who’d applied to higher education in Neath Port Talbot and we found that, in Aberavon, there were far fewer students going to HE than in Neath. It could be a consequence of some of the challenges they would have faced...
David Rees: ...boost the amount of nursing and allied health and midwifery students—a cap, remember, that is imposed by the Government that is funding the schemes anyway. I’ll focus my attention on nurse education, but we must remind ourselves of the impact of the removal of the bursary on all those other professions, because they also face the same workforce challenges that this debate applies to...
David Rees: ...’s actions on steel, and perhaps on the discussions he’s been having with the UK Government as well? On a second point, could I also support the issues that Bethan Jenkins raised on special education issues? I understand the answer you gave to her and I appreciate that it’s a decision for Neath Port Talbot council and that the ALN Bill will be coming, but it is important to...
David Rees: ...by Mark Isherwood, autism is a lifelong disability that affects how people perceive the world and interact with others. Like my colleague from Caerphilly, I came across many individuals during my educational time. Like most Members across the Chamber we’ve heard this afternoon, I’ve received many representations from families who have children or siblings living with ASD, and it’s...
David Rees: Will the Minister make a statement on actions taken by the Welsh Government to support home education?
David Rees: Will the Minister make a statement on actions taken by the Welsh Government to support home education?
David Rees: Will the Minister join me in congratulating the area of Neath Port Talbot, where we are seeing a growth in children wanting to go to Welsh-medium education schools? Will he also welcome the fact that Neath Port Talbot council is recognising this and building a new secondary Welsh-medium school on the old Sandfields Comprehensive School site? Will he also work with his Cabinet colleagues to...
David Rees: First Minister, it’s interesting and pleasing to hear that the guidance will be issued very shortly because, in my own authority, there are a known 114 children who are being home educated, but there’s only one part-time officer working with those. Can you also ensure that the guidance is going to enforce and put more pressure on local authorities to have a relationship between the number...
David Rees: ...Secretary for her statement this afternoon and also for the work done by Sir Ian Diamond and his team and put that on the record? It’s clearly important that we address the issues for higher education and support for those students. Can I also put on record once again my thanks to her predecessor, Huw Lewis, who initiated all this and basically saw this start to come through and the...
David Rees: ...identify the fact that we should attend a GP when we believe that something’s going wrong. And we often know it’s going wrong, but we just don’t want to admit it to ourselves. So, we must educate people better about taking the steps of self-awareness and screening processes, so we can actually do the early identification. Dirprwy Lywydd, progress is being made, but there’s much...
David Rees: Can I start by saying education clearly is one of the most important gifts we can give to our children? As such, we must give it in the right manner and ensure it gets there well. The Programme of International Student Assessment—as Darren said, the long term for the short PISA, as we always know it—provides us with a comparator for student performance in reading, maths and science, but...
David Rees: ...forget that—the equity for our learners, a collective responsibility and delivering a twenty-first century curriculum so our young people can live in a twenty-first century world. Those who know education know that such policies do not happen overnight; they take time to bed in and we want to ensure that they have that time. So, I would follow the advice of the OECD. I would suggest we...
David Rees: I thank you for taking the intervention. Will you also focus science on the primary school sector, because if the enthusiasm that children get at that age to take it on to the next sector is important, we need to enthuse our teachers about science?
David Rees: ...to open up accessible opportunities, doing more than the UK Government has actually ever done. My second example—because I did say two—reflects the progress in building modern, state-of-the-art schools for our children. In England, we saw the Tory Government abolish the building schools for the future programme, and that would have actually seen a similar concept. And if it had been...
