Hefin David: Okay, short, short version. Rhianon did a fantastic job as cabinet member for education and now she’s stepped down to be an Assembly Member. Last week, I visited Heolddu Comprehensive School, which has benefited from a new technology block thanks to Welsh Government funding, and Kirsty Williams was there to open it, and it was a great occasion—’I bawb ei gyfle’ is the motto of the...
Hefin David: 5. How will the proposed Additional Learning Needs (Wales) Bill support pupils with the most complex learning and medical needs in our special education schools? OAQ(5)0016(EDU)[R]
Hefin David: The Minister will be aware of the excellent work done by the special needs school Trinity Fields, which is in the Caerphilly constituency, led by the headteacher, Ian Elliott, and his fantastic staff. I declare an interest here as a governor of that organisation. Like many of us in the Chamber, and the school’s leadership, we are in support of the principles of the additional learning needs...
Hefin David: ...of what it seeks to achieve, which is to bridge the gap between aspiration and practical achievement. I learned Welsh as a second language up to GCSE level, back when the option in English-medium schools was basically, ‘Take it or leave it’. I achieved an A grade but didn’t go on to take A-level Welsh because I still lacked the confidence to study further. That confidence I feel I...
Hefin David: ...and their families. I’ll be 40 next year, but I remember—my father was a Rhymney valley district councillor, and I remember at the time feeling the incredible injustices of friends of mine in school on dinner tickets because their parents were on strike, and the difficulties and divisions that this caused in the school in which I grew up. I was fortunate my father didn’t pursue his...
Hefin David: ...with hundreds of others, I attended the funeral in Ystrad Mynach of my constituent Cyril Thomas, who passed away on 12 October last year. Cyril was a former assistant headteacher of Lewis Boys School in my constituency, where he taught both history and religious education. The brother of former champion boxer Eddie Thomas, Cyril worked as a miner before becoming a teacher and was president...
Hefin David: ...in agreement with Llyr Gruffydd’s speech. Particularly, I’d like to draw attention to points—it doesn’t happen very often, but there we go. [Laughter.]—4(d) and 4(e) in the motion. Higher education is an international vocation, and collaboration across nations in teaching and research is highly valued by the academic community. Indeed, I was, in my previous role as a senior...
Hefin David: ...to our economy, and they still do. In 2013-14, in that academic year, even after these destructive reforms were introduced, international students made up just under one fifth of those in UK education. If we go any further with these proposals with student visas, we are going to damage our economy. It’s therefore difficult to overstate the importance of overseas students to higher...
Hefin David: 4. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the most effective use of teachers’ planning, preparation and assessment time in schools? OAQ(5)0092(EDU)
Hefin David: 5. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on removing the boundaries between further and higher education? OAQ(5)0091(EDU)
Hefin David: It’s good to hear that the Cabinet Secretary supports that flexibility. At the Children, Young People and Education Committee last week, the NUT said that PPA is a big issue in primary schools in particular. It was Neil Foden of NUT Cymru who said that schools were freeing teachers for the required 10 per cent of their teaching time and releasing them from their workloads, which is to be...
Hefin David: I welcome that statement and the measures that she has just identified in response to the Hazelkorn review. In her evidence to the Children, Young People and Education Committee on 10 November, she stated that, in the more immediate future—before that further consultation takes place—when she submits her annual remit letter, there'll be an expectation that, of the money that has been...
Hefin David: ...a response last week, took a very welcome look at these issues. And as she said in her statement, the complexities involved in these matters, FE and HE, has led to unhelpful competition between education and training providers, with duplication or gaps and confusion for learners. And the Minister for lifelong learning, as I mentioned earlier at question time, said, when he visited the...
Hefin David: ...to Thomas’s pet and garden supplies, which has been there since the 1950s. I took time to appreciate their existence, the role that they’ve played in my background and in my life as I went to school at Heolddu. Indigenous businesses, buffered but unbowed, provide goods and services that contribute to our everyday lives. These businesses, rooted in our different communities, are far...
Hefin David: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the sharing of learning between pioneer and non-pioneer schools in relation to the roll-out of the new curriculum?
Hefin David: ...away. So, maybe the fourth industrial revolution is also changing the nature of our politics, as well. Can we be—[Interruption.] Can we be that optimistic that such a thing will happen? I think education is at the heart of this, and I would like to return to the argument that was advanced by Professor Tom Crick on Radio Wales this morning. He welcomes the development of the digital...
Hefin David: I’d like to echo Steffan Lewis’s concerns, and also offer my condolences to the family of Glyn Summers. I think the question is: how can the Welsh Government ensure that schools are able to reflect on occurrences—those rare occurrences—when something adverse happens on school trips? And the First Minister said he’d keep it as an open question. Would he be willing to elaborate on how...
Hefin David: ...Davies spoke very well. [Interruption.] The event was attended by representatives of the local authority, local employers—he was heckling me there, reminding me to mention it—further and higher education and transport providers. One of the key themes to come out of the event was the importance of sharing social capital across local supply chains in the northern Valleys, where...
Hefin David: ...current staffing numbers are 50 staff across four directorates. Can you confirm if that’s correct? If so, how would the future staffing and organisational structure compare to the current Higher Education Funding Council for Wales arrangements?
Hefin David: I declare an interest as an associate lecturer at Cardiff Metropolitan University. I want to focus my contribution on the importance of part-time education. I speak having had 15 years’ experience of teaching part-time students, and I guess that’s probably around 1,000 part-time students in that time, one of whom—just to demonstrate how well part-time students can do—was Alun Cairns...
