Darren Millar: ...3, which have been tabled in my name, and all of the other amendments in this group. As the Minister has said, my amendments 2 and 3 are a direct response to calls by the Children, Young People and Education Committee for a due-regard duty in relation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to be on the face of the...
Darren Millar: ...is readily available to children and young people in a national format, available across the whole of the country. Because let's not forget: at the moment, as it stands, each individual local education authority will be able to produce different versions of the code—of the information and advice literature that they might want to distribute, rather—and that, I think, will take away,...
Darren Millar: ...and their offices and officials. I also want to put on record, at the start of this debate, my thanks to the clerks, to the researchers and legal advisers of the Children, Young People and Education Committee for the support that they've also provided in drafting the amendments that I tabled for debate today. Their advice has also been invaluable. The purpose of amendment 1 is to ensure...
Darren Millar: ...it more prominently here in the National Assembly and elsewhere. So, it would be good to have a round-up, if you like, on at least an annual basis, of this sort of success in the Welsh further education sector so that we can mark it more prominently as an Assembly.
Darren Millar: I say it again, Cabinet Secretary: for every £1 spent on the education system in England, Wales receives £1.20. There can be no excuse for funding schools by giving them less finance per pupil, per head, than is currently the case. It's scandalous. One way that you could seek to start addressing this particular issue is to target resources at disadvantaged groups, and this is one thing, of...
Darren Millar: ...previous Welsh Government failures to be utterly startling. You blame the UK Government for spending pressures and yet you know full well that the situation is that for every £1 spent on the education system in England, Wales receives £1.20. There can be no excuses for the fact that Welsh pupils are disadvantaged by the funding settlement that your Government—this...
Darren Millar: Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, this Welsh Government, along with its predecessor administrations, has a legacy of underfunding Welsh schools. We know that there are huge differences in terms of school budgets between here and England, and that is putting pupils here in Wales at a serious disadvantage. According to NASUWT Cymru, the per-pupil funding gap, compared to schools in...
Darren Millar: ...'s commissioner has identified in her report about the cost, particularly of bus travel, to children and young people. Now, I know, Minister, that the Welsh Government has under review the home-to-school transport guidance that is issued to local authorities, and, again, I wonder whether you can give us an update on that, particularly in terms of post-16 provision, and perhaps you'll be...
Darren Millar: ...that’s being fed back to us in our constituencies that the 100 per cent pupil uptake target for the advanced Welsh baccalaureate is contributing to this problem. It’s leading to some schools strong-arming students into doing a qualification that is loading them with extra work, which is then preventing them and placing obstacles in their way from them being able to achieve the three As...
Darren Millar: ...to engage in professional development. You’ve said that you want to see that addressed. You haven’t said how you expect that to be addressed, but clearly we need to ensure that regional education consortia and local education authorities are inviting supply teachers and allowing them to engage in professional development opportunities free of charge, at no cost to them. Will you also...
Darren Millar: ...teachers, and I think that that is a concern for all of us. I have to say I was a little surprised that there was no reference to teacher workload in your statement. We do know from the national education workforce survey, which was conducted earlier this year, that 78 per cent of the respondents to that survey said that the workload was the least rewarding aspect of their work. We also...
Darren Millar: ...Parliamentary Assembly was the great value that zoos across the United Kingdom, and in the Republic of Ireland, have to the local economy. And, of course, they do a great deal of work in terms of education and conservation as well. Concerns were raised by Dr Pullen, who is the chief executive of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums, regarding the potential impact of the...
Darren Millar: Well, I thought I’d spelled that out, but just to repeat myself, because you clearly weren’t listening: the education maintenance allowance does not achieve its stated aims. The education maintenance allowance was scrapped in England and they have lower levels of those not in education, employment or training—in fact, record low levels of NEETs—in England, whereas Wales’s rate is...
Darren Millar: ...young people, this is a big issue. It’s one of the top priorities, as Paul Davies and Jeremy Miles acknowledged. The cost of transport is a barrier to people being able to get to their place of education, it’s a barrier to them getting a job interview, let alone getting to and from work. So, we need to do something about this. We’ve come up with a solution, we’ve presented that...
Darren Millar: ...we’ve costed these proposals. First of all, can I just say that your suggestion, Rhianon Passmore, about the fact that if we scrap EMA it’s going to push up the number of people who are not in education, employment or training is wrong, because, actually, Wales has a higher rate of NEETs than England, which does not have EMA at all? You mentioned, Jeremy Miles, about the fact that...
Darren Millar: Can I thank the Minister for his statement and for advance copy of the statement, which I received this afternoon? Like him, I was very unimpressed to see the lack of ambition in some of the local education authority proposals and plans that were published. I was very pleased to welcome the rapid review that he announced earlier this year, which has now been completed by our former colleague...
Darren Millar: ...for £15, which would give them a third off their rail fares. It strikes me that students in particular are very often having to do long journeys, particularly to and from their places of higher education, in order to get back to their families. Will you look seriously at our proposals to extend—effectively, to make all young people in Wales eligible to access a young person’s...
Darren Millar: ...we know that that age bracket is a very tough time because they’ve got exams, very often, falling in that period. Can I just ask you whether you’ve considered actually issuing guidance to local education authorities and indeed to schools on how to support people in those sorts of situations, because, clearly, they need some additional support, over and above that which is provided more...
Darren Millar: ...waiting for you to make a decision here. A decision was actually made by the previous Cabinet in the previous Government and was simply not followed through in terms of extending the remit of the Education Workforce Council, which is the profession, effectively, in Wales. You say that the profession should own these things. Why can’t you give responsibility to the profession’s body,...
Darren Millar: ...so that Welsh-medium learners can take examinations in the language of their choice and have textbooks available to them? This is adding to the burden—the workload burden—of teachers in our schools. You said that you wanted to cut it—this is adding to it, because they’re having to translate resources to dish out to the kids in their classes. It’s unacceptable and we need some...
