Leanne Wood: ...people. They must also require all regions to ensure that CAMHS and social care services provide an integrated service to children with emotional, behavioural and mental health needs. A whole-school approach, mapped and led jointly by health, education and social care is needed to guide schools, and this will ensure that the help that should be available for children and young people will...
Leanne Wood: But if they're not prioritising Welsh-medium education, what do you do then?
Leanne Wood: I recently wrote to you about a school that I visited where a large lump of concrete fell from the ceiling and landed on the floor, and had those pupils been in school at that time, there could've been a serious injury or even worse. Are you saying that that's not a problem?
Leanne Wood: But that won't ensure that every single child is educated in an adequate building, and that is the point that I'm making. This funding squeeze represents difficult decisions for schools right across Wales, not just in the Rhondda, but I recently wrote to schools in my constituency and I just wanted to note a couple of responses here today. One Rhondda primary school has had to make cuts of...
Leanne Wood: Well, it's fantastic when children have those new schools, but there are still way too many children who are being educated in inadequate and dangerous buildings. A recent UK-wide poll found that 90 per cent of teachers believe that well-built and designed schools improve educational outcomes. So, we have an obligation to ensure that our children are educated in buildings that do not harm...
Leanne Wood: .... I want to see many of these ambitions achieved. Without adequate funding, though, not only will these ambitions not be realised, but the next generation is going to be let down. According to the education front line, including education teaching unions—UCAC, NEU and NAHT—there is a funding crisis in Welsh schools. I want to focus my comments on three key issues. Firstly, I want to...
Leanne Wood: ...to have control over them. You talk of strategies, and you bemoan the Tories' welfare policies, while your only real action is to cut the benefits under the responsibility of your own Government: school uniform grant, cut; independent living grant, cut; the education improvement grant, cut; Communities First, cut. A third of Welsh children are living in poverty, thousands rely on food...
Leanne Wood: ...to change this situation? Firstly, the Welsh Government must stop cutting its funding to those in need of support. Just last week we were forced to debate the Welsh Government's decision to cut the school uniform grant for the poorest children. This week Labour are under pressure to reverse their decision to scrap the Welsh independent living grant. In today's amendment to the Plaid Cymru...
Leanne Wood: Poverty is a feminist issue. When young women miss school because they can't afford sanitary products, it's poverty. When women have to use toilet paper, old clothes, or often nothing at all, in place of pads and tampons when they menstruate, it's poverty. When women have to make the choice between buying sanitary products, clothes, bus fare or food, it's poverty. Yes, poverty is a feminist...
Leanne Wood: Five thousand five hundred students benefit from the £700,000 school uniform grant. That's £700,000, which is less than 1/150 of the Welsh Government's budget—half of what your Government spends on pizzas and luxury yacht wear on credit cards, but it's still too much for this Government. The price of school uniforms was the justification given for scrapping this grant. On average, parents...
Leanne Wood: I'm outraged by those figures that were relayed earlier on, and many of those contributory factors are outwith your control. But the school uniform grant is something that is within your control. Now, while the Assembly was in recess, and at the same time as your flagship anti-poverty programme, the Communities First programme was wound up, we heard that you intend to cut the school uniform...
Leanne Wood: ...that announcement sooner rather than later. Our academic institutions and health boards need assurances that you haven't forgotten about doctors. Today, we've seen plans to unveil five new medical schools in England at Sunderland, Lancashire, Lincoln, Canterbury and Chelmsford over the next three years—five new medical schools. It's relevant for Wales that these medical schools are...
Leanne Wood: ...the world. Immigration is one factor affecting the demographics of our society, but emigration is where a devolved Government can make more of a difference, through housing policy, through higher education policy, and a whole range of policy levers mentioned in the Plaid Cymru motion available this afternoon. It's important to begin by recognising the right of young people to live, to...
Leanne Wood: ...A&E for Bronglais and Glangwili, and keeping Withybush open. Now, Plaid Cymru has been warning you for a number of years now about the need to train more doctors. Will you work with Swansea medical school on its proposals to expand the number of doctors in the Hywel Dda health board area? Can you assure people out there, and Members here today, that you will not sign off any decision to...
Leanne Wood: ...underpaid and it's in your gift to lift that pay cap. Workforce planning is one of the most important tools that you have at your disposal, yet you won't embrace the need for a new medical training school in the north. No Westminster Government will do this for us; it's your Labour Government's responsibility. A Labour Cabinet Secretary has now admitted responsibility for the lack of...
Leanne Wood: ...of the debate about supply teachers, and some of our most experienced teachers are earning poor wages because of the situation whereby agencies take a large chunk of the pay available to them from schools. In Denmark, it's against the law to make a profit out of education, First Minister. Legislation like that here would solve the problem with regard to supply teachers. As a matter of...
Leanne Wood: ...Wales, for all supply teachers, like the ones that exist already in Northern Ireland and Scotland, so that we can finally deliver fair play for this important but often marginalised sector in our education system?
Leanne Wood: Commissioner—sorry, Llywydd—a healthy democracy means engaged and informed citizens and I’ve been raising the issue of political and democratic education in schools for some time, but we’ve also got a democratic information deficit amongst adults. In both 2016 and 2017, major surveys have suggested that just over a third of Welsh voters do not know that health is a devolved issue,...
Leanne Wood: 2. What efforts is the Commission undertaking to promote political education? (OAQ51233)
Leanne Wood: ...So, I’ll make one challenge to you today, as we mark 20 years since that ‘yes’ vote: by the end of this Assembly term, will the Labour Government have closed the gap with Scotland on health, education and the economy? And if we approach the end of this term and there seems to be no sign of a closing of that gap, will you then accept and admit that Wales needs a new Government?
