Kirsty Williams: Could I thank Darren for his broad welcome for the direction of travel outlined in the White Paper? In response to many of the questions that he has raised, the whole point of having a White Paper and a consultation is because we want to canvass a wide variety of views on these areas. First of all, if I start by going backwards, I’ll start with the sixth forms and you’ll be aware that the...
Kirsty Williams: Deputy Presiding Officer, earlier this year I made a statement to the Assembly announcing the Government’s response to Professor Ellen Hazelkorn’s report, ‘Towards 2030: A framework for building a world-class post-compulsory education system for Wales’. That report made significant recommendations for reforming the post-compulsory education and training—hereafter I shall call it...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Lynne. It is absolutely crucial. As we discussed in committee this morning, there is much that we can do to prevent difficult situations for our young people and children, but we will never, ever be able to prevent them from experiencing life's ups and downs—whether that's bereavement, whether that is the break-up, perhaps, of a significant relationship in their life, whether...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Lynne. Promoting the emotional resilience of children and young people must be understood within the wider context of their well-being. Higher levels of well-being are linked to increased educational achievement and engagement. For that reason, we are adding ‘well-being’ as a fifth objective in the next version of ‘Qualified for Life’.
Kirsty Williams: Thank you for that. I am aware of concerns on the issue of literature in key stage 4 and that some schools have been lobbying for increased emphasis on literature in performance measures. I have already signalled that school accountability is being reviewed as part of our education reforms and our national mission to improve education standards. We introduced new programmes of study for both...
Kirsty Williams: Thank you, Jayne. We recognise the importance of fostering a love of reading from an early age. Our national literacy and numeracy programme and its key policies, including the national literacy and numeracy framework and our grant-funded literacy interventions, support us in achieving this aim.
Kirsty Williams: Well, Mark, it is important that local authorities get as much education money, which is given to them either through the RSG or through special grants from this Government, to the front line. That’s where I expect money to be utilised—in our classrooms. I would urge local authorities again to look at ensuring that as much delegated budget is available as possible. One of the other...
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.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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. 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, 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: 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: 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: 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.
