Suzy Davies: ...timetable with regional Members too on the point that David Rees just raised. I'm sure you'll recall, arising from a previous question, I asked about the possibility of Natural Resources Wales and schools working together in order to plant some saplings and trees, so that our children can learn about science, nature, the history of Wales and the environment around them of course. It’s...
Suzy Davies: ...due to St Teilo's School—that's excellent news. Can you explain then why, overall across the whole of Wales, the number of A to C grades, particularly in those key subjects, has gone down, if schools like St Teilo's are actually bringing the averages up?
Suzy Davies: ...in this year at GCSE, with around 80 per cent achieving A* to C, and they've been doing it for years. Why aren't we looking more closely at their system rather than Scotland, where state schools are now offering fewer subjects and where results for Highers have fallen for the fourth year running? Now, comparing results leads me to the point raised in Plaid's second amendment, and...
Suzy Davies: ...learners sat BTECs. I want to know what that says about your ministerial confidence in so-called vocational qualifications. There is no point, as you did last week, advising Nick Ramsay that all schools in his area are offering an appropriate number of vocational courses, when your decisions have done nothing to convince parents and pupils that vocational qualifications are valuable. And...
Suzy Davies: ...can be protected within a hopefully enhanced local authority budget. I just want to ask you something different now, because this weekend we saw media coverage of concerns over the content of sex education lessons to very young children in parts of England. I know that making religious and sex education a compulsory part of the new curriculum is contentious already, but I have to say even...
Suzy Davies: Bearing in mind the huge changes that will be happening in schools, not least with the change in curriculum and the preparation for that, but also the long-standing and very acute complaints made by schools now about their direct funding, I have to say I was disappointed not to see that more explicitly in even the cross-cutting themes of Government, because, of course, if you get education...
Suzy Davies: ...for Wales of the UK Government's 2019 spending round, and in that she reinforced the Government's view that budget spending decisions should be predicated on eight areas of priority. Why isn't school-age education one of those priority areas?
Suzy Davies: ...surprised to see in Stats Wales that, as well as those who are qualified to teach Welsh as a first language, 40 per cent of our teaching workforce is qualified to teach Welsh in English-medium schools as a second language. Whether they're using those skills, of course, is a little let easy to ascertain. The number of new entrants choosing to train in Welsh has been falling, and the number...
Suzy Davies: ...but for the benefit of the whole of the region and beyond. The economic development that Huw Irranca-Davies referred to, of course, needs a well-prepared workforce who've had the best out of their school and college experience. I wonder if one of the greatest risks to that sustained economic development that he was talking about, including Ogmore, will be cross-sector employer loss of...
Suzy Davies: Lynne Neagle mentioned earlier the Children, Young People and Education Committee report, which in very strong terms criticised both Governments regarding school funding. The UK Government has responded and increased the Welsh block as a result of increasing its own UK schools budgets by £14 billion. So, we do now need to see action on this from Welsh Government, and I'm afraid, Minister,...
Suzy Davies: ...session, I'm afraid I was none the wiser on how that actually worked, and I draw Members' attention to recommendation 3 of the report. I also hoped to discover how investment from, say, the education budget might affect other policy areas and impacts there. I'm not quite sure I got clarity on that really from this session. For me, it's a live issue, because with my portfolio I'm seeing...
Suzy Davies: ...ve mentioned, have taken steps and, in this case, have taken down trees to reduce the risk to people's properties. I remember, growing up in Vikki Howells's constituency, getting people coming into schools and telling us about the dangers of mountain fires. Judging by the statistics you've given us to date, that probably seems to have worked for a certain generation, anyway. But is there...
Suzy Davies: ...was one, and of course there have been several policy announcements since then. Thank you for your statement, though. You began by saying: 'We will press on with important measures in respect of education…and transport'. So, I suppose my first question has to be why you're not bringing forward a new Act to replace the outdated Learner Travel (Wales) Measure 2008, not least to protect...
Suzy Davies: It's a perfectly good answer, Siân. 'We are AMs, not detectives,' I suppose would be my response to that, but it's not a reason for not having more AMs, incidentally. Mark Reckless—school performance and how to judge it. Actually, I think this is worthy, perhaps, of a full debate at some point. I'd be very happy for the leader of the Brexit Party to table that. My thinking at the moment is...
Suzy Davies: ...this before and something needs to change, I don't think you did cover off the English, maths and Welsh part particularly, because those particular subjects, in our current system—not our current education system, but in our current economic system, our higher and further education system—have a unique status. They're always asked for, and I would be very worried if schools were given...
Suzy Davies: ...Lywydd, and I move the motion. I tabled this motion today for two particular reasons. The first is that these are pretty important changes to the current system of assessing the performance of a school, and the second, which isn't a matter for this Minister in particular, but, I hope, for Government generally—I hope, Minister, that you will forgive me for using this particular example to...
Suzy Davies: Afternoon, First Minister. In the summary of responses to the consultation on the school uniforms—we saw the summary of responses last month—one of the questions was whether people agreed that school governing bodies should have regard to the affordability of setting school uniform policy. A very sensible question. But value for money and affordability aren't always the same thing....
Suzy Davies: ..., through individual debates such as this, where we can hold the Welsh Government to account for its failings on certain aspects of its strategy. Today, we’re focusing on small businesses, not education, because it seems to me that the Government isn’t willing to provide the opportunity to scrutinise. Once again, it has shown disrespect, unfortunately—I have to say that—for this...
Suzy Davies: ...to access the benefits of bilingualism, by looking at points 2 and 5. We are now three years into the Government’s strategy and the Government says that it’s on track to meet its early years education target by 2021. But it is very quiet on all the other targets. Regarding the issue of working with adults in work today, the work undertaken by the National Centre for Learning Welsh has...
Suzy Davies: ...to see how they can use the freedom of how to populate the bac to get this right. This is exactly what the new curriculum could look like, but, as we heard, we had evidence from students in other schools, who were basically being told what to study: 'Just do a little bit extra than what you did at post 16, add bits of work you've already done.' That is not how the bac should work. So, if...
