Alun Davies: ..., I must admit my eyes were dragged straight to the final chapter, where he says he wanted to make a few reflections. I agree very much with what he said, thanking people who were retiring. As an education Minister, I remember the work of Rhiannon Walker, and I think it is important that we put on record here today thanks to her for her work in her retirement. It's also important to look...
Alun Davies: ..., that it's quite instructive that the Welsh Conservatives would prefer to support the UK Government than they would to stand up for Wales? I must have got my geography lessons terribly wrong at school, because I just discovered on the weekend that the Huddersfield to Leeds railway serves Wales, and that Crewe to Manchester serves Wales, but only if you're a Tory. Because at the end of the...
Alun Davies: I appreciate the Minister's response. We have, for some time, talked about the Welsh-medium education continuum at school, but I'm concerned about the transition from education in school and then the post-16 period in FE college, universities and so on. I welcomed your statement a few years ago to offer an additional role for the coleg Cymraeg to secure additional investment, if you will, in...
Alun Davies: 9. Will the Minister make a statement on the opportunities available for entering Welsh-medium post-16 education? OQ59265
Alun Davies: ...that he does respond in the way that he has. There are three things that I would like to say this afternoon—three priorities, perhaps, would be a better way of expressing it. First of all, education. We've discussed education already during this session, and education is crucially important when it comes to ensuring that we create new Welsh speakers, providing opportunities for those...
Alun Davies: ...people understand not simply the technicality and the numbers, but the human impact of a genocide against the Jewish and other peoples of Europe, so that we can hope that the people who are being educated today in Wales, although they will have lost the human connection, will have that human understanding of genocide and of what the Holocaust did to all of us today.
Alun Davies: ...to fully give evidence when it is required to do so. And the point I would make to Ministers—there's one Minister in the Chamber this afternoon—is that we took evidence subsequently from the education Minister, Jeremy Miles, and the evidence we received from Jeremy was first class, and one of the reasons for that was that he was in the room with us and he was able to provide a far...
Alun Davies: ...and I don't think there's any need for us to debate this afternoon the place of sport in our lives. I only had to listen to my 12-year-old son talking about how he was wearing his football shirt to school last Friday to know how important that was to him. And standing in the stadium watching Wales walking out of the tunnel, for the first time in a world cup since 1958, still—I can still...
Alun Davies: ...are learning the Welsh language, and who use the Welsh language. I remember talking to Carwyn about how we were going to launch the policy, and members of the Welsh football team came together at a school not far from here. Chris Coleman was the manager at the time, and he talked about how the Football Association of Wales had tried to use the Welsh language, normalising the use of the...
Alun Davies: ...this opportunity extends to everybody across all the different settings and across different geographies and demographics? I'm particularly interested in what the Minister had to say about further education and about youth services, because I want to ensure that everybody, every young person I represent in Blaenau Gwent, has the same opportunity to participate in these schemes, and the...
Alun Davies: ...be useful to hear an update from the Minister on the progress that's being made, to ensure that children and young people from all backgrounds have an equality of opportunity to progress their education. We all know and we're all aware that children who come from particularly difficult and deprived backgrounds have suffered during the pandemic, and have seen that attainment gap widen. You...
Alun Davies: ...we understand these things. But it is also important that we understand the impact of inflation on services that have been delivered. What is the impact of inflation going to be on the NHS or on education? What is the impact of inflation going to be on local government budgets? Brexit has been a calamity for this country. It is an ongoing calamity and is at the root of many of the economic...
Alun Davies: ...very well known and very clear, it surely cannot be right that we have a debate for 30 minutes tomorrow on the Order paper for this matter. This isn't serious politics; this is the politics of the school yard to believe that we can have a debate on such a serious matter in 30 minutes. It's not a serious way of conducting our affairs here, it's not a serious way of debating major issues...
Alun Davies: I don't know what you were doing, First Minister, in 1973; I was in Dukestown Junior School in Tredegar. I'm not sure what Darren Millar was doing in 1973, but I'm sure he wasn't reading the report of Lord Kilbrandon, who reported at that time that Wales needed a Parliament of 100 members. Since then, we've had reports from Ivor Richard, from Laura McAllister, from everybody who's looked at...
Alun Davies: ..., to Peter Fox and to Vikki Phillips—Vikki Howells—who also supported this motion. It's important to discuss, and it's important to debate. It's important to remember, and it's important to educate and to learn. But it is also important not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to relive the horrors of the past. For many of us, and myself perhaps I'm speaking personally, being born 20...
Alun Davies: 7. What assistance is the Minister putting in place to support pupils who are living in poverty over the Easter school holidays? OQ57885
Alun Davies: ...pray in Welsh. If there isn't a metaphor for Wales and for Tredegar, that probably is it. But this also stretches back and informs who we are today. When Griffith Jones introduced his circulating schools, he didn't just preach the Bible, but he ended illiteracy; he created a literate nation in the medium of Welsh, and that led to reaching out again and creating a different cultural...
Alun Davies: ...9 and 10, relate to section 23 of the Bill. We asked the Minister to confirm why a legal provision for registration is necessary, particularly as it appears possible to regulate other tertiary education providers through the terms and conditions of funding. If a provision in law is needed, we recommend that the categories referred to by the Minister during the committees' Stage 1...
Alun Davies: ...—the Llywydd will remember these too—and that did more for me in terms of promoting the Welsh language, enjoying the Welsh language, than any lessons that I attended. I didn't have lessons in school, but that's a different issue. But we have to create the opportunity where people can enjoy the Welsh language, and where the Welsh language isn't the language of the classroom, but the...
Alun Davies: ...live in Wales. I'm anxious that a young person in Tredegar or Brynmawr, Ebbw Vale or Abertillery has the same opportunity to access an apprenticeship, to access opportunities for further and higher education, to access an opportunity to begin a career and work as a child growing up elsewhere, a young person living elsewhere. So, I'm anxious to understand, First Minister, how we can ensure...
