I would like to take this opportunity to personally and formally welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Education to her role on behalf of the people of Islwyn. I wish her well in her vital role and she should know that she will have my support in ensuring that we leave no child behind in our drive to lift educational outcomes.

‘Education is “the guardian genius of our democracy.” Nothing really means more to our future, not our military defences, not our missiles or our bombers, not our production economy, not even our democratic system of government. For all of these are worthless if we lack the brain power to support and sustain them.’

Those are the words of the thirty-sixth President of the USA, Lyndon Baines Johnson. Education was a cornerstone of President Johnson’s worthy dream of a great society for the American people, and it is the cornerstone of the Welsh Labour programme of government. As a teacher by profession, I am also old enough to know what it was like literally to walk and use the chalk. I recognise the journey that we have travelled. It is thanks to Welsh Labour policy and recognition of the importance of transformational teaching and learning, and those learning environments, that we stand today in the knowledge that these are innovative schools and fit-for-purpose educational establishments built in Wales, and that they are second to none. It is because of the twenty-first century schools programme that I say that it is more than a building programme.

The Welsh Government plans to invest £700 million between 2014-15 and 2018-19. Match-funded by local authorities, this would result in £1.4 billion capital investment in schools and colleges in Wales, supporting 150 projects across all local authorities by April 2019. Let me repeat that with the Welsh Labour Government and local Welsh councils working together £1.4 billion will revolutionise the educational landscape of Wales. It is an unprecedented commitment to our children and an unprecedented commitment to the future of Wales by this Welsh Government. It is of vital importance to our communities, our children and our skills and qualifications economy, and it would not have happened without a Labour Government.

It is no exaggeration to say that the twenty-first century schools programme is a flagship policy that marks out Welsh devolution. It aims to deliver: learning environments in Wales that will enable the successful implementation of strategies for improvement and better educational outcomes; it will deliver greater economy and efficiency for learning environments through better use of resources; and it will deliver a sustainable education system in Wales that meets national building standards and reduces the recurrent costs and carbon footprint of education buildings.

It is because of this groundbreaking programme here in Wales that Wales is envied across the UK. In January 2016, our former Minister, Huw Lewis, gave an up update during scrutiny of the 2016-17 draft budget. He confirmed that Welsh Government’s overall target is for 150 schools and colleges to be refurbished or rebuilt by the end of April 2019. Members of this Chamber and our dedicated teaching workforce across Wales are very painfully aware of the state of school buildings in the 1980s and 1990s. This is a time, as a school governor then, where I recall with genuine horror being forced to consider not curriculum planning but the sacking of excellent teachers that we could not afford to lose; a time that I do not wish to replicate, when we also should have been building schools as cathedrals of learning, not portakabins in the playground, as they still remain in some quarters. [Interruption.] Not at the moment. I’ve got enough, thank you.

Very recently I donned my own very hard hat here and wellies to tour the rapidly emerging example in my constituency, the Islwyn High School. As part of the ambitious twenty-first century schools programme, Caerphilly County Borough Council announced in 2013 that both Oakdale and Pontllanfraith comprehensive schools will close in 2016. Pupils from both schools will transfer to a brand-new, shiny, purpose-built, state-of-the-art £24 million school to be built on the plateau 3 site within the Oakdale Business Park. This is thanks to a Welsh Labour Government and the Welsh Labour Party and Welsh Labour policy in action.

The school will initially accommodate 1,150 pupils transferring across from both schools and will be built to permanently educate 1,000 mainstream pupils from the catchment area, and 50 with complex needs, in a specialist resource base, from across the county. Partner primary schools include Bryn, Cwmfelinfach, Penllwyn, Pontllanfraith, Rhiw Syr Dafydd, Trinant and Ynysddu. The main school will be three storeys high, and a sports hall of a similar height will be linked to a two-storey building that will be the school’s dining hall. It will be built in a modern design and plans will include an eco garden and water features. The school will also boast a floodlit 3G sports pitch and a 200-metre athletics track, along with a multi-use sports pitch for netball and tennis. This school will truly be a community school with close working links with all stakeholders, including parents, partner primary schools, local employers and the people living in the local area.

I recently invited a number of children from both Oakdale and Pontllanfraith comprehensives to accompany me on a tour of the new school site. These children, from years 7, 8 and 9, ranged from 11 to 14 years of age, and they will be the direct beneficiaries of this policy and of this new school. What I saw in their eyes was a genuine appreciation of the possibilities that lay before them and a real excitement for their future, and an appreciation, unspoken, that we, as politicians, value them and that society invests in them, and that their futures, by ensuring they learn in such a magnificent environment, will be safeguarded.

I was struck, as we left the building site, by the questions that the children posed to the construction team from Willmot Dixon. The new Islwyn high is being built on the site of the old Oakdale colliery—part of that community’s legacy—which closed in 1989. Whilst looking to their future, it was those children, those pupils, who asked, ‘What is the history of this coal mine?’ and could it be reflected in the physical build of their new school. Welsh twenty-first century children in a Welsh twenty-first century school cognisant of their community’s heritage and proud history, which forms the tapestry of the Welsh story, but in a globalised future—true evidence that twenty-first century schools is more than a building programme, with the true potential to transform lives.

But, twenty-first century schools is more than buildings and concrete; it is integral to our nation’s progress and our place in the world. The long-term aim is to develop an overarching capital investment programme for all education sectors, including both further and higher education sectors, which will aim to deliver priority improvement objective project programme. My good friend behind me, John Griffiths, AM for Newport East, would have spoken in this debate if we did not already have so many speakers. He is rightly proud that the centre of Newport could become the heart of learning for the whole of Gwent if a £60 million-development between the city’s university and Coleg Gwent goes ahead. The University of South Wales and Coleg Gwent have teamed up to develop plans for a new knowledge quarter on the banks of the River Usk. This scheme involves a major development at the university’s city campus, with institutions sharing space in the new building or buildings. Although formal funding arrangements are yet to be finalised, investment is expected from the Welsh Government. As a spokesperson from Coleg Gwent has stated, if we can only realise this ambition, students will be able to come in at 16 or as adult learners to a new, state-of-the-art further education college in the centre of the new city.

Such actions are non-accidental and are purposeful, and they have unleashed Welsh Government resources into an education arena of spending, coupled with a groundbreaking curriculum and Donaldson impacts. I have no doubt these will affect positively pupils’ future life chances and their opportunities—the reason why I came into politics—everything that Labour values and Labour policies achieve in tandem, and for all in our community and not just for the top 5 per cent. Such programmes demonstrate a powerful impact on people and are why I am here today. Education is indeed the key to the social mobility so often spoken of in academic circles, but which in reality protects an individual so that they do not have to rely on zero-hours contracts from an uncaring UK Government. It provides a real pathway forward to a satisfying, rewarding and useful life. Community-focused schools here, and community-flexible hubs of the future are a huge theme within the twenty-first century schools programme, alongside carbon reduction and BREEAM excellence standardisation.

So, comrades—I will say that again to the Chamber—I commend this programme of transformational improvement to our pupils’ teaching and learning environments in the knowledge that research backs the importance of the impact on educational achievement, attainment and attendance, all key drivers for our nation in building our nation’s skills, employability, growth and productivity.

The impact of Brexit and not being able at this point in the future to draw down further European structural funding streams that we currently bid for will, I have no doubt, cause hugely significant challenges to our Welsh Government programme in the future, for phase 2. But this is a challenge that we will collectively as a Government and a nation seek to meet. There is no greater priority than ensuring our Welsh children are equipped to go into the world ready to compete with anybody in the world, and, as such, I am proud to commend to this Chamber the Welsh Labour Government’s twenty-first century schools programme—that it is more than a building programme. Diolch.