Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 6 December 2016.
Well, with respect, you just need to look at what’s gone on in Scotland with the results today when you’re looking at some of the changes that have gone on in other parts of the United Kingdom. But I’m holding you to account about the vision that you obviously do not have for education in the future. I’ve quoted Huw Lewis, who was the previous Cabinet Secretary. Someone we do miss from this Chamber is dear old Leighton Andrews from the Rhondda—and I congratulate the Member for the Rhondda he lost his seat to—but, ultimately, at least he had a go. And he said to us in 2010 that honesty, leadership and a new approach to accountability was what was required. He wanted, by this stage in the cycle—not two years ago, but in 2010—for the Welsh Government to have got Wales into the top 20. Now, that was dropped, as we heard earlier from questioning, and you wanted to hit the 500 mark. Now, you said that you were confident that you were going to hit the 500 mark next time around, but we haven’t heard anything to give us confidence that we won’t be in the same place in three years’ time from you today.
Why on earth can you not give us some hard and fast commitments here today about where we will be in three years’ time when PISA does its next set of tests, so that at least we can mark the scorecard then, First Minister, and actually not have the same old excuses coming out from Cabinet Secretaries and the First Minister standing here blaming everyone else and not taking a long hard look in the mirror and wondering why it’s all gone wrong?