Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd.

Diolch, Llywydd. I’m sure, Cabinet Secretary, that you’ll have seen the figures from NUT Cymru published this week, showing that, in the four years since 2012, 0.25 million teaching days were lost to stress-related illness in Wales. You’ll also be aware, I’m sure, that college lecturers in Wales are striking tomorrow, with their union warning that a heavy workload is ruining their lives and pushing them to the brink. And, of course, we’ve well trailed in this Chamber the Education Workforce Council’s recent workforce survey, which showed that a third of schoolteachers and a quarter of FE lecturers tell us that they intend to leave their respected professions in the next three years. Now, when you agreed your 10 education priorities with the First Minister on entering Government, shouldn’t you at the very least have included an eleventh, which is the well-being of the workforce, because, without that, you’re not going to achieve any of the 10?

Well, Llyr, as we rehearsed in the committee this morning, one of my priorities is to ensure that we have an excellent and outstanding workforce in all aspects of education, and workload concerns are very real. They vary greatly across the education workforce; they’re not just confined to teachers in schools, as you have recognised. Different issues and priorities arise depending on a variety of factors, including what phase of education somebody might find themselves teaching in; a rurality where, perhaps, teachers are teaching a class with a variety of age groups, requiring significant differentiation, which can be difficult to do; deprivation; subject area; and their role. What’s important is we try to do something about that. The first ever teacher survey that we’ve done has provided us with a wealth of opportunity to try and understand some of these very real concerns from the chalkface, and we continue to analyse those data. Detailed discussions are taking place with the education workforce unions on policy in early development, and we continue to work in partnership with those unions to try and address the concerns to a variety of work streams within the Government.

Thank you for your answer, but I think it’s clear to everyone that the statistics tell a clear story that we have a workforce that’s on its knees in terms of struggling to cope with the work that confronts them. Now, the loss of so many teaching days clearly has a number of impacts, least of all on the individual who’s off work. It disrupts the education of the children, schools’ finances, of course, when you have to bring in supply teachers—and I saw that Cardiff alone has spent £12 million on supply teachers in this academic year only—and, of course, on the remaining staff, there’s an impact there because they have to carry an additional burden invariably. Now, a year ago this month, you established the ministerial supply model taskforce. You published the report back in February, but we’ve heard nothing since, really. Now, given that our education system is so reliant on supply teaching, when will we see definitive action from your Government on this front?

Well, Llyr, I don’t disagree with your analysis of the impact of days lost to teaching. The issue is what to do about it. As I said in my first answer to you, we have a variety of work streams looking to try and avoid that problem in the first place—i.e. not to be reliant on supply teachers, but, actually, to keep teachers well, resilient and in front of our children in the classroom. I, in conjunction with my Cabinet colleague for health, are looking at plans for what we can to do support resilience and support the mental health of teachers by giving them tools to address their own issues around stress management and workload management, as well as being able to teach those then on to the children.

With regard to the task and finish group on the supply workforce, I have to say I was somewhat disappointed with the conclusions of that report. If we had hoped that the task and finish group would come up with a silver bullet to solve this problem, then I’m afraid the report has not been able to do that. We continue to discuss ways in which we can work not to diminish but to limit the reliance on supply teaching, and that is tied up with our work on policy development following the devolution of teachers’ pay and conditions.

But it’s four months since you told me that you were looking to move on this agenda, and given, again, the data and the statistics that we have, clearly, time is of the essence. So, I won’t press you further on that today, but, clearly, there’s a message there that needs to be listened to.

Can I just change direction a little bit for my final question? It’ll become clear, Presiding Officer, why I’m directing my question to the Cabinet Secretary and not the Minister in a moment. It’s about the additional learning needs Bill. The Minister told us that £10 million of the £20 million budget he has for financing the additional learning needs transformation programme comes from the £100 million that you agreed with the First Minister for raising school standards. He told us that at Stage 1 scrutiny of the Bill. Now that it has become evident, of course, that the cost of the additional learning needs legislation is substantially higher—up to £13 million more expensive—than was originally anticipated over the projected period, could you tell us whether you expect a further sum to be vired from the £100 million for school standards, and, if that does happen, what impact do you think that’ll have on that particular budget?

Let us be absolutely clear: in radically reforming the way in which we support children with additional learning needs, that is integral to our national mission of raising standards in Welsh schools and closing the attainment gap. The performance of those children is crucial if we are to see the changes in Welsh education that we need. Now, undoubtedly, there is a resource implication for ensuring that those children—and that legislation is implemented successfully, and we will continue to have discussions both within the education department on how that piece of legislation is funded, and discussions across Government. But I’m absolutely clear that we cannot divorce the education of our children with additional learning needs from our national mission to raise standards for all.

Conservative spokesperson, Darren Millar.

Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, on Friday, the day after the general election, there was a piece of news that suggested that your Government is cutting £28 million-worth of funding from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, which is obviously going to have a significant impact on Welsh universities. Why did you decide to bury bad news on that day, and how can you defend those cuts?

The Higher Education Funding Council for Wales made that announcement. As Darren Millar would well know as the spokesperson for his party, HEFCW is an arm’s-length body and the delivery of that particular announcement was nothing to do with me.

You didn’t answer my question, which was: how can you defend—how can you defend—the cuts that HEFCW is now having to deliver, because of the lack of funding from the Welsh Government, to Welsh universities? We know already that Bangor University, Aberystwyth University, Trinity Saint David, and the University of South Wales have all warned that they’re going to have to make significant cuts to their workforce and restrict courses. How can you defend the cuts that you are now imposing upon our Welsh universities?

Darren, let’s be clear: education as a whole in Wales faces a very difficult time given the constraints of the budget that the Welsh Government has available to it, and very difficult decisions have to be made. But I’m sure, having taken such a great interest in the press notice, you will have read the words of David Blaney, the chief executive, who has explained that these cuts are a result of the fact that an additional £20 million, which I was able to find in-year for HEFCW, will not be available next year. Part of that money is being used to try and put our universities in a better position going forward. And another part of the cut relates to the fact that we have removed the money for the Coleg Cenedlaethol out of HEFCW and we are funding that work directly as a Welsh Government, and that also appears in the fact that there is less money available in HEFCW. Let’s also be clear: the money available via HEFCW to Welsh universities is a very small proportion of the money available to Welsh HEIs; I understand it is less than 10 per cent of their overall budgets.

Well, I’m not surprised it’s very small, and it’s going to get a darn sight smaller, isn’t it, while you keep underfunding our Welsh university sector and the Higher Education funding Council for Wales. The reality is that this is going to widen the funding gap between Welsh universities and universities over the border in England, which is going to make it more difficult for them to recruit students, which is going to widen the funding gap, therefore, even further and have a huge impact on research and training. And I have to say, I’m astonished by your volte-face, given the fact that you were championing extra resources going into HEFCW only last year when you were in opposition. Your tone has completely changed, you’ve clearly adopted the Labour line on our Welsh universities, and I would urge you again to look at the resources within your departmental budget to see what additional resources you can make available to help close this funding gap, which has widened under Welsh Labour-led administrations and looks set to widen even further as a result of you sitting around the Cabinet table.

Darren, let’s be absolutely clear what I was able to do on coming into Government: it was to find the additional £20 million that had been taken out of the budget whilst I was in opposition, and we’ve been able to make that money available to higher education. But, seriously, I will take no lectures from a Conservative politician with regard to the funding of higher education. You have, in England, thrown that sector to the market, and it is the market that is driving HE provision in England. That will not happen in Wales, and we will use the opportunity of our radical reforms under the Diamond proposals to move our HE funding onto a more sustainable footing. That is a system that is being looked on with envy by other people, such as Scotland.

UKIP spokesperson, Michelle Brown.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can the Cabinet Secretary tell us how many primary schools feed into high schools that are in the red or amber category and how many primaries in the red and amber categories feed into high schools that are in the yellow or green categories?

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.

Okay. Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. Schools in the amber category will receive up to 15 days’ support, with those in the red category receiving up to 25 days’ support. There’s no mention of additional resources in the guidance given to parents and schools—the additional resources being for the purposes of employing more teachers and to provide additional and upgraded facilities. Are you content that 25 days’ support is enough to take a school out of the red category, and what sort of work is going to be done with schools during those 25 days?

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 the red category and, year on year, have moved up the categorisation system and now find themselves as green schools. Now, some schools’ school improvement journey will take longer and they will need more sustained levels of support. The whole point behind our categorisation system is that, by working collectively with the consortia and the individual schools, we can identify shortcomings, we can identify what needs to be done, and the support will be put in place to make those improvements.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. Schools will clearly benefit from the kind of advice and support you’re talking about, and I realise that improving schools is an ongoing process, which is why the lack of concrete support reflected in the guidance on the school classification system concerns me. However, there are young people who will have spent their education in either an amber or red classified school whilst you’re taking the softly softly approach to school improvement. What are you going to do to improve the life chances of young people who have been failed by the Welsh education system?

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 high expectations of our education system. I have high expectations of our school leaders. They are in no doubt of that. But I also know that I need to put in place measures to help those schools make those improvements, and that’s what I will continue to do.