<p>The 2018 PISA Assessment</p>

Part of 4. 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:08 pm on 21 June 2017.

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Photo of Darren Millar Darren Millar Conservative 3:08, 21 June 2017

I’m very grateful for that response. Cabinet Secretary, you know that the PISA results that were published last year showed that Wales has suffered a decade of decline in international league tables, with worse scores for literacy, maths and science in 2015 than there were in 2006. And those poor scores prompted your predecessors to announce all sorts of Welsh Government targets, the most recent of which, of course, were in 2011; we had Leighton Andrews setting a target to be in the top 20 in the international league tables by 2015. That, of course, was highly unlikely and, as a result, was scrapped by his successor, Huw Lewis, who set a new target of achieving scores of 500, at least, in each of the subjects by 2021. Now, at the time of that announcement, you criticised the then Welsh Government’s decision, saying that it was, and I quote,

‘an example of the absolute poverty of ambition’, and you accused the Government, at that time, of ‘settling for mediocrity’.

Last week, you told the Children, Young People and Education Committee—