6. Will the First Minister make a statement on the implementation of 'Qualified for Life: A Curriculum for Wales—A Curriculum for Life'? (OAQ51136)

On 26 September the Cabinet Secretary for Education launched ‘Education in Wales: Our national mission’. That reaffirms our commitment to building a transformational curriculum in order to deliver a better education system for Wales.

I broadly welcome the Welsh Government’s approach to implementing the recommendations of Professor Graham Donaldson, but Members will be aware of Professor Donaldson’s comments that were reported by the BBC this morning, in which he remarked that ‘progress remained good’, but also cautioned against

‘any loss of momentum in the whole dynamic of this reform’.

What discussions has the Welsh Government had with Professor Donaldson with regard to the changes that were announced by the Cabinet Secretary last week? And what would be the First Minister’s response to Professor Donaldson’s concerns about a potential loss of momentum?

Well, Professor Donaldson actually oversees the implementation board. He agrees that we’ve made the right decision to introduce the curriculum as a phased roll-out rather than a big bang. The approach will mean that all schools have the time to engage with the development of the curriculum and be fully prepared, of course, for the changes. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development have already said that we need to continue our drive to create a curriculum for the twenty-first century, and that’s what we will do, but at the appropriate pace.

First Minister, while we welcomed the postponement of the implementation of the curriculum, one aspect that still concerns us is the fact that secondary schools will be required to deliver two curricula for pupils in those schools for a period of five years. Now, that’s going to cause absolute havoc and I believe it’s a recipe for chaos for, particularly, newly qualified teachers coming into the system, who will have been trained to deliver a new curriculum but are having to deliver the old, and for the already burdened profession that we have out there, 70-odd per cent of which said that they felt overworked and stressed because of their workload. So, what are you going to do to make sure that schools are geared up to deliver two curricula to the pupils in those schools and ensure that pupil attainment doesn’t dip as a result, and that staff aren’t overworked more so than they are now?

Well, if that was a concern, then the teaching unions wouldn’t support this, but they have. They have supported the phased implementation. Teaching skills are transferable. It’s not the case that somebody is trained to teach a particular curriculum. They have teaching skills that they adapt according to the curriculum that’s before them. It’s hardly unknown, of course, for schools to teach different curriculums at the same time. When the national curriculum came in, schools had to gear up for that. There was often overlap at that point. Foundation phase was the same. My father worked in education in the 1980s and I can tell you, things used to change almost on a half-yearly basis, which the teachers had to deal with. So obsessed were Ministers at that time—and they weren’t Welsh Ministers; they didn’t have control over education then, over the syllabus—teachers found themselves having to satisfy the whims of Ministers who wanted to change things all the time. Now, that surely is not the best approach. It’s hugely important that we don’t introduce a curriculum until the profession is ready. They’ve indicated that they’re content with this approach, and that is why we’ve taken the approach that we have.