Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:17 pm on 3 October 2017.
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.