I now call on the party spokespeople to question the Cabinet Secretary. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd.

Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, you’ve acknowledged to me in this Chamber—and the First Minister, in fairness, has said very much the same—that the Government isn’t where it would like to be in terms of supply teaching here in Wales. The Children, Young People and Education committee, of course, published its report, suggesting actions in the last Assembly. The ministerial supply model taskforce was set up last year and it reported back at the beginning of this year. With the sector becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress, your most recent letter to the education committee last week suggests that it could now be another two years before a new model is developed and ultimately implemented. That’s well over four years after the Government accepted all of the recommendations in that committee report back in 2015. So, do you sympathise with the sector’s frustrations around this and are they justified in being aggrieved at the Government’s slow pace of reform?

Llyr, the issue around supply teaching is a complex and sensitive one. You will be aware that the task and finish group that was set up by the previous Minister have acknowledged in their own report, which was delivered to me, that there is no single answer to addressing the issue around supply teaching. It’s not fair to say that no action has been taken. A group has been set up by myself to work through and implement the findings of the task and finish report. So, for instance, supply teachers now have access to Hwb, whereas they didn’t have that before. We are working on new training arrangements for supply teachers. We have new collaborative arrangements in a number of local authorities around newly qualified teachers, who find themselves working in a supply route, to better support them in their role. And we continue to look at new models of delivering supply.

As I said in my statement last week, in a question, I think, you raised then, officials have recently been in Northern Ireland to look at the experience of Northern Ireland. However, until we have the completion of the devolution of teachers’ pay and conditions, we are somewhat constrained by our ability to introduce an innovative new model that I would like to see.

Well, I’ve been approached by a constituent—and you mentioned pay and conditions—who was earning £115 a day as a supply teacher. She’s now had a letter from her local authority to say that all schools must work through the private supply teaching agency, New Directions, with very few exceptions. And she tells me that will mean her pay will be cut to £85 a day, because New Directions retains about 30 per cent of the money paid by schools for the supply teachers. Is it any wonder that there’s an increasing shortage of supply teachers, particularly in certain subject areas? And do you accept that our supply teachers deserve a better deal and a fairer day’s pay?

The issue of the employment of supply teachers is for individual schools. Schools do not necessarily have to go through those individual procedures. Local authorities are encouraged to use the consortia arrangements, because that gives us some level of confidence around, for instance, checks for the individual practitioners who may be working in our schools. One of the issues that we did find with the task and finish group is that some of these smaller organisations that organise and supply supply teachers are not following some of the basic checks that we would want to ensure ourselves were happening in our schools.

So, as I said, ultimately, there’s a model for individual schools, but I would expect that all proper protections are in place for our supply teaching workforce. What’s important to me is that we use supply teachers when necessary, but supply teaching doesn’t become the default in many of our schools, and that disrupts learning, potentially, and has an impact on standards.

Well, you haven’t addressed the question about whether they get a fair deal out of this. Because another supply teacher tells me he’s considering giving up the job that he’s done for 18 years because of this drastic reduction that he’s facing in pay. And, in the meantime, of course, he tells me that he sees New Directions paying its directors a dividend of £100,000 a piece, and a share in a further £430,000 dividend from the firm’s parent company. At the very time our schools are increasingly dependent on supply teachers for their services and support, you’re kicking the prospect of reform two, maybe three, years further down the line. Now, in the meantime, supply teachers are seeing their pay being cut. So, do you think that it’s right that a private agency is taking a third of supply teachers’ pay?

As I said, the employment arrangements for individual supply teachers are a matter for schools. One of the more interesting examples of an alternative model that the task and finish group looked at was a co-operative model that was set up by teachers themselves in the south-west of England, and I’m very keen to see whether there are any lessons that can be learned from that.

With regard to the use of private agencies, that’s one of the reasons why we have set up these new consortia arrangements with local authorities for NQTs, so that, actually, it is the local authorities that are responsible for placing supply teachers in those areas. And those types of models, and the social contract that we have between us as a Welsh Government and our teaching workforce, is one I want to build on.

Conservative spokesperson, Darren Millar.

Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, this summer saw the worst Welsh GCSE results in a decade, with the pass rate falling to its lowest level since 2006. It provides us with further evidence that successive Welsh Labour-led administrations—and now this coalition Government—is failing children and young people here in Wales. What are you going to do to turn this situation around?

What I’m going to do is implement the contents of ‘Education in Wales: Our National Mission’, which was published last week, and which I answered questions on last week in this Chamber.

You haven’t specifically said what you’re going to do to turn the GCSE results around. One thing that would be helpful, of course, is having GCSE textbooks that are available in the Welsh language for those pupils who wish to sit their exams through the medium of Welsh. But, as you will probably be aware, the new specification for religious studies GCSEs, which has already been published—there aren’t any textbooks at all available for those religious studies GCSEs, either in English or Welsh. So, we’re not going to see any improvements until we actually get some work done by your Government on making sure that teachers are equipped with the resources that they need, and learners have the ability to access the resources they need, to drive these standards up. You gave us assurances in the past that these were issues that had been dealt with. We’re now at the beginning of October and these textbooks still aren’t available in either of those two languages, particularly for the religious studies GCSEs. When are you going to pull your finger out and sort this situation out?

Can I be absolutely clear with the Member with regard to GCSE pass rates this summer? For 16-year-olds, the pass rate was 66.7 per cent, and that is consistent with historic high levels that we’ve seen over the last three years. Importantly for me, results at A* level—the very highest-performing students—have remained stable, and there were improvements in the summer results at A* to C in large subject entry areas, such as better results in English literature, better results in history, better results in geography and, importantly, better results in Welsh second language.

The issue around textbooks is a real one. Qualifications Wales—of course, qualifications are now at arm’s length from this Government—will not sanction a new course from the WJEC unless they are satisfied that resources are available. When it comes to bilingual resources, I’m sure the Member will very much welcome the announcement yesterday that additional resources will be made available for the production of Welsh-medium resources, seeing that both this Government and Plaid Cymru have a shared ambition to increase resources in that area.

One excuse for the poor GCSE results that you didn’t rattle off, of course—you’ve tried to make this point on a number of occasions—is that these are new GCSEs. But, of course, we’ve got new A-levels, and the results improved on the A-levels, whereas they actually, as I said earlier on, went backwards in terms of GCSEs here in Wales.

We’ve heard promises about this issue of the Welsh textbooks being available from you in the past. We raised these issues earlier this year, and you still haven’t addressed them. I appreciate you’ve made a similar commitment now, but if you didn’t fulfil that commitment previously, earlier in the year, how can we trust you to deliver on that commitment now? We already know that there are Welsh learners who are unable to access psychology and economics exams this year as a result of the unavailability of examinations in Welsh because of cock-ups by Qualifications Wales and, indeed, your Government in not holding them to account for that. So, I’ll ask you again: when are you actually going to get a grip of this situation so that Welsh-medium learners can take examinations in the language of their choice and have textbooks available to them? This is adding to the burden—the workload burden—of teachers in our schools. You said that you wanted to cut it—this is adding to it, because they’re having to translate resources to dish out to the kids in their classes. It’s unacceptable and we need some action, not just warm words.

At the heart of my approach to education is the issue of equity. No child should be disadvantaged whether they choose to study through the medium of English, whether they choose to study through the medium of Welsh or whether they choose to attend a bilingual school. I held a summit back in the spring to address this issue around Welsh-medium resources. You were invited and you didn’t come, Darren, which perhaps shows your true interest in this subject. Since that time, we have worked with the WJEC to provide online and electronic copies of Welsh-medium resources to shorten the time that they have to wait for them. We are working with the Welsh Books Council and the WJEC to look at how we can develop the Welsh publishing industry to publish our own textbooks, rather than being beholden to large publishing houses across the border in England. Crucially, we have been able to agree between ourselves and Plaid Cymru additional resources to tackle this very issue.

UKIP spokesperson, Michelle Brown.

Cabinet Secretary, Philip Hammond recently said that he was considering slashing tuition fees at higher education institutions in England to the tune of £5,000 a year. So, we’ve got the situation where the tuition fees may be going down in England and you’ve introduced new student loans in Wales. So, basically, Welsh students are going to be looking at England if they actually do this and think, ‘Well, I’m going to be getting into less debt if I go and study in England’. What’s your assessment of the potential move suggested by Philip Hammond, and are you likely to reduce tuition fees here to get in ahead of the game to attract students back to Wales?

The Welsh Government has been clear in its belief that the English and Welsh higher education systems do not operate in isolation, and we must provide the financial and the regulatory framework to allow our institutions to compete both domestically and internationally. On that basis, I am watching the policy position in England very closely, and I will consider the implications of any changes before bringing forward legislation here in this Chamber. For 2017 and 2018, the fee level in Wales is currently lower than the maximum allowed in England.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. According to figures given by the BBC earlier this year, student debt in Wales is estimated to be about £3.7 billion, with the average graduate debt in Wales already approximately just over £19,000. That was before you effectively forced Welsh students to get into further debt. You can say that the debts are incurred in return for the so-called graduate premium, but let’s remember that those graduates are going to be paying tax through the nose in later life like the rest of us, so it’s rather a red herring. As I’ve said, you decided to jack up the debts of Welsh students even further. They’re going to end up with debts the size of a mortgage, and it will take years to pay off just as they’re starting out in life. Do you think this helps the Welsh economy and, if so, how?

One announcement that has been made by the Conservative Government in Westminster that I welcome very much indeed is that they have agreed to change the repayment threshold for student loans. In fact, I wrote to Jo Johnson, the Minister for universities and science, back in July and in September of this year outlining my concerns about the amount of interest that was being paid on loans, and the issue of the threshold. So, I welcome very much the decision to increase the threshold to around £25,000, and I will work with the UK Government to ensure that that change can be implemented here in Wales first. But what the Member does not recognise and does not acknowledge is that the true barrier for people, especially from a poorer background, accessing higher education is not the issue around fee loans; it is the issue of upfront costs. How do you pay for your accommodation? How do you pay for your resources? And that’s why this Government is introducing the most progressive system of student support for undergraduates, part-time students and postgraduates anywhere in Europe.

Well, Cabinet Secretary, you can call it progressive if you like; I call it saddling young people with debt. So, we are where we are anyway; you’ve taken the position that you have. Like I said, these students are going to be incurring large amounts of debt at a time in their life when they’re perhaps not used to handling large amounts of money, running a monthly budget or running a quarterly budget effectively. So, how are you going to ensure that these students get responsible and thorough financial advice before they take out loans, so they’re not doing things like taking out pay-day loans and credit cards to pay for accommodation that ultimately should be provided by the universities? So, what support systems are you going to put in place to make sure that those students have the right financial advice before they enter into these decisions, and what kind of debt counselling are graduates going to have when they come out?

Let me be absolutely clear, because I’m not quite sure if the Member understands. All students in Wales next year will qualify for a £1,000 non-repayable grant. For students from our poorest backgrounds, they will have the equivalent of a living wage whilst they study to pay for the very accommodation that you just talked about. This is the most progressive system anywhere in Europe. You are right: there are issues around how we can support students to use their resources appropriately. That’s why we are working with the Student Loans Company to see whether we could introduce those grants on a monthly basis rather than having simply a big cheque at the beginning of the year.

Question 3 (OAQ51130) is withdrawn. Question 4—Eluned Morgan.