Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Education – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 31 January 2018.
Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, in 2015 when the new Wales-only GCSE qualifications were being mooted and going to be introduced, my colleague Angela Burns, the then shadow Minister for the education portfolio, said that it was a short-sighted decision and that there would be adverse consequences for learners. It's now 2018, and I'm afraid that some of our concerns are materialising. More than half of pupils who took the new maths GCSEs got a D or below, according to the results that were published earlier this month. Do you now accept, and would you agree with our assessment, that your predecessor's decision to introduce these new qualifications was a mistake?