Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 1 May 2018.

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Photo of Andrew RT Davies Andrew RT Davies Conservative 1:45, 1 May 2018

Well, Leader of the house, when it comes to education, many of the things that can be done to improve life chances for young people are within the gift of the Welsh Government, and, sadly, the achievement has been hindered by some of the policies that have been brought forward by previous Labour Governments. But in the field of dyslexia, there's a real poverty of ambition in trying to improve the life chances of children identified with dyslexia in our schools. The gap with children achieving A or A* to C in selective GCSE grades has widened since 2015. Thirty-three per cent of pupils used to be getting those results at GCSE. Now, 36 per cent of pupils are not hitting that target in English. When it comes to science, which used to be a positive territory for students who were identified with dyslexia, now there's a 10 per cent deficit in children achieving five good grades at GCSE. You don't need money to make that difference, you just need the policies in place to make the improvements. Over the last two to three years, we've seen a massive decrease in the number of children achieving the grades we'd like to see who've been diagnosed with dyslexia. Why isn't the Government doing more in this particular field?