Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:39 pm on 13 November 2018.

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Photo of Paul Davies Paul Davies Conservative 1:39, 13 November 2018

First Minister, these are figures from the Welsh branch of the NASUWT union, and this is despite having a funding settlement that allows £120 to be spent per person in Wales for every £100 spent in England. But it's not just your decision to underfund schools that has led to a decline in standards, it is the failure of your Government to set a clear direction for education here in Wales. Let's take the Programme for International Student Assessment targets, for example—a clear measure of managed decline in school standards. In 2011, your colleague, and the then education Minister, Leighton Andrews—Leighton Andrews: remember him? Yes; perhaps you don't want to remember him—set the ambitious target that, by 2015, Wales would be ranked in the top 20 countries for PISA results. The reality, First Minister, is that we are currently ranking thirty-ninth out of 71, and now there's no target at all. There is no ambition, no drive and no desire at the heart of your administration to develop an internationally competitive education system, which speaks volumes from a tired and unambitious Welsh Labour Government. So, do you agree with your previous colleague Leighton Andrews that Wales's education system continues to be complacent, falling short of being consistently good and not delivering the outcomes that our learners deserve? Would you agree that Wales's education system is currently in a weaker place now than when you became First Minister?