Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 1 May 2019.
Thank you for those answers. Yes, I've spoken to Qualifications Wales myself about this and I am still unclear about what it is that will be examined in approximately seven years' time in a GCSE. I appreciate that, in the period in between, we might get some clarity on that, but I still do have concerns about those individual teachers who start in year seven, and, even if they're with the same children until year 11 or 12, they will have had no prior experience of teaching this. That's why I asked this question about will there be some kind of—I don't want to call it 'special arrangements', but breathing space for the children who are caught up in the process in its first seven years.
I just want to move on now, still with the curriculum: Welsh Government often invites us to look at international comparators and I'm sure that we'll be invited to do so again, quite rightly, during the debates on removing the defence of reasonable punishment. Professor Donaldson's proposals were inspired by the experience of other countries—as we know, not least some of those were in Scandinavia—and we've had the chance to see them in practice, closer to home, in Scotland. Now, the Scotland experience hasn't been without its problems and you have reassured us, Minister, on more than one occasion that you've learned lessons from Scotland to avoid their mistakes. Recently, Scotland has learnt from its own mistakes. All of its councils have instructed their schools to teach CPR on the secondary school curriculum. It is compulsory on the curriculum in 20 per cent of European countries, including Norway and Denmark—Scandinavian countries—and in Sweden, where it's not, guess what, the chances of surviving a cardiac arrest outside a hospital setting are lower than in the rest of Scandinavia. Even America is on the ball now, with this training being compulsory in 36 states. If you are prepared to learn lessons from Scotland, why won't you learn this one?