Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:59 pm on 22 October 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:59, 22 October 2019

Well, I certainly don't agree with that, of course, Llywydd. A* grades in A-levels in Wales in the summer were the best in any part of the United Kingdom—the very best, better than any part of England, better than Scotland. Welsh young people achieving the very top grades in examinations and outstripping anybody else—I don't regard that as a failure of our system. And his Gradgrind approach to education, that it's simply there to factorise children through a system so they come out at the end of it, not as young people who've had a breadth of education, not as young people who are taught to think critically, not as young people who are able to understand, argue and to participate in that wider way, but just have a set of qualifications, that's not my idea of education, because I want our children to have both. I want them to have successful qualifications, but I want them to have an education experience that will fit them for life in the twenty-first century, and that's what our curriculum will provide.