Additional Learning Needs

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 23 October 2019.

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Photo of Alun Davies Alun Davies Labour 2:16, 23 October 2019

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and can I place my personal interest on the record? You said, Minister, in answer to Mark Isherwood, that all local authorities have responsibility for delivering on this agenda. You know and I know, from your constituency workload and from my constituency workload, that children with additional learning needs are being failed every day of the week in schools in this country. You know and I know that local authorities are not delivering on the support that children with additional learning needs require to fulfil their potential. You and I worked together in Government to deliver a restructured and a new, transformed process for supporting children and young people with additional learning needs. Do you not believe now, Minister, that the time is here for us to ensure that there are ring-fenced resources, specific streams of funding, available to schools to deliver additional learning needs education? Because I do not have the confidence—. My personal experience and, I think, your personal experience, as the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, tells you and tells me that the current system, even a reformed system, unless there is additional funding in it, specifically ring-fenced funding, will not deliver.