I was very pleased to be part of this important inquiry, and there are important recommendations that are being presented in this report. It should be an exciting period for education in our schools in Wales. The introduction of a new curriculum that respects the skills of our teachers is a concept that Plaid Cymru has supported across the years.

But, unfortunately, if this huge change is not supported by funding and sufficient resources, there’s a genuine risk that we will lose this golden opportunity, and the introduction of the new curriculum will be inconsistent at best around Wales and, at worst, will be a complete disaster. Amid this, our children and young people will suffer.

The paper that was published this week, called ‘Fit for the Future Education in Wales’, draws attention to this exact problem, noting the concern about the level of resources available to teachers to develop and to provide the new curriculum, and that there are few signs that a significant injection of funding is going to happen at a school level and across the system before the launch in 2022.

The NAHT quotes figures from schools this year, compared with the previous year, in order to outline the problem as it exists at present. I do think it’s important for us to outline the crisis that needs to be sorted.

So, starting this year, there were 1,286 more pupils, but 278 fewer teachers and 533 fewer support staff. So, from those figures, it is obvious that the budget cuts that are described in detail in the report mean that there are no teachers appointed to many of the vacant posts and that cuts mean that fewer teachers work full time and more are working part time, and that the support staff are the first to be hit by losing their jobs, working fewer hours or by schools failing to renew their specific contracts.

One primary head told us, ‘We’re on our knees’. This is a genuine concern, and steps have been taken by the Welsh Government to reduce the burden on teachers, but a lack of funding in schools is adding to the workload and, of course, this is having a detrimental impact on the education of our children and young people.

So, I welcome recommendation 2 by the committee more than the others—the others are important, but recommendation 2, in my opinion, is the one that’s going to bring the greatest change that is needed. The implementation of recommendation 2 would mean that there would be reasonable class sizes to ensure that teachers could give adequate attention to every child. It would mean sufficient numbers of support staff and enough capacity in the additional learning needs staffing to identify problems as early as possible, and would give greater support to mental health problems across the education system.

Even though I do welcome recommendation 1 on the review, I do think it’s important that we shouldn’t wait for that, as that would decelerate the process and the funding needs to flow into our schools now. It’s important for the review to be clear about the initial assumptions and to ensure that there is a range of models in terms of schools and costs taken into consideration. For example, there are differences between the cost models for big schools and small schools, and rural and urban schools, and so on and so forth.

There are a number of sensible recommendations in the report about the different aspects of this, and I do think that recommendation 15 is one to draw attention to and is a high priority, namely the creation of three-year funding settlements. Now, I know that there are difficulties in terms of depending on Westminster timetables, but I do think we need to find a way of doing this. There is another group of recommendations involving the middle tier, and I’m looking forward to seeing the work of Professor Dylan Jones. And there is a problem here. There is a lack of trust between schools and the regional consortia, and a strong feeling that there are great sums being spent on that level, or that tier.

What is important, I think, is recognising what’s in recommendation 2. If we do that, then the discussion could move forward. And I do believe that we need to turn, as the committee Chair said. We need a mature discussion across the Chamber, across the ministerial responsibilities, to think differently about the Welsh budget and to think about the Welsh budget in a preventative way.