Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 3 December 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:54, 3 December 2019

Well, Llywydd, this Government has the most ambitious programme of reform in the education system of any Government anywhere in the United Kingdom. It's a programme for reform that the OECD has endorsed again today as the basis for the improvements that you have already seen.

The Member is right to say that PISA is only one of the measures that we use to understand the success of our education system. That's why we were so pleased to see in the summer that the best A-level results in Wales are better than any region of England or of Northern Ireland. I answered a question from another of his Members last week in relation to the report to which he refers and Qualifications Wales. The report will be a useful contribution to the consultation that Qualifications Wales is carrying out, but in the end, it will be Qualifications Wales that will be responsible for making representations to the Welsh Government as to how we have a qualifications system that stands alongside our new curriculum, and that all of that underpins our ambition. And we are as ambitious as anybody in Wales for our young people to get the best possible education to achieve everything that we would want them to achieve and then to go on to have chances in this economy, where those chances are fairly distributed rather than the sharply unequal society that his party has been determined to create.