We have now reached the debate on Stage 4 of the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Bill. I call on the Minister for Education to introduce this item—Kirsty Williams.

Motion NDM7627 Kirsty Williams

To propose that the Senedd, in accordance with Standing Order 26.47:

Approves the Curriculum and Assessment (Wales) Bill. 

 

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I formally move the motion.

I would like to begin by thanking the Chairs and members of the Children, Young People and Education Committee, the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, and the Finance Committee, as well as other Members who have contributed to the scrutiny of this historic Bill. Thank you also to the Commission staff for their conscientious and diligent work, as well as the unstinting counsel and exemplary efforts of my officials and others across Government. They have gone above and beyond in maintaining their, and my, optimism in delivering on behalf of pupils, parents, teachers and our whole education system during these challenging months.

In the spirit of what I have called 'our national mission' over the last five years, I'm also grateful to all of those across the country who have helped shape the Bill and associated guidance. It is not the easiest journey when Governments pursue radical reform and do it through co-construction, co-operation and collective effort. It might—indeed, it probably would—have been simpler to cook up plans in Cathays Park in a back office and issue a 'take it or leave it' offer. But our combined efforts with teachers, academics, parents, and many organisations here and abroad is worth so much more because of that 'national mission' spirit.

Presiding Officer, as you know, I'm a student of American history, and John F. Kennedy, during a challenging time of his presidency, said:

'Our deep spiritual confidence that this nation will survive the perils of today—which may well be with us for decades to come—compels us to invest in our nation's future, to consider and meet our obligations to our children and the numberless generations that will follow.'

Llywydd, it has been a year full of perils, but we have maintained our focus and our commitment to investing in Wales's future and meeting our obligations as a Government and as a Parliament. It has taken a great deal of time and effort to get to this point. It may have taken several years, but now we have this historic and innovative Bill, made in Wales for Wales, which will reform and effectively deliver on the purpose and vision of the curriculum. I am really proud to be a Minister to have got to this point, but, equally, I am a proud parliamentarian. I have sought to view this Bill's Senedd journey through not only a Government's perspective, but through my eyes as a long-time Member of the opposite side. I hope that colleagues have valued the creative tension, the consideration of big ideas and, yes, the compromises along the way, because I certainly have.

In particular, the constructive challenge offered by the CYPE committee has given us a better and bolder piece of legislation. Each Member and each party has made their contribution, and our pooled efforts and our shared purpose has shown this Parliament at its very best. It may not have been possible, that genuine challenge and co-operation, without the drive and determination of the committee Chair. Lynne, we are both Members of the class of 1999 and I may be graduating this year, but it is my firm belief that you still have much more to contribute to reforming education and, in particular, promoting good mental health and well-being support for all. 

One of the core principles of the Bill is to reduce prescription in the curriculum, and to allow our teachers and other education practitioners the freedom to make decisions around teaching and learning that are appropriate for their learners, but within a national framework. The focus of the Curriculum for Wales is on enabling children and young people to fulfil the aspirations set out in our four purposes. The Bill will support this by providing a framework for a broad and balanced curriculum, based on promoting children's rights and putting learners' mental health at the forefront of implementation. Another key aspect is to support the improved teaching and learning of the Welsh language, and, indeed, other languages, in all schools and settings. 

Llywydd, in delivering on our national mission over these years, I have often invoked the great Welsh educationalist and progressive Elizabeth Phillips Hughes. She was the only woman on the committee that drafted the University of Wales's original charter, and she was the first principal of the Cambridge teacher college for women. In a pamphlet of 1884 arguing for co-education and the promotion of women's education, and the importance of a Welsh dimension to our education system, she said that 'education must be national, and it must be in our own hands'. Today is a day where we can say that we are delivering on that promise, because of our own Government, and because of our own Parliament. The education of the future is truly in the hands of our teachers, our schools and our nation.  

This Bill is the product of a shared desire to reform education and improve the life chances and futures for all of our children and young people. If approved today, it will provide for the most significant legislative reform to compulsory education in Wales for decades. I urge Members of our Senedd to support it. Diolch yn fawr. 

I must begin by thanking our dedicated Chair, my fellow committee members, clerks, researchers and lawyers of the Children, Young People and Education Committee for the phenomenal amount of work that went into scrutinising and improving this Bill. The evidence sessions were scrupulously balanced, witnesses were thoroughly challenged on their evidence, and you can see from the number of recommendations that the committee made at Stage 1 that we have lived and breathed it almost as much as the Minister and her department.

We took and analysed a lot of evidence—much of it at the same time as the committee was scrutinising COVID—so the work of the Chair and the staff needs well-deserved recognition on the record. And I thank the Minister too, who has put her heart and soul into this, and she will be remembered for it. Obviously, we welcome her willingness to move on the matter of life skills—something her Cabinet colleagues have resisted over the years without any compelling reason—and we are also grateful to her for securing a strong place for the teaching of menstrual well-being, both fought hard for by my colleague, Suzy Davies.

It will be down to the next Senedd now to ensure that the Minister's intentions are properly reflected and taught, but what has impressed me has been the Minister's willingness to consider changes to the Bill at all stages, even on controversial areas of the Bill, if it meant a fairer way of achieving her goals within it. The swift acceptance of the need to fix the Welsh-language provisions and the movement on all schools being under an equal duty to have regard for an agreed RVE curriculum were about getting rid of discrimination. The new spotlight on mental health and children's rights was a recognition of policies that improved the effectiveness of the Bill, even if they disrupted the design of the Bill. One of the big lessons learnt is that the Bill would have been a lot easier to understand and scrutinise if it had been drafted from scratch; much of the running around after Stage 1 was needed because of the cutting and pasting of phrases from pre-devolution education Acts and references back to them. We have the legislation Act, which took the Assembly time that it could ill afford when we were in the throes of leaving the EU. I hope the sixth Senedd doesn't leave it on the shelf. The ultimate test of this Bill will now be that it raises standards for all and equips our young people to be inquisitive, adaptable, responsible, confident problem solvers who grow up thinking they have a duty to contribute to society, whatever their background.

Without a huge investment of time and training the current workforce and expanding it, there remains a risk that these monumental changes will fail or take effect too slowly. I also hope that we work hard to ensure, in the next Senedd, that schools will forge strong links with local businesses and experts to ensure and to enable the very best real-life education, which I know that the new curriculum will allow for. The RSE code and some work around assessment—this is the curriculum and assessment Bill, after all—will need detailed scrutiny in the early next Senedd.

Suzy Davies, our shadow Cabinet spokesperson for education, deserves many, many thanks for all her hard work in scrutinising this Bill. It's a shame she can't be with us today, but she needs thanks on the record for all her contributions towards this.

But congratulations, Minister. I look forward to seeing the new curriculum achieving all that we hope it will achieve, and I encourage Members to support this Bill. Thank you.

Plaid Cymru supports the direction that the new education curriculum takes us in. The young people of Wales have wanted to learn skills appropriate for life and modern workplaces for some time. We also believe in empowering teachers and giving them the freedom to teach creatively. The emphasis on the development and progress of the individual is also to be warmly welcomed. Enabling every individual, whatever their circumstances, to reach their full potential, is at the core of our values as a nation.

There is a real opportunity, through the curriculum, to start to transform the education system in Wales. If it is to properly take root, our teachers will need the space and the opportunity to fully understand the requirements of the new curriculum. This is more important than ever given COVID, when there will be so many challenges facing our schools, but I do agree with the Minister that the emphasis of the new curriculum could be beneficial in that recovery, with the excellent emphasis on mental health and well-being.

If the curriculum is to succeed, then giving our teachers the opportunity to adapt is crucially important, and to do that they will need the support of supply teachers and that will be priceless. We will also need sufficient teaching resources, and to deliver that, we need an injection of financial investment so that that can reach the schools. We also need to align the assessment and schools accountability systems to the new curriculum. We need to re-design qualifications and to move away from examinations and towards ongoing assessment. The emphasis on individual progress needs to be reflected in the way that we assess too.

In turning now to the Bill itself, I do believe that the Bill itself is flawed. There is no consistency within it, because it does emphasise certain mandatory elements, but rejects and refuses to include others. Whilst agreeing with the inclusion of relationship and sexuality education, and religion, values and ethics on the face of the Bill, Plaid Cymru argued for the inclusion of two other mandatory elements that could also contribute towards creating that social, far-reaching transformation that we want to see, namely the history of Wales in all of its diversity, including black and people of colour history, and environmental education, including climate change.

Whilst there is an assurance that these two transformational elements that are on the face of the Bill will be taught, there is no assurance that the other two that I've mentioned will be given due attention, and for me, that is a fundamental flaw within the Bill. Guidance simply isn't enough. It's easy to scrap guidance or to change guidance, unlike issues which have a statutory basis and are included on the face of the Bill.

I've not been given a logical explanation that could convince me as to why my amendments couldn't have been accepted, which also includes significantly strengthening the way the Welsh language is taught in our schools. We will, therefore, vote against the legislation today, and we, in Government, will seek an early opportunity to amend it.

Thank you, Llywydd, for this opportunity to make a brief contribution on what I think is a landmark occasion today. Passing this Bill will not just be setting the legal framework for the first review of the curriculum in over 30 years—it will be our first Curriculum for Wales, co-constructed with the profession and made in Wales. And if ever there was a time for a curriculum rooted in well-being, now is that time, after all our children and young people have been through.

Despite the constraints of the pandemic and the virtual proceedings, the committee did undertake a full Stage 1 process, and I hope that anyone who has read our Stage 1 report will agree that we did our best to do this Bill justice. So, I'd like to thank the whole committee for their hard work on this Bill, but also to say a very special thank you to my committee team. Llinos Madeley and Michael Dauncey worked incredibly hard, grappling with some very complex and challenging issues, and have provided absolutely wonderful support for the committee's work on this Bill. And as this may well be my last opportunity to do this in the Chamber, I also wanted to take this opportunity to place on record my thanks to the whole committee team, both clerking and research, for the absolutely phenomenal support they've given me and the rest of the committee in the last five years. Diolch o galon.

I'd like to thank the Minister for her consistent ready willingness to engage and listen to the committee throughout this whole process. I've always believed that strong committee scrutiny provides better Government, and that is very much, I think, in evidence with this Bill, and also to thank her officials, who I think have bent over backwards to engage with the committee, arrange extra briefings and always been there to respond to our queries. So, my heartfelt thanks to them as well.

In particular, I am absolutely delighted that the Minister agreed to place mental health on the face of this Bill, signalling not just that mental health is a critical aspect of what is taught in our new curriculum, but a system-wide consideration to inform every decision around the curriculum. That will make such a huge and fundamental difference to young people in Wales. And in saying that, I want to thank Samaritans Cymru and Mind Cymru who've worked so hard with me behind the scenes to push for this amendment. There is, of course, more work to do, and I'm sure the Minister won't be surprised to hear me say that if re-elected, I look forward to working with her successor to ensure that the new duty is supported by strong guidance and clearly linked to the work that is being undertaken on a whole-school approach to mental health.

But in closing today, I'd like to thank the Minister for bringing forward—and the whole Welsh Government—this landmark piece of legislation. I have absolutely no doubt that this will make a huge contribution to ensuring that we have well-rounded, successful and, above all, mentally well children and young people in Wales. Diolch o galon.

We in the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party oppose this Welsh Government Bill. There are good parts to this Bill, and I don't dispute that, and some of it has been outlined by the Minister today—some of those good parts—and in many ways, she has been, despite my profound political differences with her, a very able Minister. And some of the good parts were also highlighted in the contribution by Laura Jones, which I thought was very useful in demonstrating how the Bill has, in some ways, changed, as the Minister interacted with the relevant committee. So, those are good points, but my party does have some very strong differences with the Minister and the Government over this Bill, and I think, in the interest of brevity, I need to, perhaps, quickly go over those points of difference. 

We believe that the Bill will lead to more divergence from the curriculum in England, leading to more difficulty in comparing the performances of school students in Wales with their peers in England. The continuance of the Welsh baccalaureate, which effectively compels Welsh students to study for an extra A-level, which is not widely recognised by English universities, is another area of divergence that will hinder students in Wales. At a more fundamental level, the downgrading of English teaching in the interest of immersion in Welsh is a sinister development that will surely disadvantage Welsh schoolchildren who are not from a background of speaking Welsh at home—and we know some of these children from these backgrounds do now go into Welsh-medium education. As far as the teaching of the Welsh language to English-medium pupils is concerned, our basic principle as a party is that what is required is a measure of choice, not compulsion. So, we do not go along either with the continued policy of compulsory Welsh up to the age of 16.

Now, although I know that the Minister herself actually wants Welsh students to succeed not only in Wales but also further afield—and she's certainly not intending to narrow the horizons of our young people—unfortunately, I believe this will be the long-term effect of some of these measures. We in Abolish believe that, increasingly, the effect will be to push Welsh students towards studying in universities in Wales, and not venturing further afield. In effect, this may be part of a movement towards guiding young people in Wales to stay in Wales. The narrowing of opportunity this entails surely cannot be a good thing, and so, for these reasons, we are voting against the Bill today.

I would like to thank the Minister for her efforts, regardless of our disagreements over the course of the Assembly term, and I do wish her well in whatever she decides to do next. Diolch yn fawr.

The Minister to respond—Kirsty Williams.

Thank you very much. Can I thank those who have contributed this afternoon? I'm disappointed to hear that Suzy Davies is not able to join the session this afternoon, because I know that she has worked incredibly hard on this Bill, and I know that she's been fully committed to the scrutiny process. And, as I said in opening my comments today, I think we have a better Bill as a result of the efforts of the CYPE committee, and I have gone to great lengths to try and respond positively to the cross-party report that the committee published to try and meet those aspirations.

Can I thank Gareth Bennett for his kind words on my retirement? Can I gently remind him that the Welsh baccalaureate is accepted by the vast majority of institutions across England and Wales. Indeed, Presiding Officer, my own daughter was saved by her Welsh baccalaureate grade, which allowed her to go on to university this year, and there are many students like that. It's disappointing that the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party won't be supporting the Bill today, but perhaps not so disappointing as the fact that Plaid Cymru—The Party of Wales will not take this historic opportunity, for the first time in our nation's history, to have our own curriculum, designed by the teachers of Wales for the children of Wales.

Can I just say once again, for the absolute avoidance of any doubt, Welsh histories and the story of Wales will be a compulsory part of this curriculum? It is included in the statutory guidance that has already been issued and will have a statutory underpinning as a result of this vote—hopefully, successful vote—this evening. There will be no way a school cannot teach the history of Wales, and, indeed, every single area of learning and experience is required to have a golden thread of a celebration of Welsh identity in all its diversity in every area, and that is underpinned in the legislation before us. The same is also true for issues around teaching on the environment and the climate crisis. Now, I accept it's election time, and there are petitions and e-mails to be sent, but it's regrettable, as I said, on this historic day, with the opportunity for the first time in our nation's history to have our own curriculum, that The Party of Wales will choose to vote against.

Can I conclude by thanking Lynne Neagle for her tough, astute, tenacious, sometimes bloody mindedness in her approach to this legislation? I mean that as a compliment, Lynne. As I said earlier, the results of the committee's work have made this a better Bill, and I have loved every minute—well, almost every minute—of being a Minister, but it is my experience on the backbenches, of having sat through endless Government debates and Government pieces of legislation that has guided my interaction with your committee over this time. I'm grateful for your leadership, and I applaud you for the work that you have done that has got us to this point. Presiding Officer, I commend this piece of legislation to our Senedd.

In accordance with Standing Order 26.50C, a recorded vote must be taken on Stage 4 motions, so I will defer voting on this motion until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.

And that brings us to voting time. So, we will take a short break in preparation for the voting. Thank you.

Plenary was suspended at 18:49.

The Senedd reconvened at 18:51, with the Llywydd in the Chair.