Education in Wales is in crisis – can a new minister fix the problems?

I wont hold my breath, Neagle does not have a great track record. Also, in my opinion, anyone with an ounce of integrity would not be supporting Gething in government given the apparent stitch up of the leadership contest and his dodgy donations/connections to criminality.

I am 75 years old and I believe the standard of education in Cymru has fallen dramatically from when I was in school in the 50s and 60s. Discipline was maintained in both primary and grammar school and in my opinion stood us in good stead. I strongly believe that there is currently no lack of funds in financing a good education. Not providing good education results in ignorance just like government likes it so they can manipulate the masses without challenge. Keep them poor, ignorant and wanting is their motto.

Not until we start teaching our people our history, not a watered down Version the English decide upon. They wouldn’t dream of claiming the history and events that happened to Japan before Westerners arrived there hadn’t happened as they weren’t there to confirm them. They do it with us as they want to make us, and others believe we have no history.

The facts based curriculum in England appears to be providing results (see the IFS study). While the different focus in Wales and Scotland is not.

There are a number of problems happening in confluence which are blighting the educational outcomes of Cymru's young people. Don't pay too much attention to the Right Wing IFS's recent proclamations - poverty is without a shadow of a doubt a massive factor. It has a profound influence on the mindset of not only the pupil but of their family and close community on the value and purpose of education. Years ago in Wales, in working class communities, a culture existed wrt literacy and self-education. That culture no longer exists. People are now passive recipients of services, behaving as consumers with their own expectations. When poverty acts on that dynamic, the desire to receive the service and hence the value placed upon it is very different. Poverty is corrosive in terms of self-esteem and it profoundly affects the way pupils view their education. Without a shadow of a doubt, addressing poverty and the psychology of poverty must be the number one priority of the Welsh Government. Then there is the delivery side of Education as a public service. This is the remit of social science as the underlying philosophy which provides us with the basis to observe, evaluate, improve. A very good example of this working at its best was the work of Black and William et al wrt Assessment for Learning. Very good data and sound analysis which means that the findings are eminently useable and applicable. At its worst are a glut of books with little evidential basis for their conclusions which often become flavour of the month amongst some teachers and school leaders - a kind of "well it worked for me" kind of approach. Fine, a great deal of teaching is about what works in practice and you often only find that out by trial and error. However, what it is vulnerable to is conscious and unconscious bias. Much of what people think constitutes "a proper education" is highly politicised. I personally find this exasperating. As a science teacher, I'm eager that Education is engaged with by government and academics as the Social Science it is - dispassionate, non-partisan, rigorous and unbiased as it should be. The problem with the new Curriculum for Wales (and the new GCSE specifications that are being built upon it) is that it was commissioned as a political response to a political problem. An expert to the Welsh Government's liking was employed to conduct a review and the review's findings were to their liking. The Donaldson review recommendations, the "Curriculum for Exellence" (an almost like for like copy of the earlier Scottish reforms which are now being questioned in the light of the decline of Scottish Education's performance) and the Curruculum for Wales which is based upon the former, read like a progressive's wishlist for education. In other words, what I am saying is that these reforms are rooted in political philosophy and not Social Science. They are clearly compromised by political bias. Now I am, very much, a Democratic, Liberal, Social Market favouring Progressive. Yet it frustrates me that the process of learning is being approached politically as opposed to scientifically in Wales. This, and the corrosive influence of poverty, is the real reason that we are not making progress. As a Liberal Progressive, that galls me. How people learn should not be a partisan issue. The purpose of education is. What should be learned, therefore, is contentious. What the Curriculum for Wales does is weaken the first, attempts to impose the second and confuses the third. In short, it is a bl***y mess - and that's before I get on to the issue of the new Science GCSE. Oh dear me ...

'Education in Crisis' yet 7 out of 10 cats supposedly thought he could lead the country... Everybody change hats and off we go again... Except for the obligatory cuckoo in the health nest...