Part of 1. 1. Cwestiynau i Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros Addysg – Senedd Cymru am 1:46 pm ar 22 Mawrth 2017.
Well, you make a valid point. ‘Some inconsistency’ was the term you used, but we’re talking here of almost double the spend in some areas as compared with others. So, what I was trying to ask was: what can we do to try and bring some consistency to that picture? There’s no doubting that the financial pressure is very grave and it’s going to lead to significant problems in the future. When you look at all the changes in the pipeline in education over the next few months and years—we’ve discussed the ALN Bill and the additional requirements as a result of that; we know of curriculum changes and the needs in terms of CPD of the workforce, and so on—now it’s clear that there will be huge increasing pressures on teachers and on school resources over the next few months, and at the very same time, of course, we see that staff are being dismissed—many of us are governors in schools that are having to make some very difficult decisions—where schools are cutting back on their budgets. Bearing in mind the research by NUT Cymru last year that revealed that some 52,000 school days had been lost in 2015 because of illness as a result of workplace stress, and bearing in mind the financial pressures that we’ve talked about, are you confident that schools in Wales have the capacity necessary to implement all of these changes that are in the pipeline, and not just implement them, but to implement them effectively?