As is often the case in Welsh politics it takes an outsider to cut through the crap and tell it like it is, the latest example is The Economist’s Bagehot with his take on Lib Dem and Labour on education policy.
The article points out that for all the Lib Dem talk of the lack of cash the real problem with the pitiful state of Welsh Education is down to Labour Welsh Government Minister’s policies of scrapping league tables to please the teaching unions that donate a lot of money to the party.
Bagehot writes ‘Trust me, in education and public sector reform circles, the self-inflicted Welsh education debacle is famous, the stuff of dinner-table conversation.
Yet Mr Clegg gives the malevolent lefties of the Welsh devolved government a free pass, and blames it all on the improbable idea that Gordon Brown did not spend enough during his years in charge of the nation's purse strings.
And goes on to say ‘But it was a passage on schools that really stands out. Mr Clegg asked local MPs, members of the devolved Welsh Assembly and councillors to contemplate Labour's sorry legacy on education, noting that Welsh examination results lag markedly behind the rest of the country:
That is Labour’s legacy to the children of Wales and I’m proud you’re putting it right. Labour has let the spending gap between pupils in England and pupils in Wales grow every year since the assembly was established. And the results are there for all to see. Worse GCSE results than English pupils. Worse A-Level results than English pupils. Leaving Welsh young people with fewer chances and worse prospects than those in England. Education used to be something Wales could be proud of. But under Labour standards have slipped back and back and back. Labour should be ashamed
Mr Clegg knows this is nonsense. Labour did many things for state education, some bad and some good, in 13 years in office at Westminster. But one thing that Labour undoubtedly did was test to destruction the idea that throwing money at schools magically improves academic outcomes. In a single decade, Labour almost doubled school spending per pupil. Yet in international studies such as the PISA tests, English school results stagnated while others surged ahead. Only about half of English pupils achieve a decent pass in English and maths examinations for 16 year olds, despite years of systematic dumbing-down of those examinations. In Singapore, the proportion is four in five.
Worse, Welsh exam results fell so precipitously during the Labour era that academics from elsewhere flocked to the principality to investigate what had gone wrong. They discovered not a funding gap but a man-made crisis triggered by Welsh politicians, who bowed to bullying from teachers' unions and scrapped examination league tables.
By scrapping league tables, and thus denying Welsh parents the ability to see how different local schools were performing, Welsh politicians offered educationalists a remarkable controlled experiment. With league tables in place across England but ditched in Wales, and with Welsh and English pupils sitting the same public examinations, scholars were able to test the hypothesis that publishing exam data improves results. They found not just a bit of evidence, but rock-solid evidence.'
Kirsty and the Lib Dems made much of their pupil premium when supporting Labour’s budget before Christmas, in the cold light of day it perhaps wasn’t the great leap forward for education in Wales the spin suggests.
The full article is here and well worth a read, now if only Welsh journalists were capable of blowing holes in the Welsh Government’s policies like this on a regular basis, we might have more accountable, responsive Government Ministers and a more engaged electorate here in Wales.Any source
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