ATL

Wales

ATL Cymru welcomes education pledges from the new Wales First Minister, says its director Dr Philip Dixon

Carwyn Jones has now been First Minister for several weeks. ATL welcomed his election for several reasons. His father worked for the union as a caseworker and Carwyn has always taken a keen interest in ATL - he was happy to present bikes to the winners of a competition we organised one year at the Eisteddfod! But apart from these personal ties, we were very impressed with his pledges on education.

These included a commitment to refocus educational investment to ensure a greater proportion reaches the frontline and a reform of school budgets to ensure a fairer per-capita distribution of resources across Wales, guaranteed to be spent on education.

Extra money was promised for new schools for those local authorities that match the number of schools to the number of children in their area. He also promised to narrow the gap between spending on education in Wales and England. The manifesto pledged to end the incorporation of FE colleges, with reforms to governance structures to give proper representation to staff, students and communities. There was also a promise to develop an all-Wales contract for FE lecturers.

These are significant policy commitments, and also a significant change to the rhetoric emanating from the Bay that constantly tried to deny the impoverishment of Welsh education.

We realise that these things cannot be achieved overnight, and that public spending will be squeezed after the Westminster election this year, but at least we now have a First Minister who knows the importance of education and, even more importantly, knows what the major failing has been in Wales in recent years.