As voting day looms, how do main parties measure up when it comes to education?
With a hugely unpredictable Assembly election on the horizon, the teachers’ vote could be crucial to candidates’ chances of success at the polls. With that in mind, we asked Owen Hathway, policy officer for the National Union of Teachers (NUT) in Wales, t
PLAID CYMRU
The first out of the blocks to publish their manifesto, Plaid Cymru has made education a key plank of its electoral pitch.
There are some exciting and innovative policies that will be very wellreceived by teachers, parents and pupils alike.
There is a strong focus, as has been the trend over the past few years in Wales, to ensure that the teaching profession is at the heart of the decision-making process.
Plaid has put forward a series of policies that aim to challenge the status-quo and the dreaded buzzword “Pisa” does not escape these pages.
However, the polices around childcare, school improvement, selfregulation and teacher training all offer a clear path to how the party believes it can work with the teaching profession to achieve success.
Perhaps the most eye-catching, head-turning policy in the Plaid manifesto, and arguably of the election for teachers, is the offer of a 10% annual bonus to all teachers who reach certain CPD (continuing professional development) standards.
The party’s aim is two-fold. Firstly, to reinforce the status of teaching as a profession on the same formal standing as doctors, lawyers and engineers and the like.
Secondly, to build professional capacity to ultimately have a master’s level workforce.
As with any policy, implementation, of course, will be critical to its success. How can you guarantee all teachers the ability to secure a 10% CPD bonus if we currently have a system where you can’t guarantee all teachers access, or at least equal access in relation to time and quality, of CPD?
Any future Plaid Cymru government would need to win that debate. Certainly, however, the promise of a pay bonus and training will be a combination that plays well on the doorstep with teachers who have seen their pay cut and access to CPD eroded over many years.
WELSH LIBERAL DEMOCRATS
The Welsh Lib Dems have traditionally had a strong focus on education and you can see that influence in their manifesto.
Their lead policy is a commitment to establish a “class sizes reduction fund” of £42m over the next Assembly term to ensure that infant classes normally contain no more than 25 pupils, to give teachers the time to focus on a child’s individual needs, which we believe is central to raising standards.
Class sizes are an issue that are always top of the agenda for the profession, particularly in light of increasingly tight school budgets actually resulting in class sizes going up more often than not.
Aside from this the other big Lib Dem proposal for schools is the expansion of the Pupil Premium.
The pledge is to continue to expand the Pupil Premium and increase the early years’ Pupil Premium every year to reach £1,000 per eligible child by the end of the next Assembly.
The pupil premium was one of the big wins for the Lib Dems during the past Assembly term.
Their negotiations with the Welsh Government secured a major boost for schools and the money was a huge relief for school leaders.
Underfunding of Welsh schools is not a new problem sadly – and it is one that is seemingly getting continually worse.
Any additional funding is always going to be critical and having a continuation of the pupil premium, let alone the proposed increase, is certainly a policy that will register with those on the front line.
GREEN PARTY
The general policies in the Green Party manifesto are to be welcomed. They offer a positive overview of Welsh education with support for parents and teachers.
The main concern is that while they are a list of ambitions, there doesn’t appear to be that much detail about how they will be achieved.
For example, there is a statement to ensure that all pupils have access to mental health support but no explanation of how this will happen, in what capacity or through what funding.
That said, I think the aims of what is being put forward are more than laudable and would make any Green AM an attractive collaborator to other political parties on education policies at least.
There is a strong support for the Foundation Phase, including a pledge to raise the starting age of formal education, as well as plans to reduce the bureaucratic burden on teachers.
However, perhaps their signature education policy is for class sizes to