Further Education (Kirsty Williams AM )

Cymraeg
English

Kirsty Williams AM <info@kirstywilliams.org.uk>

Further Education

March 20, 2009 12:00 AM
By Kirsty Williams AM in County Times 20th March 2009

Further Education is suffering and has been for sometime - despite continuous improvements within the sector and the Welsh Government pushing a strong skills agenda the inadequate funding of the sector is holding it back on the ground. Wales has a lower employment rate than the UK average, a higher proportion of adults without qualifications, and nearly 10% of young people not in education, employment or training. Clearly the sector needs investment and never more so than in a time of recession. We must provide our students with access to the qualifications they need in an increasingly competitive and difficult employment market. We not only need to invest in further education to help us out of the recession we also need long-term investment for when we emerge so that Wales can have a strong skills market, society and economy into the future.

Despite talking the talk the Government is not walking the walk and whilst their policy is to develop skills and the post 16 sector, their lack of investment prevents this. From 1st April the Welsh Government will cut budgets for the education of 16-18 year-olds by 7.4%. Across Wales this means the anticipated £421 million budget has been reduced to £391 million. For Powys this translates as an £844 thousand loss - putting schools and colleges in an impossible situation which they had not been prepared for. Powys schools and colleges had already prepared their budget for the year ahead and now find themselves facing a financial shortfall in funding for key skills which is impossible to manage at this late stage. It is unfair to put schools in this position without consultation or warning and with no period of transition to allow schools to adjust.

There have been warnings that over 30 teaching jobs across the county could be cut. The worry is that if funding is not increased and teachers have to be lost many schools will be unable to deliver their curriculum from September 2009, which would be a devastating blow to the schools, their teachers, children and the local communities. The reduced funding comes as a further blow after the Welsh Government's poor 1.5% settlement to Powys County Council, one of the lowest in Wales.

Last week Mick Bates AM and I took a delegation of Head teachers and council officers from across the county to meet with the deputy Minister for Skills and to call for action from the Welsh Government. Sadly, despite the very clear and desperate pleas for a review of the funding settlement the Minister refused to reconsider his decision. The Minister's failure to respond is of course hugely disappointing, as a result Mick and I have written to the Welsh Local Government Association asking them to join us in calling on the Government to act on the post 16 crisis in Powys. One success of the meeting was the Minister's agreement to review the decision to allocate only 96% of the county's Post 16 Special Educational Needs (SEN) funding. This is of course good news but is only one step in the right direction. It is high time the Labour-Plaid Government realise the importance of investment in Education before it is too late.