Guest Lecturer Jane Davidson

We had a guest lecture from Jane Davidson who was formely the national assembly education and life long learning minister from 2000 until 2007. She talked to us about the history of education in the UK as well as her own role when she was in parliment and her own books 'The learning country' and 'The learning country vision into action'.

Prior to the curiculumm brought in, in 1983 children were put into a O level stream at school or a GCE stream and the teacher decided what to teach. The National curiculumm was brought in because Margret Thatcher wanted all children to learn the same subjects and have the same experiences regardless of where they were in the country.

1983- National Cuuriculum introduced in UK by Thatchers goverment. The curriculumm came with new sets of tests the SATS which were to be taken at 3 stages of your life at the age of 7, 11 and 14. This new curriculumm was treated with a lot of anger from teachers because of the lack of freedom for the teacher within the new curriculumm.

1997- Change of goverment to Labour and Tony Blair's "Education, Education, Education" speech. Labour were concerned that the curiculumm was to structured and did not widen pupils learning enough and that some pupils were actually going backwards. So decided that change was needed. Wales had a referendum for the National Assembly and was put into place for 1999.

1999- Welsh Assembly came into place and set up two education committees pre 16 committee and post 16 committee. Each committee had their own education minister. In 2000 Rhodri Morgan became the first minsiter of Wales and Jane came in also in 2000 and began her book 'The learning country' as the current system needed change. The book was a framework for helping learners for the next stage and what to do with their life and aimed to pick up standards in schools. It was a 10 year plan and many of the initiatives are still used today. She also brought class sizes down and introduced free school breakfasts for all.

Jane also gave us some facts and opinions on education in Wales some of these were:
* Devolution has had a massive impact on education in Wales.
* She believes education is the way out of poverty as the more educated a country is the more wealthy they become.
* Weslh Back course was intrdoduced to wider access under her.
* Wales has less people than the rest of the UK with degrees.
* Wales earn less money than the rest of the Uk.
Goverment now introduce new regional pay which could result in teachers in Wales earning up to 10% less than teachers in England.
* Sickness and disability is higher in Wales than anywhere in the UK.

She talked about the foundation phase and the aim of the foundation phase was to create a new curriculum which encouraged children to be more creative.

All in all a very interseting lecture. Thats all for now.