With exactly a week to go until polling day, Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones has said that next Thursday’s Welsh national election gives Wales the opportunity to transform the hopes of a generation of young people who are currently being let down by the education system.
The Plaid leader will be spending the final week of the campaign visiting constituencies across Wales to highlight his party’s transformational plans to make educational improvement the basis for future economic success.
Plaid has consistently made education one of its major priorities for the coming Assembly term, saying that illiteracy and innumeracy rates in particular need to be tackled in order to improve the life chances of our young people and to enable our economy to grow. The party has pledged to halve illiteracy rates by the end of the next Assembly term, and virtually eradicate illiteracy amongst primary school leavers by 2020, as well as improving numeracy and core subject standards in schools across the nation.
In an impassioned plea, the Plaid leader has said that without a dramatic change to Labour’s failing education policies, our children and young people will fall further behind, and leave our nation unable to build the successful and skilled economy Wales needs to create in the coming decade.
Plaid leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said:
“At the moment too many of our children are leaving school without having the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed to succeed in life. There have been several damning reports into the state of education in Wales and we cannot allow the decline to continue.
“This is why next Thursday’s election is so important. Without a dramatic change to Labour’s failing education policies, our children and young people will fall further behind, and leave our nation unable to build the successful and skilled economy Wales needs to create in the coming decade.
“The hopes of a generation and the future success of the economy depend on getting education right. The single most important thing we can do in the next five years is ensure that children and grandchildren have the skills to succeed.”
Every time a child leaves school unable to read, write or count properly it has huge implications for the rest of his or her life. It undermines our communities, undermines our economy and it has gone on for long enough.
“Plaid is determined to bring this to an end. We’ll raise standards to ensure that when our children leave education they have the basic skills needed to succeed – the ability to read, write and count to an expected standard.
“The party has pledged to halve illiteracy rates by the end of the next Assembly term, and virtually eradicate illiteracy amongst primary school leavers by 2020, as well as improving numeracy and core subject standards in schools across the nation.
“The other parties seem to treat our schools as an electoral side-show. The Tories want to slash the education budget by £40m, starving our schools of the funding they need. The Labour party would prefer to tinker round the edges, publishing league table which will only succeed in undermining our schools rather than working to improve their standards.
“With a week to go until the all important Welsh national election, our message is clear – give us your support to ensure that we give our children and grandchildren the world-class education they deserve.”
