Commenting on a leaked report from 2007 that detailed many criticisms and recommendations that featured in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) report published earlier this month, Aled Roberts, Welsh Liberal Democrat Shadow Minister for Education, said:
“The OECD’s report published earlier this month was a damning indictment of Welsh Labour’s fifteen-year failure to get to grips with education in Wales. To now discover that many of its findings and recommendations had already been raised with the Welsh Labour Government over six years ago is astonishing.
“It would seem that this now leaked report was considered an inconvenience to the Welsh Labour Government at the time, so instead it was buried. This morning Professor David Reynolds, an advisor to the Welsh Government, admitted he wasn’t even aware that this report existed. That indicates the lack of priority that the Welsh Labour Government gave this report.
“Six years on and the same problems exist. There is still a lack of a consistency and long-term vision. The constant changes of policy have left our education system lacking any sort of coherence and have already let down a generation of our young people. Welsh Government must stop trying to come up with a variety of quick fixes and have the political courage to take one sound and sustainable plan then see it through to completion.”
