Welsh Conservatives today slammed the Labour-run Welsh Government as the latest international PISA test results show Wales has fallen further behind the rest of the UK in key subjects.
Angela Burns AM, Shadow Minister for Education, said:
“After the First Minister promised improvements in Wales’ PISA rankings only weeks ago, Carwyn Jones’ credibility now lies in tatters.
“These truly appalling figures show Wales’ educational performance has at best stagnated, and at worst declined, and that in educational terms, Labour Ministers have wasted the past three years.
“Labour has been running the education system in Wales for 14 years, while a whole generation of young people have been though Labour’s unfit for purpose school system, which is failing to equip them for the global race.
“If young people in Wales are not sufficiently literate or numerate, they will lose out to other countries in the global jobs market, and as the Welsh Government’s own advisor claimed, our nation’s economy will be reduced to that of ‘a theme park’.
“PISA is a robust and authoritative indicator of global educational standards and it is time Labour Ministers took responsibility for letting down a generation of young people and finally addressed the woeful systemic failure on Labour’s watch.
“Education is a key route out of poverty, but globalisation disadvantages the ill-educated most and these results risk condemning Wales to another decade as the poorest part of the UK.
“This is a terrible time to be a teenager in Wales and these results risk further demoralising Wales’ teachers and students.
“These results show that Wales barely scrapes into the top 40 and that Labour is light years from its target of raising Wales’ ranking to the top 20 by 2015.”
