Welsh Conservatives today exposed the vast amount of paperwork sent to Welsh schools from the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning & Skills every week.
In the most recent academic year 2009-10, DCELLS spewed out 8,468 pages of guidance, policy papers, strategy updates, consultations and statistics to schools, in addition to a series of internet links, newsletters, posters and workbooks.
This equates to reading all seven Harry Potter books twice or Tolstoy’s epic ‘War and Peace’ five times. Stacked in a pile these documents would stretch to over a metre in height.
It comes weeks after First Minister Carwyn Jones admitted his Government had been guilty of “creating an endless stream of strategies without there being any product at the end of it.”
Paul Davies AM, Shadow Minister for Education, said, “These figures reveal Labour-Plaid Ministers’ complete lack of trust in Welsh teachers and obsession with unnecessary bureaucracy.
“Ministers should have faith in our teachers rather than bombarding them with an endless stream of paperwork telling them how they should do their jobs.
“Recent reports have revealed how educational standards in Wales are falling behind the rest of the UK, so it is even more worrying that our teachers are being forced to read excessive amounts of guidance when they could be focussing on quality teaching.
“The cost to the taxpayer of producing all these glossy documents must be extraordinary, not to mention the amount of time it takes teachers to read them all.
“I fear that this excessive paperwork must be having a negative impact on discipline, extra-curricular activities and the time available to teachers to prepare innovative and interactive lessons.
“The First Minister has admitted that his government produces too many failing initiatives and strategies, but now needs to take swift action to reduce them.
“Welsh Conservatives want to give teachers, parents and governors more control over their local school because they understand the needs of their students better than politicians.”
