What is education? Guest speaker 9

On our previous lecture we had Jane Davidson who was the Education Minister for 7 years. It started off by Jane giving us an outline on her background and how she began her career. She began by teaching and from that she went onto explain that the National Curriculum was introduced because originally different parts of the country were learning about certain subjects more than others, and so the curriculum came into place so that everyone is on the same level, taught the same and to have similar experiences. 1997 was then brought up as labour came in and the famous quote ‘education education education’ by Tony Blaire drew people in as they showed a high passion for education. It was also mentioned that the students were being taught information to make them pass a test or exam and not to widen their education, a lot of disagreements came up and it was vital to address this issue. The year 1999 brought something big as the national assembly for Wales was put in place along with a set of members.
Jane got asked to become minister by Rhodri Morgan for Education and Lifelong Learning. She wanted to make alterations and set goals such as making more contact between Primary and secondary schools to help with preparing students, making use of schools outside opening hours by creating clubs and holding activities, introducing the Welsh Baccalaureate for ages 14-19 to provide the learning of new skills and to have school councils so that student voices can be heard and to have a say in matters. ‘The Learning Country’ which was published in 2006 was explained throughout the lecture giving us outlines on the policies and goals. The policy was to introduce a new curriculum which was the foundation phase, and to also bring in a decrease in class numbers and to set up breakfast clubs to help parents who are working, but the main point for this is that they found children were not having adequate meals and in order to learn you have to have a good breakfast to take you throughout the day. The last main point was that The Learning Country was made to be a 10 year strategy, and the reason being is because by the time the new curriculum would be introduced and then put in place it would have taken a number or years for it to be put into practise and so ten years would cover it.