The proceedings are
reported in the language in which they were spoken in the
committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous
interpretation is included. Where contributors have supplied
corrections to their evidence, these are noted in the
transcript.
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am
09:00.
The meeting began at 09:00.
|
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan
Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
|
[1]
Lynne Neagle: Good morning.
Can I welcome everyone to the Children, Young People and Education
Committee? We’ve received apologies for absence from Julie
Morgan and there’s no substitution this morning. Can I ask
whether there are any declarations of interest, please? No.
Okay.
|
09:01
|
Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros Addysg a Gweinidog y
Gymraeg a Dysgu Gydol Oes: Sesiwn Graffu
Cabinet Secretary for Education and Minister for Lifelong Learning
and Welsh Language: Scrutiny Session
|
[2]
Lynne Neagle: Item 2 this morning is a scrutiny session with
the Cabinet Secretary for Education and the Minister for Lifelong
Learning and Welsh Language. I’m very pleased to welcome
Kirsty Williams, the Cabinet Secretary, this morning, and Alun
Davies, the Minister. Could you introduce your officials for the
record, please?
|
[3]
The Cabinet Secretary for Education (Kirsty Williams): Thank
you. Of course, Chair. Good morning to everybody. This morning, we
are joined by Chris Jones, who is the head of performance
management and student finance, and Andrew Clark, who is the deputy
director of the further education and apprenticeship division.
|
[4]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Thank you for your time this
morning and also thank you for the paper that you provided in
advance. Now, I understand that you’d like to make some
opening remarks.
|
[5]
Kirsty Williams: With your permission, Chair, I’d be
very grateful to do that. As you will know across the table this
morning, the Government in England announced last week various
major changes to their higher education system, and this, of
course, has repercussions for us here in Wales. So, it’s
important for me to be able to respond quickly to that announcement
last week so that we can give certainty to students and to the
sector and to be able to update you fully today ahead of this
morning’s scrutiny session. I would like to put on record my
thanks to Chris and his team for going to extraordinary lengths to
ensure that I can announce the changes that I have done via a
written statement this morning.
|
[6]
Firstly, I can confirm that I’m committed to securing a
stable and sustainable higher education funding system that works
for both our students and our universities, and our Diamond reforms
enable us to do just that. In fact, a student support review in
Scotland and a vice chancellor in England’s review are
looking very, very closely at the Diamond report and Welsh
Government policy in this area. As I’ve stated previously,
though, our sector does not operate in isolation, and we must
provide the financial and regulatory framework to allow our
institutions to compete both domestically and internationally.
|
[7]
I have to say, Chair, that the many unscheduled changes recently
announced in England are having an impact on their ability to
follow a consistent approach to policy development and initiatives
in higher education. One only has to look at the front page of
The Times today to see the turmoil that there is across the
border. Now, I will not allow such instability and incoherence to
knock us off course here in Wales in delivering a stable and
sustainable system.
|
[8]
So, I want to confirm to members of the committee that our Diamond
reforms are on track and that my statement sets out today that we
will bring forward regulations to increase the repayment threshold
for undergraduate loans from £21,000 to £25,000,
subject to concluding discussions with Her Majesty’s
Treasury. We will maintain the maximum fee level at £9,000.
We will allocate an additional £6 million to the Higher
Education Funding Council for Wales in this financial year to deal
with short-term implications affecting the sector, primarily
demographic changes and threats from Brexit. We will provide an
additional £10 million to deal with any immediate issues
arising from the tuition fee changes and provide a further £5
million in both of the next two years to allow our institutions to
provide bursaries and grants to postgraduate students. That is in
line with my announcement in July and I believe it will help
incentivise Welsh students to return to Wales to study at a
postgraduate level in line with our Diamond response.
|
[9]
I’d like to confirm that the announcement in the outline
draft budget for 2018-19 is that capital funding will be made
available to support institutions to rationalise their estate.
I’m very grateful for the time you’ve allowed me this
morning, Chair.
|
[10]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you, and we appreciate having that opportunity
to hear that announcement this morning as well. So, we’ll go
straight to questions on this point then, and I’ve got Llyr
first.
|
[11]
Llyr Gruffydd: Thank you, Chair. Morning, and can I thank you for
your statement this morning, and welcome its contents as well? You
made reference again there to the uncertain political climate in
England and the fact that the Welsh higher education sector
doesn’t exist in isolation. So, what you’re saying, in
effect, is—and I don’t think anyone is
doubting—that we’ll always be in the shadow of what
happens in England and we’ll always be at the whim of UK
Ministers, potentially, when it comes to higher education in
Wales.
|
[12]
Kirsty Williams: I would take issue with the words that you’ve
used: ‘shadow’ and ‘whim’. As
I’ve quite clearly stated, the reform agenda that we have
here in Wales, around our Diamond package, is attracting a huge
amount of interest from both Scotland and the Westminster
Government. My understanding is that Justine Greening is
particularly keen to follow our path with regard to maintenance
loans, of course. Her Cabinet colleagues take a different view,
perhaps, but who knows?
|
[13]
What’s important to me is that we
do have to recognise, because of cross-border flows, that our
institutions work in a very competitive UK and global market. My
job is to secure a sustainable and stable approach to HE support
here in Wales. And that’s what I believe that we’re
doing today in my announcements, but also in the implementation of
the Diamond reform. We cannot kid ourselves that what happens
across the border in England doesn’t have an impact on us.
It’s frustrating and does mean that we have to review what
we’re doing, but we’ve done that quickly to provide the
certainty that the sector needs.
|
[14]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, that makes it absolutely critical that you
engage fully with the UK review that’s going to happen, in
terms of influencing that decision, clearly.
|
[15]
Kirsty Williams: The issue with the review is, the vice-chancellors
of England are doing their own review—the vice-chancellors
are—and we are work ready. We have good relationships across
the border with vice-chancellors in Wales, vice-chancellors in
England. With regard to the other HE review, I have to say, Llyr,
the Prime Minister announced that in her conference, but the
Department for Education continues to deny that there is such a
review. So, we don’t know whether there is going to be that
comprehensive review in England because the Prime Minister says it
will happen, but the Department for Education continues to hold the
line that there is no such review. There’s certainly no
chair, there’s certainly no announcement on the terms of
reference of a review, or who would sit on it. I’m
quite happy to help with some recommendations, and I would point
her in the direction of Professor Diamond, who did a fantastic job
here for Wales. But at the moment, the Department for Education in
England says there is no review.
|
[16]
Llyr Gruffydd: You’ve announced funding for HEFCW in
response to the fact that, for example, tuition fees won’t
now rise, as you announced they would, in July. Could you tell us a
bit about where that money’s coming from, and whether that
decision is going to be held in terms of the level of tuition fee
until there’s greater clarity on a UK level?
|
[17]
Kirsty Williams: The money has been found following discussions
between myself and the finance Minister, so it is additional money
that will be made available from the centre into the budget,
because we want to, as I said, treat the sector fairly. The fee
freeze that’s been announced in England comes with no extra
money for English HE institutions. We had hoped to see whether
there would be new money going into the sector in England, which
meant there would be a consequential for us. There is no money, new
money, going into the sector to compensate English universities for
the difference in policy. We do not believe that was fair, and we
have had successful negotiations with the finance Minister to
secure additional money. And we will continue with our Diamond
reforms as outlined, which, I believe, will put us on a sustainable
and secure footing going forward, where we balance our ability to
support both students and institutions.
|
[18]
Llyr Gruffydd: But the fact that you found the money, to me
suggests that the original decision was a political decision and
not one that was borne out of financial necessity.
|
[19]
Kirsty Williams: No, not at all. I made it very clear when I made
this statement in July that we were not immune to changes that were
happening across the border, and we have to make sure that our
institutions remain competitive. You, yourself, Llyr, earlier on
this year, questioned whether having differential fees between
England and Wales would actually put the sector at a disadvantage,
and I do believe you said that maybe it was inevitable that fees
would have to rise here in Wales. I made that announcement on the
basis of the situation we found ourselves in at the time. There has
been a difference of approach. I will not put Welsh universities at
a disadvantage, and I’ve acted accordingly to find, in
conjunction with the Minister, additional resources.
|
[20]
Llyr Gruffydd: I asked that very same question to Professor Diamond
as well when he was giving us a briefing, and he made it perfectly
clear that, no, it wasn’t inevitable; it was a political
decision. But that was his view and he’s entitled to
that.
|
[21]
Could I, therefore, just confirm, because
there’s no particular reference to how long this £9,000
freeze, effectively, will be in place on tuition fees? Is that
something that you intend, as I said earlier, to hold until this
process is complete on a UK level, or are you just taking it year
by year?
|
[22]
Kirsty Williams:
We will continue to work with the sector,
taking all factors into consideration as we move forward with our
Diamond reforms. The issue around the long-term funding of the HE
sector has been quite clearly outlined with the projections that
have been shared with the Higher Education Funding Council for
Wales and institutions, around our ability to resource both
students and HE institutions as we go forward. But, we will have to
continue, constantly, to review these situations in light of
decisions that may be taken in other places.
|
[23]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, you’re not saying that tuition fees
won’t rise in future.
|
[24]
Kirsty Williams:
I have no plans at this stage to increase
tuition fees during the term of this Parliament.
|
[25]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Darren.
|
[26]
Darren Millar: I’m very pleased to see this u-turn. I think
it’s very welcome indeed. It’s something that, of
course, I urged you to do in the immediate aftermath of the UK
Government’s announcement and I thought you should’ve
done it earlier, frankly. Your decision to increase the fees caused
a great deal of angst amongst student representative bodies in
particular, and so I’m very pleased that you’ve
followed the UK Government’s lead on this. I know that you
like to say that you’re responding to the political
uncertainty in England, but of course the reality is that students
here, had you followed your path, would’ve had a rougher deal
with higher tuition fees than in any other part of the UK, and
certainly, by the end of this Assembly term, probably in excess of
£10,000 a year while they were being frozen at £9,000
across the border. So, I’m very pleased to see this decision,
although a little disappointed at the way that you have tried to
present it.
|
[27]
Can I just ask in terms of the finances?
I note that you have made these additional resources available, and
I think it’s very welcome that you’ve given that extra
cash to the university sector to allow them to adapt to the change
that you have made. How much did the sector actually ask for when
you—? I mean, how have you arrived at this £6 million
figure? Is it a figure that was estimated by you, or did the sector
come to you with a figure? How are you carving it up via individual
university and higher education provider?
|
[28]
Kirsty Williams:
Thank you, Darren. Can I just make it
absolutely clear for the record that when Mr Millar says that
students in Wales will have a rougher deal than students in
England, I think we literally need to be very clear to parents and
to prospective students about what this Welsh Government provides
in terms of student support and will provide? Students studying in
FE from a disadvantaged background will continue to have access to
the education maintenance allowance—resources that are not
available to students and young people in England. In England,
there are no maintenance regimes. The entire cost of going to
university, both loans for tuition fees and for maintenance costs
are borne by the student. Here in Wales, we are transitioning away
from a system where we have very generously supported tuition fee
policies and moving to a situation, in recognition that it is
upfront costs that put people off from going to university, to a
system where our poorest students in Wales will have access to a
non-repayable grant equivalent to the living wage. No such system
exists in England and to suggest that, somehow, students in Wales
have a rougher deal than students in England is almost Trump-esque
in its furthest-ness from the reality of the situation.
|
09:15
|
[29]
Mr Millar should be very careful, because there are some people out
there who, perhaps, will be making decisions about whether
they’re going to go on to study at a HE level, and they need
to do that with full understanding of the facts and of the support
that will be made available to them. I would think that Mr Millar,
who says that he wants Welsh children to aspire to HE, would want
to reflect on how he portrays the support that is available
for—
|
[30]
Darren Millar: You didn’t answer my question.
|
[31]
Lynne Neagle: Darren.
|
[32]
Kirsty Williams: —students. With regard to the
resources, Darren talks about £6 million. He’s mixing
up some of the issues around funding for HE. Six million pounds is
being made available this year, brought forward from next year to
help institutions deal with, as I said, some threats from
demographic changes and from Brexit. With regard to resources for
fees, we’re making available £10 million, which we have
calculated would have been in the region that universities could
have expected, and we don’t fund individual universities,
Darren; the funding goes to HEFCW.
|
[33]
Darren Millar: Okay. I understand that. Can I just
ask—? You’ve clearly done some calculations; I was
asking you about your calculations and your estimates. Forgive me
for referring to the £6 million rather than the £10
million. As you know, we’ve only just had sight of your
statement, but I would be grateful if you could provide us with the
calculations as to how you’ve arrived at the £10
million because, frankly, it looks a little bit like a finger in
the air job.
|
[34]
Kirsty Williams: Chris, would you like to explain?
|
[35]
Mr Jones: Yes. It’s not finger in the air. It
isn’t—
|
[36]
Darren Millar: So, how have you arrived at it?
|
[37]
Lynne Neagle: Darren, can you let people answer, please?
|
[38]
Mr Jones: I mean, there are different figures coming from
different sectors. We have had information from Universities Wales,
which is their estimate of what the costs are over a long period of
time—four or five financial years. We’ve looked at the
nearest financial year, and our estimate has been calculated by
discussing it with statisticians. So, they’ve looked at the
student numbers and the possible average fee level that was in
place last year and will be in place next year, and we’ve
come up with what we consider to be a reasonable figure for one
academic year, which is the next one.
|
[39]
Darren Millar: So, would you be prepared to share your
calculations with us?
|
[40]
Mr Jones: Absolutely.
|
[41]
Kirsty Williams: Yes, that’s not a problem.
|
[42]
Darren Millar: I assume that within those calculations
you’ve had to estimate on a university basis.
|
[43]
Mr Jones: Yes. It’s not easy because each institution
has a different average fee. They also have a different legal
position as to what they could charge students next year. So, there
are some institutions that wouldn’t have been able to charge
all cohorts of students in their university the full fee; there are
others that would have been able to. So, we need to take all that
into account. It’s not an easy calculation to make in a short
period of time.
|
[44]
Lynne Neagle: But if the committee could have a note, that
would be very welcome.
|
[45]
Kirsty Williams: Yes, that’s not a problem at all.
Very happy—. As I said earlier, Chris and his team have had
to compress into a very short period of time a piece of work that
would usually take a long time. But I have absolute confidence in
the way in which the figures have been arrived at. I’m very
happy to share them with the committee.
|
[46]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Thank you very much. John.
|
[47]
John Griffiths: Thanks, Chair. In terms of what you said
about the transition, Cabinet Secretary, from subsidising tuition
fee repayment towards meeting upfront maintenance costs, obviously
in line with Diamond, to what extent does that suggest that the
existing tuition fee grant hasn’t offered best value for
money or best use of Welsh Government funding, would you say?
|
[48]
Kirsty Williams: John, the reason why the previous Minister
commissioned the Diamond review was to look at a medium to longer
term financial arrangement for the sector as a whole. Diamond
doesn’t just look at how we support students, but it is a
complete package of how we fund higher education. It also took into
consideration the real pressures that students face, and if you
listen to NUS Cymru and, increasingly, voices from across the
sector—vice-chancellors in England, for instance—it is
the upfront costs of going to university that are the real barrier
to many people going on to study. So, the fact that we’re
transitioning away from one regime to a new regime isn’t to
say that the last regime was a bad one or a poor one—it
supported Welsh students very well—but we can’t put
policy in aspic, we have to move with the times and we have to
acknowledge where the pressures are for students and for the
sector, and come up with a fair deal for both. Moving away
isn’t a criticism of past policy; it’s to say that we
need to find better ways of supporting students that recognise the
real pressures that they’re facing.
|
[49]
John Griffiths: Okay. If I could just go on, Chair, just in
terms of the figure, the annual household income figure of
£59,200 for means-tested maintenance grants, that being the
ceiling beyond which they will not be available—could you say
a little bit about how you arrived at that figure, because we know
that there was a figure of £81,000, wasn’t there,
recommended by Diamond, and there’s a figure of £50,020
in terms of Welsh Government learning grant? Why did you arrive at
that particular figure of £59,200?
|
[50]
Kirsty Williams:
First of all, it’s important to
remember that all Welsh students, regardless of household income,
will be entitled to a £1,000 non-repayable grant, regardless
of their income. So, everybody gets that, and then there is a
sliding scale and the means testing. We have arrived at that figure
around affordability issues, John, looking to the medium to longer
term. We have to satisfy ourselves that what we’re setting up
is a system that is affordable, and that’s why we have
brought this threshold down to a level that we think we can sustain
over the medium to longer term.
|
[51]
To reassure people, on our calculations
to date, an average student from an average Welsh household we
anticipate will be entitled to approximately £6,000 in a
non-repayable grant. So, this is about being able to target those
who are most in need of our help whilst being able to be satisfied
ourselves that we are introducing a system that is viable and
sustainable in the medium to longer term.
|
[52]
John Griffiths:
Okay. And, if we could move on to
part-time students, it will only be households with earnings of
less than £25,000 there that will be eligible for maintenance
grants. We have that £25,000 figure, compared to the
£59,200 for full-time students. Again, could you set out the
rationale for that particular figure?
|
[53]
Kirsty Williams:
That’s not my understanding of how
it will work. Moving to support for part-time students is important
to me, as we transition away from only seeing higher education in
terms of traditional 18 and 19-year-old school leavers.
What’s really important is we look at the needs across the
entire economy, and one of the issues around productivity in our
economy and the skills level in our economy is that we need to be
able to allow people to enter into the education market at
different points in their lives, and support for part-time is a
crucial part of that. But, Chris, could you explain around
part-time?
|
[54]
Mr Jones: Yes, just to confirm, the thresholds for part-time
postgraduate and undergraduate will be the same, or broadly the
same. So, there won’t be any major differences in the
eligibility thresholds within the system.
|
[55]
John Griffiths:
Okay, so the £59,200 figure will
apply to the part-time—
|
[56]
Mr Jones: Broadly, yes.
There might be small differences, because the thresholds are
slightly different, but they are more or less the same.
|
[57]
John Griffiths:
Okay, thanks very much.
|
[58]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. Llyr.
|
[59]
Llyr Gruffydd: Yes, could I
just ask—? We’re discussing student funding, but of
course also today we understand that there have been considerable
hikes in pay for vice-chancellors in Wales. Now, you’ve
previously suggested that you might have something to say about
that at a certain point in the future. How do you respond to the
inflation-busting increases that we’re seeing some of the
vice-chancellors in Wales receive?
|
[60]
Kirsty Williams:
Well, I think the first thing to note,
Llyr, is that these are autonomous institutions, and we have no
locus over what they decide to do in terms of pay. But this is of
concern to me, and you’ll be aware in my remit letter to the
Higher Education Funding Council for Wales that I have urged full
transparency and accountability around these issues. I have to say,
my focus has been on the other end of the scale. Now, we can have a
row and have a view on what vice-chancellors are paid, but, to be
honest, that doesn’t help the people I’m most concerned
about, who are those people who are on very low wages in the
sector. And what we’ve been able to achieve by discussing
this with Universities Wales is a commitment across the sector for
the sector to become a living-wage employer. So, I expect full
transparency and accountability around high levels of
vice-chancellors’ pay. It’s for them to justify that
that decision is the right one for their institutions. We
are working with Universities Wales to ensure that we have greater
transparency going forward, talking to HEFCW about the
ability—because last year they published their first report
into high pay in the sector—about whether we can enhance that
transparency around differentiation within the sector, whether we
can look at gender within those pay analyses, so that we can get a
fuller picture of what’s going on in our institutions. But I
think, for practical purposes, focusing on those people being paid
the least in the sector, and being able to get an agreement to move
the entire sector onto a living-wage basis, is a real coup for the
sector, because we will be the first HE sector in the UK to be able
to state that.
|
[61]
Llyr Gruffydd: And nobody’s doubting that, and that is
welcome news, but you did say, in the Chamber, I believe, that you
would have, hopefully, something to say about the top end of the
spectrum, and now you’re saying that you have no jurisdiction
over it.
|
[62]
Kirsty Williams: No. As I said, in our remit letter we have
asked HEFCW to continue to discuss this with the institutions.
We’re working with HEFCW over how we can improve transparency
and accountability in the reports that they do into high pay.
|
[63]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, you will be responding to that piece of
work. Okay.
|
[64]
Kirsty Williams: Yes, and that’s what we’ve
asked them to do in the remit letter.
|
[65]
Llyr Gruffydd: Fine.
|
[66]
Lynne Neagle: Darren on this, briefly.
|
[67]
Darren Millar: The Public Accounts Committee has considered
high pay across the public sector, including the university sector,
in the past, and made recommendations that the Welsh Government
should attach conditions to the finances that it makes available to
the HE sector in order to require pay of no more than a certain
level. So, why haven’t you used that mechanism, given that
you are a significant funder of HE, to influence the decisions of
HE boards at universities in awarding significant pay increases to
university vice-chancellors?
|
[68]
Kirsty Williams: As I’ve just said in answer to Llyr,
via my remit letter to HEFCW—because I don’t fund
individual universities; the funding goes through the higher
education funding council—we have asked that funding council
to do further work on accountability and transparency of high pay
within the sector, and we continue to have discussions with them
and the universities about what more we can do in this particular
area. But, as I have said, my focus, Darren—. We can rant and
rave here about whether vice-chancellors are paid too little or too
much, but that doesn’t help the person who is cleaning the
lecture theatre and it doesn’t help the person who is on the
lowest wages in that institution, and my priority is getting an
agreement from the sector that those people are paid a living
wage.
|
[69]
Darren Millar: I understand that, Cabinet Secretary, but why
haven’t you implemented the recommendation of the Public
Accounts Committee, which was very clear and unambiguous, and that
is that, through the funding that is provided to the HE sector,
whether that’s via HEFCW or not, you are able to attach
conditions to that funding that can influence the pay regime for
senior members of staff within the university sector? You
haven’t done it. Why haven’t you done it?
|
[70]
Kirsty Williams: Darren, I do not have any legal powers to
intervene in autonomous bodies on what they pay their
vice-chancellors. I have, in my remit letter of 2017 to HEFCW, said
that these issues are important to me and we want greater
transparency and accountability on the reporting of higher sector
pay. I cannot tell universities what to pay their
vice-chancellors.
|
[71]
Darren Millar: You can attach conditions. It’s very
clear from the advice that was given to the Public Accounts
Committee.
|
[72]
Kirsty Williams: I do not have any legal powers—
|
[73]
Lynne Neagle: The Cabinet Secretary has answered.
|
[74]
Kirsty Williams: —to set the pay of
vice-chancellors’ wages in Wales.
|
[75]
Darren Millar: But you do have the ability to set
conditions—
|
[76]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you, Darren. Hefin has got some
questions on the general finances issue.
|
[77]
Hefin David: The recurrent revenue allocation that was
agreed with Plaid Cymru—the Welsh Government agreed with
Plaid Cymru—was £20 million again next year, the
2017-18 financial year. Can we be clear that’s a continuation
of the £20 million that was awarded, it’s not an extra
£20 million?
|
[78]
Kirsty Williams: No, it’s recurrent. So, the budget
agreement last year between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru
was for an additional £20 million for FE and HE, and that has
been made recurrent in the proposals for next year’s
budget.
|
[79]
Hefin David: Okay. So, with the additional funding
you’ve announced today, that’s, effectively, additional
ring-fenced funding for HE on top of that.
|
[80]
Kirsty Williams: Yes.
|
[81]
Hefin David: And what is that? That’s going to be,
looking at it, £16 million next year, if you don’t
count the £6 million that is going to be given now. Is that
right?
|
[82]
Kirsty Williams: Yes. So, what we’ve agreed with the
universities, to cope with initial pressures that they’re
facing, is to bring £6 million forward.
|
[83]
Hefin David: For this year.
|
[84]
Kirsty Williams: Yes. So, we’re bringing this £6
million forward. The additional resources that we’re making
available: there’s one to cover tuition fees, which will be
the £10 million, and we’re also announcing the
financial package attached to postgraduate study. So, in July, I
signalled my intention to move to this system. In July, I was not
in a position to say how much that is. So, there’ll be an
announcement today around the £5 million in both years, for
two years going forward, which will fund the postgraduate element
of this, which we were not in a position to tell you in July.
|
09:30
|
[85]
Hefin David: So, next year, it’s not £20
million, it’s £35 million, of which £15 million
is ring-fenced for higher education.
|
[86]
Kirsty Williams: Well, the £20 million is spread from
HE and FE. So, there is a discussion to be had about how those
resources will be—
|
[87]
Hefin David: I’ll come on to that. But you can
conceptualise it as £35 million or £20
million—£35 million, given the announcement
you’ve made today, of which £15 million is ring-fenced
for HE. That’s a way of conceptualising that.
|
[88]
Mr Jones: The £10 million hasn’t been allocated
to a specific financial year yet. So, we’ll have to have some
further discussions around when that money is allocated to
HEFCW.
|
[89]
Hefin David: But it will be this year or next year.
|
[90]
Mr Jones: It won’t be this year.
|
[91]
Hefin David: It won’t be.
|
[92]
Mr Jones: No, it won’t be this year.
|
[93]
Kirsty Williams: It won’t be in there.
|
[94]
Hefin David: Okay. Okay. So, it’s going to
be—.
|
[95]
Kirsty Williams: The new financial year.
|
[96]
Hefin David: Well, it, surely, would likely to be—
|
[97]
Lynne Neagle: Can we let people answer, please, Hefin?
|
[98]
Kirsty Williams: So, the money, the £10 million, has
yet to be allocated to a particular year, but it won’t be in
this financial year. It will be in the new financial year. Same
academic year, new financial year.
|
[99]
Hefin David: Okay, got it. I think. And, if you are sitting
in the FE sector, is it fair to say that you might have the
perspective that HE are now getting an increased amount and FE is
not, and, therefore, would you, in your remit letter to HEFCW, give
a clear indication of how you expect the £20 million then to
split, and will it be different to the £15 million/£5
million split that you had last year?
|
[100] Kirsty
Williams: Well, we were clear in the remit letter last year of
our expectations around cross-sector working, and we will consider,
across Government, how best to allocate and to utilise this
£20 million that is available. What’s clear to me is
that the traditional barriers between HE and FE are breaking down,
and that’s to be welcomed. And, therefore, we need to look at
support for the sector as a whole, but, as for whether FE feel that
they’re not getting a fair deal, I guess, Alun, you would
have a perspective on that.
|
[101] The Minister
for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language (Alun Davies): I do
have a perspective on that. [Laughter.]
|
[102] Hefin
David: And what is that perspective?
|
[103] Alun
Davies: We’re managing a financial situation that has
been difficult for some years. And we understand that, and I
don’t think there’s any need for us to rehearse that
this morning. Within that, we’ve taken decisions over a
period of time, both this Government and the previous Government,
to seek to protect full-time, work-based apprenticeships and
learning in the 16 to 18 age bracket, mainly delivered through
further education colleges. The consequence of that has been
significant reductions elsewhere, of course. Now, we’re
looking at how we take this strategy forward. I would like to see
us protecting, continuing to protect, the areas we are protecting,
but also looking at how we can continue to support adult learning,
for example. That’s something that I hope we can do.
|
[104] We’ve
worked with the sector to manage reductions over some years, so you
haven’t seen the chaotic situation you have in England.
Darren Millar speaks about the Public Accounts Committee report. He
will be aware of the review that they did of the Wales Audit Office
report on further education colleges in Wales, which was, on the
whole, a very positive report on both the financial strength of the
sector, and the financial management, both of the sector and the
relationship with Welsh Government. So, we have a robust situation,
but it’s a situation that hasn’t arrived by accident,
but as a consequence of management.
|
[105] Hefin
David: You’re talking about this borderless FE/HE, which
the tertiary funding council will address as well. But would you
appreciate that it may be a view in the further education sector
that the higher education sector have had a big increase now, and
that the introduction of the tertiary funding council will not be
fast enough to keep up with a borderless system, and, therefore,
you need to be very direct and clear about how the £20
million, separate from the extra money, will be allocated?
|
[106] Kirsty
Williams: It will be allocated in the same way as it was last
year.
|
[107] Hefin
David: Fifteen million pounds to £5 million.
|
[108] Alun
Davies: Fifteen million pounds/£5 million, yes.
|
[109] Hefin
David: Right. Okay.
|
[110] Alun
Davies: But can I say, in response—? Because I think,
Chair, that it’s important that we recognise the scale of the
ambition here. The White Paper that the Cabinet Secretary
published, and which we will complete a consultation on—I
think it’s next week—is a very, very ambitious
document, with a vision for that seamless post-16 educational
experience, and us bringing together sectors, colleges,
institutions, and the rest, in order to deliver that in a way that
enhances the citizen—if you like, the person’s
individual opportunities of education. And that is a fundamentally
important way of structuring things. Now, I don’t want to,
and I won’t—with respect, Hefin—get into a
situation of these sectors competing with each other. We understand
that all sectors are facing robust financial difficulty, shall we
say, and we recognise that, both as a Government, as HEFCW and as
institutions, we have to manage that accordingly. To date, and
certainly within the FE sector, we’ve seen some very
effective management of the financial situation, and the WAO report
I think recognised that. As we move forward, we will seek to do
that in a wider sense, together with HE.
|
[111]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. We need to make some progress. I’ve got
two Members who want further questions on this: John, then
Mark—very briefly, because we need to go on to
post-compulsory education and training reforms.
|
[112]
John Griffiths:
Okay, Chair. You mentioned lifelong
learning, Alun, and I think, over the last five years, we’ve
seen a halving of learners in adult community learning, so
there’s been a dramatic decrease. So, I just wonder whether
you could say a little bit about that, and how that fits in with
Welsh Government’s ambitions to take forward lifelong
learning. And has any analysis been done on just who those learners
are? Because we heard at one stage it could be middle-class people
doing flower-arranging classes, which is great, but perhaps not as
important as somebody who’s doing adult community learning as
a way back into employment, and a way back into perhaps further and
higher education.
|
[113]
Alun Davies: I thought the Estyn report, published last year, was
a very good analysis of those areas, and the impact of reductions
in that area. And in accepting that report, what we’ve also
done is accept the need to look again at adult learning, adult
education. Chair, I’ve got no issue with the analysis that
John has outlined. I absolutely agree with the fundamental
importance, that we have to provide that wider educational
experience, and the funding reductions did have a disproportionate
impact, of course, on adult learning—we’re aware of
that. The reason for that, of course, was to protect the full-time
places available to young people between 16 and 18, and we did
protect those. I think we actually saw a funding increase of about
3 per cent, in fact, over that period. So, we have protected those
courses, and the consequence has been the reductions in the wider
adult learning that you outlined.
|
[114]
Now, I’ve spoken, and, I hope,
reasonably clearly, over the last year or so that it’s my
ambition to be able to look again at adult education, and bring
forward a new strategy for adult education that recognises its
importance in the wider society, and which enables us to reach our
ambitions for that. And I hope I’ll be able to make a
statement on that, Chair, certainly within the next six
months.
|
[115]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Mark, briefly, please, because I want to
move on to PCET reforms.
|
[116]
Mark Reckless: Cabinet Secretary, thank you for publishing the
student finance update, and sharing the statement in advance of the
committee meeting. I wonder if you could just help me with a couple
of paragraphs. You say:
|
[117]
‘I am able to confirm
that…the maximum tuition fee will remain at
£9,000.’
|
[118]
And I’m just trying to reconcile
that with the next paragraph, where you say that
|
[119]
‘financial plans will have included
additional income from increased tuition fees’
|
[120]
for universities. And you refer to
managing financial issues for our institutions as a result of this
change. Can you clarify that, actually, you haven’t confirmed
the tuition fee will remain at £9,000, but you have performed
a u-turn on the previously announced policy of increasing
fees?
|
[121]
Kirsty Williams:
I don’t think you were here at the
beginning of the committee for my statement, and my opening
remarks, where I clearly said to the committee that £9,000
fees will remain. And that is a change of policy from July, and we
will make additional resources available to the HE sector to help
them accommodate that change.
|
[122]
Mark Reckless: So, we’re not confirming that fees are staying
at £9,000, we’re changing the previously announced
policy, so there’s not going to be an increase, and contrary
to what was said before, you
are—[Inaudible.]—£9,000.
|
[123]
Kirsty Williams:
Fees are £9,000—
|
[124]
Lynne Neagle: We have done this, Mark, before you came
in.
|
[125]
Kirsty Williams:
Fees are £9,000. They will be
staying at £9,000, and we will be making additional resources
available to institutions.
|
[126]
Mark Reckless: But a change rather than a confirmation.
|
[127]
Lynne Neagle: Mark, if you’d been here at the
beginning—we covered this. Okay. We’re going to move on
now to talk about the post-compulsory education and training
reforms. The first questions on this are from Hefin.
|
[128] Hefin David: The White Paper on Hazelkorn
identifies significant weaknesses in the post-compulsory education
and training system, which don’t seem to have been addressed
by the Higher Education (Wales) Act 2015. So, what are those
specific, significant weaknesses that you’re trying to
address?
|
[129]
Kirsty Williams:
I think, Hefin, reading Professor
Hazelkorn’s report, it identified a number of weaknesses,
specifically concerns about duplication within the sector, but also
gaps in provision within the sector. Traditional boundaries, as
we’ve just been talking about are breaking down, and so, for
some institutions, they may be subject to more than one set of
regulatory requirements, which is confusing and costly and not
productive. Funding and quality-assurance mechanisms vary widely
across the sector, and there is this age-old problem of academic
and educational routes through education having a very different
status and not being regarded as being equally valuable. Evidence
also suggests that sometimes young people and their parents
aren’t getting access to advice that allows them to make the
appropriate decisions for them. So, there are a number of issues
around the current sector that Professor Hazelkorn identified as
being weaknesses and what we hope to achieve, by moving to the
establishment of the commission, is a seamless arrangement for
planning and regulating and quality-assuring and providing
information and coverage for the sector.
|
[130]
Hefin David: Some of these things are probably things that I
recognise from my own previous career experience. I don’t
know whether you needed a report to say them. For example, the
single funding body, the FEHE and the boundary-less FEHE, which is
really good, but why not have that addressed in the previous Higher
Education (Wales) Act 2015?
|
[131]
Kirsty Williams:
Hefin, you would have to ask the Minister
responsible who took the higher education Act for 2015
through.
|
[132]
Hefin David: You must have a view.
|
[133]
Kirsty Williams:
Well, yes, I have a view. I think, if I
were to try and put myself in that person’s shoes back at the
time, I guess the Act was there to answer a different set of
problems, really, and then, subsequently, the previous Government
commissioned the Hazelkorn report to look at the entirety of the
sector, and I am picking up that report. I agree with the analysis.
I think there is an opportunity to do things better and we are
taking that opportunity through the consultation that is about to
come to an end, moving towards legislation in this Assembly term to
create that overarching body that I believe will help us solve some
of those problems that you’re talking about. I think the Act
of 2015 was designed to do a different set of things.
|
[134]
Hefin David: Okay. And how will the changes enable
Government-supported higher education and further education sectors
to address the problem of employers’ confidence that supplies
of skilled labour are not of the standards they should
be?
|
[135]
Kirsty Williams:
I think what we’re trying to
achieve is by bringing institutions together to focus very much on
the needs of learners and indeed the needs of employers—the
new commission will bring functions that are currently dispersed
through different regulators and several funders to a whole-system
approach. I would very much like to see employers have an active
part and representation on the commission so that that voice of
business and the voice of what we need for the economy is heard
loud and clear, so that when that commission is looking to engage
with the sector, to commission and plan the sector, we will have
that coverage.
|
09:45
|
[136] I am aware that, for some employers, confidence is
low in the traditional settings that are there, and we need to get
better—both in the FE sector, and particularly in the HE
sector—at working more closely with employers, which, again,
takes us back to the 2017 remit letter, where we’re urging
HEFCW to prioritise and to work very hard with the sector on issues
around research and links to business, and to be able to
have those voices on HEFCW as we move forward in the interim
period. Because we can’t just sit back and wait for the new
commission to be on board. There are things we need to do now to
improve the situation. HEFCW are out to arrange a round of
replacements. Some people have come to the end of their term on the
HEFCW board, and they’ve been proactive, I believe, in going
out to look for a more diverse set of people who can bring these
experiences to the HEFCW board now, rather than simply just waiting
for the commission to take place.
|
[137] Hefin
David: Okay. I’d like to explore the structure and nature
of the new body. Are you ready to move on to that, Chair?
|
[138]
Lynne Neagle: Yes, that’s fine.
|
[139]
Hefin David: Okay. So, the new tertiary education research
commission for Wales, which sounds a bit like
‘turkey’—[Laughter.] I’m wondering
about the acronym, but there we go. The new body—how will it
differ from the current structure of HEFCW? What is, in your
view—? Can you explain to us the current structure of HEFCW
and how TERCW will be different?
|
[140]
Kirsty Williams:
Okay. Hefin, if I can be flippant for a
moment, if all I have to worry about in the next couple of years as
we move towards the commission is the acronym, I’ll take
that, because this is a very comprehensive, complex piece of work.
We believe that when the Bill comes forward, it will probably be
the largest Bill that this Assembly has—
|
[141]
Hefin David: I was also being flippant as well.
|
[142]
Kirsty Williams:
—ever had to deal with.
So, if the acronym is all I’ve got to worry
about—
|
[143]
Hefin David: But the structure—
|
[144]
Kirsty Williams:
—then I’ll be
happy.
|
[145]
Hefin David: But the structure is important. But the structure is
important. How will—
|
[146]
Lynne Neagle: Hefin, don’t interrupt, please.
|
[147]
Hefin David: —the structure be different?
|
[148]
Kirsty Williams:
So, our aim in creating the new
commission will be to keep what is good about the current system,
but also to build anew where innovation is needed. So, while
we’ll—. You know, we’re out to consultation at
the moment on the broad principles around the commission. My
intention is to have a technical consultation in the new year,
which will be more detailed and will drill down into more detail,
because at the moment the consultation is quite high level, and
more detail.
|
[149]
In principle, it’s difficult to
imagine how the model that we’ve currently got for HEFCW,
which is designed solely for the needs of the higher education
sector, could in its entirety just be brought over and parked and
be expected to cope with the diversity that the new commission will
have to consider—so that’s HE, FE, work-based
learning—so it will have to be a much broader approach to
that with the multiple voices. But, you know, it’s a genuine
consultation. We’re looking for views from people about how
best that will be set up and how it will function, and what the
methods by which it will—the relationship that it will have
with the providers, who will be covered and who won’t be,
because there’s a discussion to be had about sixth
forms—where do they lie? So, it’s a genuine
consultation. It’s coming to an end. We will reflect closely
on that before we go out to technical consultation in the new year
on a more detailed proposal.
|
[150]
Hefin David: What are the current numbers of staff at HEFCW at the
moment?
|
[151]
Kirsty Williams:
Current numbers of staff? I will have to
let you know. Off the top of my head—
|
[152]
Hefin David: Is it about 40?
|
[153]
Mr Jones: It’s just over 40. It’s about 44, or
something like that.
|
[154]
Hefin David: And what kind of structure does the organisation
have? Is it a directorate structure, or is it an organic
structure?
|
[155]
Kirsty Williams:
It’s a chief with a
board.
|
[156]
Mr Jones: Yes, well, there’s a board that overarches, and
then the executive consists of a chief executive officer and a
senior management team.
|
[157]
Hefin David: So, would you expect to see an expansion of this
organisation into something bigger, or—?
|
[158]
Kirsty Williams:
Can I make it absolutely clear: the new
commission is not the son or daughter of HEFCW? This is a new
approach and a new organisation, learning from what has worked well
in HEFCW, but I don’t want to give any impression that
we’re just going to morph HEFCW into—
|
[159]
Hefin David: But you will still have the same people, won’t
you? You’re not going to have a whole new set of people
running this. The people who are currently working for HEFCW are
likely to be involved in the new body. Therefore, there’s a
cultural continuation.
|
[160]
Kirsty Williams:
It’s too early to tell what
decisions individuals will make. Obviously, we don’t want to
disadvantage anybody, and we’re not in the business of making
people lose their jobs, but I think we’re too early in this
process to know who is going to head-up this
organisation.
|
[161]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. Have you finished your questions?
|
[162]
Hefin David: Yes, okay.
|
[163]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Llyr, on this.
|
[164]
Llyr Gruffydd: Just coming back to the sixth form
question—now, you may say, ‘Well, we’ll have to
wait and see what the consultation says’, but I’m just
wondering—
|
[165]
Kirsty Williams:
It’s what I will say.
|
[166]
Llyr Gruffydd: Yes, I was fearing as much. But, surely, if
we’re looking to introduce a system that brings more
coherence, more co-working, more of a look at the whole
post-compulsory education sector, then it would seem very strange
if sixth forms sat somehow outside of that.
|
[167] Kirsty Williams: Well, of course, if you read Ellen’s
report, she does not come to a firm conclusion around the issue of
sixth forms. There are advantages and disadvantages in moving the
sixth forms—. Technically, they are indeed post-compulsory
education, and we don’t compel people to go to sixth form,
but they are very clearly part of the school system. So, the report
itself says that there are disadvantages and advantages to either
putting them into the school system, where they are regulated by
Estyn and they are part of that regime—or whether you
actually take them out of the school system and put them into a
different regulatory body and planning body. It’s a genuine
consultation. The Government has no fixed view on this at this
moment. We’re waiting to hear how people view this, because
Ellen Hazelkorn herself did not come up with a firm recommendation
about where sixth forms should sit.
|
[168] Llyr
Gruffydd: Fair enough.
|
[169] Lynne
Neagle: Okay, thank you. We’re going to move on to
questions around access now—John.
|
[170] John
Griffiths: Thank you, Chair. The White Paper suggested that
post-compulsory systems were not, I think, fully optimised—or
something similar was the charming phrase used—in terms of
dealing with more diverse learners and anticipating future trends.
So, I wonder if you could say a little bit about how the new
post-compulsory system will meet the challenges of widening access.
And what are your thoughts on whether the commission might be
tasked with carrying out any particular work to ensure that we do
widen access as we go forward?
|
[171] Kirsty
Williams: John, can I reassure you that widening access is a
priority for me and a priority across the Welsh Government? I
can’t comment on the future priorities of future Ministers
when the commission is up and running, but I would expect the new
commission to have wide-ranging powers that they could use to
promote and support wider access. I think what’s important as
well is that, by taking this whole-systems approach within the
commission, we will be more effective in breaking down some of the
barriers and creating seamless pathways and transition arrangements
for all learners to be able to move through different parts of the
system, which I think sometimes learners can find very complex and
very difficult and not flexible enough as it currently stands. So,
the commission will be able to help, I believe, to open up learning
opportunities for all. That vision of what’s best for the
learner will be at the core of what the commission’s function
will be.
|
[172] John
Griffiths: If I could, just very briefly, Chair—do you
believe that we’re seeing any particularly interesting
developments in Wales at the moment in terms of FE and HE
understanding this agenda and working more closely together and
perhaps having particular projects and proposals to give effect to
it?
|
[173] Kirsty
Williams: Yes, John, and I don’t think we should just
limit that to HE and FE, but also the school system. Last week, I
was at Cardiff and Vale College where they, after a pilot last
year, have got a very, very successful recruitment where selected
students at 14 are coming in and studying at the college,
especially those students who can benefit from that slightly
different type of approach, perhaps children who are in danger of
disengaging from school and want a slightly different curriculum.
So, we see FE colleges and schools working very closely
together.
|
[174] In my own area,
some students take a mixture of A-levels within the sixth form but
also go to the local college to pursue qualifications in more
vocational routes, because they want a mixture of both. They
don’t want to just do three A-levels, they want a bit of both
systems. We’re also seeing, via the work on higher-level
apprenticeships and the development of our degree-level
apprenticeships, which is ongoing at the moment, the breaking down
of barriers that allow that flexibility and allow students to be
able to pursue a route that is particularly helpful to them. So,
I’m greatly encouraged by an understanding across the
sector.
|
[175] Again, this is
part of our civic mission. I’ve challenged our universities:
they have a role to play beyond their institution, beyond just
providing support for their students, beyond just simply training
future generations of teachers. We’ve seen some very
interesting projects, for instance our MFL mentoring scheme, with
sparky, bright undergraduate modern foreign languages students
going into schools and being mentors around modern foreign
languages in schools. We’ve recently seen a report: those
schools where the mentors have been placed have seen a significant
increase in the number of students deciding to take MFL as a GCSE
option. So, if we can do that with modern foreign languages, we
need to do it with physics and chemistry, because those
universities have this great resource.
|
[176]
Lynne Neagle: Okay, thank you. We will move on now, then, to
research and innovation—Mark.
|
[177]
Mark Reckless: At a UK level, the Higher Education and Research Act
2017 changes the procedures for awarding grants largely through the
research councils. I have read that the Welsh Government sees some
risk in this to the research base of Welsh universities, and I just
wonder if you could explain what those risks are for the
committee.
|
[178]
Kirsty Williams:
The higher education and research
Act—if Members are not aware, and I’m sure you
are—created a UK Research and Innovation. That incorporates
into one body the functions of UK-wide research and innovation
funding activities with England-only funding activity—and
that’s Research England. Therein lies the potential threat, I
believe, to Wales and other devolved nations. It’s not
particularly picking on Wales. I don’t want to suggest that.
It’s essential that Wales has a body of sufficient gravitas
and identity that can work with UKRI on an equal basis when it
comes to issues relating to research funding. It’s very
difficult for Jo Johnson, and sometimes Ministers in England, and
sometimes this board: most of the time they are England only, then,
occasionally, we expect them to be UK-wide in their outlook and
approach to things. I think that’s challenging—not
because they want to be difficult about it. I’m not
suggesting for one minute that there is malice in this. It’s
just the nature of that organisation, which I think intrinsically,
potentially, could be difficult. We need something of equal status
to be able to talk to that body.
|
[179]
To be honest, what I’m also
concerned about are issues around, for instance, Horizon 2020
funding, which has come from the European Union. If that is to be
replaced by UK funding, how do we make sure that Wales gets its
fair share of that? So, I’m just worried that UKRI will look
at funding things that are specific to England rather than looking
at funding research projects in Wales that might have specific
interest to us. So, for instance, the Institute of Biological,
Environmental and Rural Sciences in Aberystwyth and
grassland—that’s very specific. It’s very
relevant to the Welsh economy and very relevant to Wales, but it
might not be seen as a priority for a body in England. There are
issues around how we can make our steel industry more
competitive—cutting-edge research around some of that. Again,
that would potentially be a big priority for us. It’s very
important to our economy, but it might not be seen as something
that is strategically important for a different body. So,
it’s about making sure that we can have those conversations
and that there’s fairness.
|
[180]
Mark Reckless: So, as well as the commission looking to put those
types of issues on the UKRI agenda and fighting to get Wales our
fair share of moneys, would the commission also look to move away
from non-hypothecated funding towards the model that the UK
research councils have adopted of funding particular
projects—for example, on grasslands or the steel
industry—if the UKRI wasn’t doing that
sufficiently?
|
[181]
Kirsty Williams:
Well, as you’ll be aware, Mark, the
Government is currently awaiting the finalisation and receipt of
the Reid review, which is looking at Welsh Government-funded
research and innovation. I don’t want to prejudice anything
that the Reid review might say, but the Welsh Government expects to
continue to make funding available to the funding council for the
award of unhypothecated funding for quality-related research, and
the Welsh Government recognises that that’s a very important
part of the dual-funding mechanism for research and innovation
activities in the HE sector. So, there’s a dual-funding
approach. But the Reid review is to conclude shortly, and I
don’t want to prejudge anything that might say. What we need
to do is make sure that we get great value for that
funding.
|
10:00
|
[182]
Mark Reckless: Whether it’s Professor Diamond or Hazelkorn or
the Reid review, Welsh Government seems to have done well at
getting in well-respected professionals to advise and do
substantive reviews. I just wonder: is there a danger that
Ministers end up stepping too far back from the process in terms of
implementing the reports of others, rather than putting their own
strategic stamp on what is happening, particularly—sorry, if
I can just continue—in light of the commission? I understand
why with higher education you need an arm’s-length body to
fund it, and you don’t want Ministers saying, ‘Well,
this research or this project or this professor should get money,
and not this’, but when we look at FE, do the same sorts of
issues apply, and don’t we actually want to see Ministers
getting quite into the nitty-gritty of how FE is working with
schools and supporting business, for example, rather than leaving
it all to an arm’s length body and just trusting it
does it well?
|
[183]
Alun Davies: I hope I do get into the nitty-gritty, Mark;
I’d be disappointed if you thought I didn’t. In terms
of looking at the—. I spoke to a number of college
leaders—FE leaders—in Ebbw Vale in my constituency last
week, and the point I was trying to make to them was that
Government will lead and Government will design an agenda and many
of the commissions, of course, that you’ve just listed were
actually commissioned by Ministers to deliver an agenda for
Ministers on behalf of the Government. But then, we also want to
unleash the creativity of the sector as well. If you look at the
‘creative futures’ way of responding to some of the
funding reductions you see, Government provide an element of
support for that direction and guidance, and then what we do is
enable managers and leaders to actually use their knowledge and use
their creativity in order to deliver on some of those solutions.
Kirsty has outlined a number of different examples of where
that’s working well. You can go to Bridgend and see it
working well. We’ve got colleges working in schools
delivering an educational experience that simply wouldn’t
have been possible if you’d had these sectors working in
silos separately from each other. So, our priority is to deliver
this strategic vision and this strategic direction, and then to
work with and alongside leaders and professionals in order to
deliver that on the ground, in the middle of the nitty-gritty that
you described.
|
[184]
Mark Reckless: And finally from me, if I may, very quickly, Chair:
Cabinet Secretary, can I just ask, do you see HEFCW as a broadly
successful organisation that you want to carry over its culture
into the new commission?
|
[185]
Kirsty Williams:
As I said, there are many very positive
aspects of how the higher education funding council has worked. We
want to take what’s good from that, but I am very clear that
I do not want people to have the impression that this is just going
to be a souped-up HEFCW, or that the new commission will be the son
or daughter of HEFCW. Because as I said in answer to questions
earlier, given the diversity of the sector as a whole, it’s
hard to see how you could just simply transplant HEFCW and
everything that HEFCW has done into a sector that will have to take
care of so many more different types of organisations and ways of
doing things. That’s not a reflection of HEFCW; the PCET
reforms are not me saying that HEFCW hasn’t done a good job.
It’s about recognising the weaknesses in the system and being
able to deliver it better. So, it’s not a criticism of HEFCW,
but we need to have that overarching view of post-compulsory
education and training in Wales.
|
[186]
Alun Davies: Can I come in on this, because I think it is
important? What this reform represents isn’t simply a
technical reform to an organisation and making technical changes;
this is a philosophical approach to how we see the development of
post-compulsory education. It’s working with people not in
the competitive way that we see in England, or the destructive
forces that that has unleashed, but this is about working in
partnership with people where we are able to deliver a very, very
ambitious vision for the opportunities that we want to provide for
the learner and for the citizen. When I look at the
future—you talk about HEFCW and whether this is going to be
the son or daughter of HEFCW, and all the rest of it—for me,
the test of this organisation will be how we’re able to deliver on some of the
higher apprenticeships that Kirsty described earlier, and how this
contributes to the wider employability work that Julie James is
leading in Government, and how we’re able to deliver this
sort of progression for people and institutions, working
collaboratively together to deliver these sorts of educational
opportunities for people from 16 through to whatever educational
opportunities they wish to access. So, this is very much
philosophically rooted in the values of this Government, but also
rooted in a vision for a very different sort of education system.
So, you know, I think if you try to compare it with what
we’re doing today, I think we sometimes lose that idea.
|
[187]
Lynne Neagle: Okay, thank you. We’re going to move on now,
then, to talk about the impact of Brexit. Llyr.
|
[188]
Llyr Gruffydd: Thank you, Chair. We’re all conscious that the
Brexit clock is ticking, and I’m just wondering what kind of
Brexit scenarios in terms of HE the Government is planning for and
what some of those plans look like.
|
[189]
Kirsty Williams:
Okay, so, you’ll be aware that the
First Minister has his external Brexit group, on which there are HE
representatives. I’ve also established a HE working group for
the sector to get together to look at, with officials, some of the
pressures, dangers, threats, opportunities—finding it quite
hard to find some opportunities, maybe.
|
[190]
Llyr Gruffydd: I’ll ask you about that later.
|
[191]
Kirsty Williams:
Anyway, we’re looking at a wide
range of issues. So, there are a number of key areas that
we’re concerned about. So, the first is around EU staff.
Seven per cent of the total staff and 11 per cent of the academic
staff are from the EU, so it’s about ensuring that there is
clarity around their position, and also ensuring that we
don’t put people off from coming here, because there may be a
misapprehension from people who are looking to apply to work in the
sector here that somehow the country is unwelcoming of those
individuals. So, it’s about creating that culture that, you
know, ‘You’re very welcome.’ Then the other issue
is—
|
[192]
Llyr Gruffydd: Sorry—. I mustn’t interrupt.
|
[193]
Kirsty Williams:
And then the other issue is around
students. So, how can we protect students’ interests?
Structural funds: Welsh HEIs have received quite significant
amounts of money around structural funds, so what will the
replacement for structural funds look like and how will that impact
upon HE? EU research frameworks: we’ve just talked about
Horizon 2020. Wales has done well, so how do we continue to have
access to resources of that kind? That’s €55 million of
2020 funding that has come into Welsh HEIs since 2014, but
it’s also—. It’s not just about the money;
it’s about those collaborations as well—those
international collaborations that academics value. It’s also,
then, about Erasmus as well, so the opportunities for students to
travel. So, those are the issues that we are looking at that are of
concern and we’re trying to mitigate, lobby, discuss with the
UK Government, to try and get some clarity around.
|
[194]
Llyr Gruffydd: Yes. You’ve listed the issues that I’m
sure we’re all aware of and concerned about, but I’m
not hearing what those plans are in terms of mitigation. Is it the
case, therefore, that you really don’t know until you know
what the situation is going to be? Because if we leave it that
late, then clearly there’s a risk that it will be too
late.
|
[195]
Kirsty Williams:
Well, some of this is out of our control,
Llyr.
|
[196]
Llyr Gruffydd: I appreciate that, yes.
|
[197]
Kirsty Williams:
We’ve had regular correspondence.
I’ve met with Jo Johnson to talk about the issue of whether
students should be included in the net migration figures, which we
don’t want to happen. You’ll be aware of the Welsh
Government’s paper on fair movement of people, which talks
about how we want the UK Government to understand the specific
needs of the sector here. It’s very difficult to deal with
the Government. They themselves seem very uncertain around a number
of issues. Some of this HE stuff, I worry about how high up the
Westminster Government agenda it is, and there’s a danger of
some of these issues not getting the traction that perhaps they
need. But we continue to work with the sector to identify what we
can do within our remit to protect against some of these adverse
situations we may find ourselves in.
|
[198]
Llyr Gruffydd: I appreciate that it must be very frustrating
because, clearly, you are doing this with your hands tied behind
your back in a certain sense, although it does feel a bit like
we’re fumbling in the dark a little bit, because we
don’t really know what things are going to look like. But
I’ll leave it there for now, because clearly time is
short.
|
[199]
You touched on opportunities earlier, and
I was going to say surely there must be some work happening to
identify what those opportunities might be.
|
[200]
Alun Davies: Can I say, over the last few weeks we’ve nearly
seen a collapse of UK policy on Brexit, and I think the chaos
within the United Kingdom Government, where you’ve got
Ministers openly arguing in the pages of the Sunday papers about
what the terms of departure should be, is one of the most bizarre
episodes in our recent political history? Now, within that context,
of course, you’ve also got a United Kingdom Government that
is anxiously trying to find a way of getting its withdrawal Bill
onto the statute book. Now, until some of these matters are
resolved, it’s very difficult for us to have a coherent plan
in place, because we don’t know what the different variables
will be. But I would take issue with the description that somehow
we’re in the dark or our hands are tied behind our back.
We’re active participants with the United Kingdom Government
in seeking to find a UK structure that will function in 2019, and
part of that is a review of what regional policy will be in 2019
and post 2019.
|
[201]
Now, the United Kingdom Government has
given some commitments in terms of funding issues, but, again, we
don’t know how that structure will work. Now, if you look at
the issue of further education you’ll see that something like
£600 million has been accessed by further education colleges
in the 10 years to date of European structural funds to deliver
skills training and the rest of it. Now, somehow, we need to fill
that gap, because we still need—and we’ve had this
conversation before, about post-16 training—to deliver those
sorts of training opportunities. Now, our ability to do that will
be dependent both on a regional policy that is subsequent to 2019,
and then a structure that enables that regional policy to be
delivered in a way that we’ve been able to deliver on
structural funds.
|
[202]
Now, at the moment, given the chaos that
you have at the other end of the M4, it’s difficult for us to
actually plan that sort of future scenario, but we are active
participants in trying to bring some order to that chaos, and I
think the statements that Mark Drakeford has made this week are
actually quite important in that way, and that we’re moving
forward with a set of principles that we are working with the UK
and Scottish Government on, on which we will base future policy
directions and future policy structures.
|
[203]
Kirsty Williams:
We are very clear of our ask of the
Westminster Government. We are absolutely clear in what we need the
Westminster Government to do. So, if they support the Welsh
Government’s position about an adjustment to the block grant,
to ensure that there is no reduction in the money that we would
normally have expected to receive from structural funds,
that’s what they need to do, and that’s what people who
campaigned for a ‘leave’ vote promised would happen. We
want them to negotiate continued participation in Horizon 2020 to
secure those relationships for Welsh institutions. We want them to
negotiate continued participation in Erasmus+ so that UK students
have the cultural benefit of being able to go and study somewhere
else. We want them to adopt a pragmatic approach to migration
policy with regards to numbers, and I know Jo Johnson feels the
same way. Whether he can convince the Home Office, of
course—
|
[204]
Alun Davies: Or his brother.
|
[205]
Kirsty
Williams:—or his
brother, is another matter. But I know how important he sees this
to be. We’ve seen from the education committee in England
that they’ve called on the Westminster Government to develop
a cross-Government strategy for international research and higher
education. They are calling on their Government to do that.
There’s an opportunity there, should that happen, for the
devolved administrations to be actively involved in developing that
and supporting that and bringing those benefits to Wales. But I
have to say, sometimes they do not work in a particularly
collegiate fashion. So, Jo Johnson has signed a deal, a UK-US
agreement that they didn’t tell us about, didn’t tell
the Scots about, and we’re constantly battling against that
intransigence.
|
[206]
Llyr Gruffydd: You’ve listed a lot of questions that
you’re asking the UK Government, but the clock is ticking,
so, on a scale of one to 10, how confident are you that you will
get those answers in time to develop a meaningful plan to maximise
opportunities and mitigate all the risks?
|
[207] Kirsty Williams: It’s impossible for
me to answer that because I don’t even think the Prime
Minister could answer that at the present moment.
|
[208]
Llyr Gruffydd: That probably says a lot about the process,
doesn’t it?
|
[209] Lynne Neagle: Okay. I’ve got Mark
then Michelle, briefly, please.
|
10:15
|
[210] Mark Reckless: Cabinet Secretary, would you meet with Professor
Riordan, vice-chancellor at Cardiff University, and discuss
some of his concerns about how Erasmus has been operating and the
fact that he sees leaving Erasmus as an opportunity to develop
better exchanges for students at Cardiff, where there is a huge
number of people from European and other countries who would want
to come to Cardiff University? Sometimes, our students don’t
necessarily have the same enthusiasm for doing the reciprocal side
of those exchanges. Couldn’t we actually use that opportunity
to bring the best quality of possible students to most enrich the
body at Cardiff but also bring potentially extra income into
Cardiff University, given the amount of demand for people to come
in and do exchanges there?
|
[211]
Kirsty Williams:
I meet with Colin Riordan
regularly.
|
[212]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Michelle.
|
[213]
Michelle Brown:
Thank you, Chair. You said earlier that
you find it personally difficult to find any opportunities in
Brexit. What work are you actually doing on the ground to see if
some opportunities can be actually identified, because I personally
think there are quite a few opportunities if you’re actually
open-minded about it?
|
[214]
Kirsty Williams:
Okay. Well, as I said, we have
established an EU working group for the HE sector with my officials
to look at both threats and opportunities. If you can name them,
Michelle, I’d be very pleased to hear them, and I’ll
ensure that they form part of the agenda when the group next meets.
But let’s be absolutely clear: when the House of Commons
Education Select Committee published its report very, very
recently, there wasn’t a huge amount of positive
recommendations that they could find. There were some, and we
actively look to work with them, but if you can name them here
today, then we will discuss those in the working group.
|
[215]
Mark Reckless: [Inaudible.]
|
[216]
Lynne Neagle: Excuse me, Mark—
|
[217]
Mark Reckless: [Inaudible.]
|
[218]
Lynne Neagle: Mark. Mark, you come through the Chair,
please.
|
[219]
Mark Reckless: Apologies, Chair.
|
[220]
Michelle Brown:
Well, I mean, you’ve established a
working group. So, you’ve established a talking shop that
you’re going to be—. You’ve asked them to
identify the challenges and the opportunities. How much focus are
they actually making on the opportunities?
|
[221]
Kirsty Williams:
It is not in the sector’s interest
not to look for those opportunities. It’s not in their
interest to do that, and it’s not in our interest to do that.
What I’m saying is that we are dealing with a massive
potential threat to the sector, and we are exploring actively with
universities how we can mitigate those threats and what the
opportunities are. Those opportunities, for instance, about trying
to—. We have a fantastic product. The Welsh HE product is a
really, really, really strong product. So, what can we do as a
Welsh Government to support that product into other markets so that
we can, potentially, make our product an attractive one and one
where people want to come and study here, people want to work here,
people want to have partnerships in their own countries with our HE
institutions? How can we support that? And we’re actively
supporting that as a Government. But a lot of this then comes back
to policies around immigration, migration status, the signals that
the Westminster Government are putting out there about what kind of
country we are, and Welsh education is bucking the trend. Our
ability to recruit EU students this year has outstripped that in
England, so that positive work that universities are doing,
supported by us, to give positive messages that we’re open
for business, we’re open for study, it’s a great place
to come and do your learning—you know, this year, we’ve
bucked the trend. And we will continue to support the sector in any
which way we can to do that. It’s not in our interests or
their interests to do anything else.
|
[222]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. We’re going to move on now to the
Welsh baccalaureate. Darren.
|
[223]
Darren Millar: Can I just ask you, Cabinet Secretary, about the
Welsh baccalaureate? Some schools are expressing concerns that they
feel strong-armed, almost, into ensuring that the Welsh bac is
something that has to be taken post 16. I know that the Welsh bac
can be a very enriching experience for many pupils, but there are
other pupils who may well benefit from doing four A-levels rather
than three or a combination that does not include the Welsh bac
post 16. Can you just respond to those concerns?
|
[224] Kirsty Williams: Okay. Well, like you, Darren, I think the Welsh bac
provides an opportunity for students to be able to develop and to
demonstrate a wide range of skills above and beyond simply academic
study and pursuit. We are actively working with universities across
the United Kingdom for recognition of the Welsh bac, and
you’ll be aware that the reformed Welsh bac, which now has a
grading system similar to that of A-levels, attracts UCAS points,
and I meet parents all the time whose children—and the
students themselves who have been able to gain a place at
university as a result of their participation in the Welsh
baccalaureate.
|
[225] In line with the
recommendations from the review of the qualification, we encourage
universal adoption and delivery of Welsh bac. Although it’s
not statutory for all learners to undertake the Welsh bac, we would
very much encourage students and schools to offer that opportunity
and encourage as many of their students as possible to participate
in that, because I believe that it brings real benefits.
|
[226] Darren
Millar: I agree with you that there are benefits that can be
derived. The problem is that the Welsh bac is not always recognised
by universities, particularly those in the Russell Group; whilst
they will say that they will accept them, they usually also require
the traditional three A-levels, initially, as part of their
entrance criteria.
|
[227] Can I just
clarify, though, this situation in terms of the push for the Welsh
bac? I know that the Welsh bac is something that is part of the
performance measurement—access to the Welsh bac and the
availability of the Welsh bac at post 16 is something that schools
are measured against. But I am concerned that that strong-arming is
forcing some schools into a situation where they feel obliged to
ensure that all of their pupils—and these are decisions that
are being made in Wales—in some schools have to participate
in the Welsh bac post 16. I appreciate that you’ve said
it’s not compulsory; you want to encourage rather than hit
people with a stick for not participating, but that is driving some
pupils into, simply, stressing out, not feeling able to cope with
the work in those schools, because they’re being required to
take the Welsh baccalaureate. What message do you think that that
gives to those pupils who perhaps might be much more suited to the
traditional three A-level approach, or even four A-level approach
in order to get into the top universities? We know that not enough
Welsh students are getting into those top universities around the
UK.
|
[228]
Kirsty Williams:
Darren, we would encourage schools and
colleges to ensure that young people follow three A-levels as well
as the Welsh baccalaureate. It is recognised at the vast majority
of universities, including Russell Group universities. Cardiff is a
Russell Group university—
|
[229]
Darren Millar: Yes, but not all Russell Group
universities—that is the point.
|
[230]
Kirsty Williams:
Let me be absolutely clear: there are
many, many universities that will use the UCAS point scores from a
Welsh bac as part of the offer. For other universities, if they
don’t do that, they use the process of a Welsh bac as a way
of differentiating Welsh students from other students, because our
students undertaking this course have got a personal statement and
an interview perspective that I believe sets them apart, because
they’re able to demonstrate that, ‘Yes, I can cope with
an academic load’, which is what our Russell Group
universities are looking for—‘I can cope with an
academic load, but I’m not just about the academic;
I’ve got a whole range and set of skills that I can bring to
this university on top of those grades.’ So, I think we need
to look at it in the round, at what it offers students. I’m
very happy to share with the committee the views that universities
have on this.
|
[231]
I am not in every sixth-form classroom or
further education classroom. The decision to allow some students
not to participate has to be a decision for the headteachers in
those classrooms, but I am clear that there are very real benefits
to Welsh students studying the Welsh baccalaureate. We encourage
schools and colleges to be able to allow their students to do it,
but for each individual student, that has to be a decision for the
headteacher within that school; I can’t micromanage that
process. I’m sure that if a headteacher genuinely thought
that somebody’s chances of obtaining a place at Oxford or
Cambridge or a Russell Group university were severely being
disadvantaged because of participating in the Welsh bac, those
professional people would make the right decisions. Because, once
again, it’s a badge of honour for a school to get pupils into
Oxford and Cambridge or Russell Group universities; that’s
one of the ways in which they demonstrate their success as an
institution. So, I think it would be massively inconceivable that a
school would go out of its way to force a pupil to do a
qualification if they genuinely believed that that was jeopardising
their chances of that student going on to fulfil their potential.
That would be a very strange situation indeed, Darren.
|
[232] Darren Millar: But if a school is performance measured as a result
of offering the Welsh bac to all its pupils and ensuring their
participation as much as possible, and if there were incentives in
the inspection regime and other tools in terms of the
tactics of the Government to encourage take-up of the Welsh bac,
then don’t you see that that may force schools to
inappropriately push kids in the direction of the Welsh bac when it
may not suit them because of their future ambitions?
|
[233]
Kirsty Williams:
But it’s not part of the post 16
performance measures, Darren. It’s part of
the—
|
[234]
Darren Millar: The inspection regime?
|
[235]
Kirsty Williams:
It’s not part of the performance
measures, Darren. So, it is part of the performance measures up to
the age of 16, but post-16 advanced Welsh bac is not part of
performance measures in our schools. Andrew, do you want to
explain? It’s not.
|
[236]
Mr Clark: The current arrangement is as the Secretary has
stated, in that we actively encourage the take-up of the Welsh bac
post 16. The documentation is equally clear with the phraseology,
‘where appropriate’. So, there isn’t the
expectation that every young person in full-time learning in Wales
at post 16 will undertake the Welsh baccalaureate. It has many
advantages as a qualification—some of them around the
employability skills that were referred to earlier in
committee—and it does produce, for those who take it, perhaps
a more rounded individual than somebody just undertaking an
academic period of study, but it is not compulsory and it is down
to the institution and the learner to decide whether or not they
were going to undertake that qualification.
|
[237]
Darren Millar: But, please—
|
[238]
Lynne Neagle: Darren, I want to move on. What I was going to ask
was whether we could maybe have a note, because I think that we
have had a bit more clarity around that this morning.
|
[239]
Darren Millar: It’s the post 16 that I was particularly
interested in, and I’m grateful for what you said. I’m
a supporter of the Welsh bac; it’s not something I
don’t support. I want to encourage take-up. I’m just
posing to you some of the problems that some of the schools have
been raising with me, and no doubt with you as well, as Cabinet
Secretary, when you visited them, about the ability to fit this
into an already difficult offer, if you like, to our children and
young people in our schools. The acceptability of it is still a big
issue amongst some of those higher education
institutions.
|
[240]
Lynne Neagle: We need to move on now to the coleg cenedlaethol.
Hefin.
|
[241]
Hefin David: When will the Welsh Government provide a response to
the recommendations of the task and finish group report on Coleg
Cymraeg Cenedlaethol?
|
[242]
Kirsty Williams:
First of all, can I put on record that
we’re very grateful to Delyth Evans for the work that has
been done, and we hope to publish a formal Government response
shortly?
|
[243]
Hefin David: ‘Shortly’. Any ballpark area? Any
idea?
|
[244]
Kirsty Williams:
Having been stung on the education
strategy for being too enthusiastic and then having to wait a bit
longer for it—. We are actively engaged in meetings with the
coleg and officials around the policy engagement, but we’ll
have it out shortly.
|
[245]
Hefin David: Are you willing to give us any indication of what
your response might be to the recommendations, particularly the
extension of the remit post 16?
|
[246]
Kirsty Williams:
You’ll be aware that I have
personally said previously that I believe that there is a role to
expand the remit. I think that the coleg has done a fantastic job
in the HE sector. We’ve identified that there is a gap in
provision in FE that we need to address and we will, as I said, be
responding formally, shortly.
|
[247] Alun
Davies: Can I say, from the perspective of our overall Welsh
language policy, that the policy is to both increase the ability of
people to learn the language and to speak the language, but also to
use the language and to use the language in all aspects of their
lives? We recognise that as we look—. And the conversation
that we had at the committee last week about the workforce
planning, I thought was very, very useful. The work we’ll do
prior to Stage 3 of the Additional Learning Needs and Education
Tribunal (Wales) Bill is about ensuring that we have a workforce
available to us that will be able to work bilingually and to
deliver bilingual services. I’m therefore very anxious that
we work with the FE sector to develop Welsh language services in as
profound a way as possible. We believe that the coleg Cymraeg has a
role to play in delivering that, and that is a conversation that
we’re having. And, can I say this: it’s a positive
conversation? It’s a very positive conversation with further
education. It’s a positive conversation about this with the
coleg Cymraeg. This isn’t about knocking heads together; this
is about maximising our potential and, at the moment, I’m
very excited about the potential for a sea change in the
availability of Welsh language education post 16.
|
[248]
Hefin David: I think that’s as far as we’re going to
get for now and patience is needed.
|
[249]
Alun Davies: You got reasonably far there, Hefin.
|
[250]
Kirsty Williams:
We also have to take it into
consideration in the overall PCET reforms as well and how
that’s going to be delivered.
|
[251]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. We are now out of time, so can I thank the
Cabinet Secretary and the Minister and your officials for attending
and for answering all our questions this morning? We will send you
a transcript to check for accuracy in due course, but thank you
again for your attendance. Thank you.
|
[252]
The committee will now break until 10:45,
but can Members not rush off, please.
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:30 a 10:45.
The meeting adjourned between 10:30 and 10:45.
|
Adroddiad Blynyddol
Comisiynydd Plant Cymru ar gyfer 2016-17
Children’s Commissioner for Wales Annual Report 2016-17
|
[253]
Lynne Neagle: Can I welcome everybody back? Item 3 this morning is
a scrutiny session on the Children’s Commissioner for
Wales’s annual report. I’m very pleased to welcome Dr
Sally Holland, Children’s Commissioner for Wales; Rachel
Thomas, head of policy and public affairs; and Sara Jermin, head of
communications and performance. We’re very pleased that you
could come this morning to discuss your report with us. I
understand that you’d like to make some opening
remarks.
|
[254]
Professor Holland:
Please, I will keep them brief. Thank you
very much. My annual report for 2016-17 is entitled ‘A Year
of Change’ and I think that really has been the case over the
last year. This report represents the work of year one of my first
three-year strategic plan. I will have two three-year strategic
plans during my seven-year term.
|
[255]
During this year, my team and I have
undertaken participatory or engagement work with more than 10,000
children and young people across every local authority in Wales.
We’ve also dealt with 528 cases, again, across every local
authority in Wales. Alongside this, we’ve seen some real
concrete changes through our policy work, particularly in relation
to looked-after children and care leavers.
|
[256]
Through my ‘Hidden Ambitions’
report we’ve worked collaboratively with the Welsh Government
and with the Welsh Local Government Association and this has
directly resulted in a £1 million bursary for care leavers
across Wales, new funding for in-house training schemes and
apprenticeships, and funding to extend provision of personal
adviser support up to the age of 25—something that young
people from right across Wales have told me is very important to
them and their chances of achieving their ambitions.
|
[257]
We’ve also seen the introductory
work and clear commitment to establishing a youth parliament in
Wales—something that I’ve been very involved
in—and actually giant steps forward in achieving a
consistent, active offer of advocacy—again, something this
committee’s been very engaged in—for all eligible
children, something that I’ve taken up following the work of
both of my predecessors, in fact, and I’m pleased to see that
now becoming a reality.
|
[258]
As noted in my report, there are some
areas where progress has been made but remains uneven. So,
curriculum reform, as you’re well aware, is happening now,
and I remain convinced of the need to underpin the whole curriculum
with children’s rights and the need for wholescale healthy
relationships education. We’ve seen some progress in relation
to waiting times for children and adolescent mental health
services, but there does remain work to do to ensure better
preventative services are universally available. I’ve heard
from the Government their continued commitment to give children
equal protection from physical punishment, but await concrete
details about how this will be enacted.
|
[259]
And, there remain areas where little or
no progress has been made and that I remain concerned about.
I’d like to highlight particularly the lack of progress on
safeguarding and promoting the rights of electively home-educated
children. I would have liked to have seen more strategic direction
from Government to tackling child poverty and I’m
disappointed that, at present, the planned large investment in
children’s early years through the childcare offer does not
include plans to increase the offer of childcare provision to
children from the poorest households, something that research shows
is particularly effective in increasing the life chances of the
poorest children.
|
[260]
When I was appointed, I outlined how I
intended to work on three levels: firstly, working on policies and
laws to ensure children’s rights are at the centre of any
changes; secondly, ensuring effective implementation of those
policies and laws; and, thirdly, listening to children and young
people’s experiences and outcomes in order to inform my work.
I would say that this annual report demonstrates how I’ve
worked across all three of those areas in the last year.
|
[261]
This report also demonstrates the strides
we’ve taken as an organisation to strengthen our governance
structure. It’s based on industry good practice, and enables
me to transparently report on all aspects of my organisation,
including financial performance, our processes, my staff team, and
how we deliver for children and young people. It also includes a
report of how we’ve introduced advisory panels, including
young people and adults, who provide strategic advice and support
and ensure I deliver for children and young people in
Wales.
|
[262]
Fe wnaf i jest newid i Gymraeg nawr,
os gwelwch yn dda. Rydym ni hefyd wedi gwneud llawer o waith eleni
dros y Gymraeg i sicrhau ein bod ni’n gweithredu’r
safonau, ond yn bwysicach fyth i sicrhau bod plant a phobl ifanc yn
medru gweithio gyda ni drwy’r Gymraeg, gan gynnwys
digwyddiadau penodol i ysgolion Cymraeg. Rwyf wedi buddsoddi llawer
yn yr iaith yn bersonol, ond
hefyd wedi sicrhau bod pob aelod o staff sydd ddim yn rhugl yn
medru cymryd mantais o hyfforddiant o’r safon
uchaf.
|
I will just change to Welsh now, please.
We’ve also done a lot of work this year for the Welsh
language to ensure that we are implementing the standards, but more
importantly ensuring that children and young people can work with
us through the medium of Welsh, including specific events for
Welsh-medium schools. I have invested a lot in the language
personally, but have also ensured that every member of staff who
isn’t fluent can take advantage of training of the highest
quality.
|
[263] I wish to
continue to work in collaboration with others where possible,
including Welsh and local government, other public services and the
third sector to achieve concrete changes for children here in Wales
in relation to universal services, but also services for children
who can find it harder to access their rights. But it’s my
job and my duty, on behalf of children in Wales, to hold the Welsh
Government to account to their commitments to children’s
rights and ensuring that accessing those rights becomes a
reality.
|
[264] In my annual
report, I’ve recognised where progress has been made in
relation to children’s rights, but also mapped out key areas
where progress is slow or gaps remain so I can continue to hold the
Welsh Government to account as my role and statutory remit require
me to do.
|
[265] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you very much for those opening remarks. So,
we’ll move into questions now, and the first questions are
from Llyr.
|
[266] Llyr
Gruffydd: Thank you, Chair. You’re half way through your
seven-year term, now, as children’s commissioner, or more or
less.
|
[267] Professor
Holland: A year off being half way through. Two and a half
years in.
|
[268] Llyr
Gruffydd: Two and a half years. Okay. Well, okay, two and a
half years is a long time. If a week’s a long time in
politics, then I think two and a half years is ample time to be
getting to grip with the issues that you’ve listed to us
today, and much of that work, of course, is being done. But
I’m just wondering what you would say is your—. What is
the most significant change that you’ve achieved for children
so far in your role, and what would you say now is your No. 1
priority for the next few years, moving forward?
|
[269] Professor
Holland: Okay. I think probably the most concrete thing I can
point to is the achievements we’ve had for young people
living in care and leaving care, so the ‘Hidden
Ambitions’ commitments from both national government and
local government. I’ve already outlined those in my opening
statement. That’s a continuing process, so I’ve been
working with—. Since the end of this financial year,
I’ve met with every local authority in Wales to discuss their
progress with support of the new commitments from Welsh Government.
Local authorities have committed to reporting to the young people
they serve by the end of October this year, so they’ll be
sharing that with me too and I’ll be following up with them
by the end of March to look at their progress. So, it’s an
ongoing process, but I think we’ve seen some real changes
and, in fact, just yesterday we saw an announcement from Torfaen,
for example, that they’ll be exempting care leavers from
council tax. That’s something I talked about in my
‘Hidden Ambitions’ report, and I’ve made a call
today, so I really hope we’ll see other local authorities
following that fantastic lead.
|
[270] I think, for my
office as a whole, and this is obviously not just—. I sort of
just finished this process off, but the advocacy offer is a really
significant change. It’s something that my office has been
working on for over 10 years, as you know, and it shows, really,
how long it can take to achieve policy change. So, I hope that some
of the things that I’m asking for now that we haven’t
achieved yet—you know, that we will see, over the years, a
number of changes. You asked me my priorities for the remainder of
my term. I think—. You said ‘one’.
|
[271] Llyr
Gruffydd: Yes. I know maybe it’s a bit unfair, but which
would be, if you had to prioritise—?
|
[272] Professor
Holland: If I could just say something around systemic change
and then something about a specific legislative change, on systemic
change I would say I think that we have a once-in-a-generation
opportunity at the moment to make a difference for children’s
rights in the curriculum, so having children’s rights
underpinning the curriculum, underpinning the whole education
system—not just learning about children’s rights, which
is vital, but it underpinning how we approach our education in
Wales will be absolutely vital. And that, therefore, would be
sitting within a wider public service approach where everyone takes
a children’s rights approach, and I’ve published this
year a real guide to help public services do that. So, that’s
systemic change I really wish to see. I’m starting to see
change. I’ve seen a number of large public bodies committing
to taking a children’s rights approach this year on the back
of my report.
|
[273] Specific
legislative change: I would expect and hope to see equal protection
for children from physical punishment and better protection for
children who are electively home educated. Does that answer the
question?
|
[274] Llyr
Gruffydd: Yes. That’s—. I agree with those answers;
I think they are key priorities. Just looking at your annual report
and the analysis that you offer of last year’s
recommendations, clearly it’s disappointing in that only
one—as far as the Welsh Government is concerned—of your
recommendations has been fully implemented. Does that suggest that the Government isn’t
taking your role seriously, or is it a reflection on the poor
performance of the Government?
|
[275]
Professor Holland:
This is the first time, I
think—certainly the first time that I as commissioner have
reported on progress on recommendations, and I will continue to do
so through my term; I will report on these again next year. I think
change takes time. So, some of these things I would expect to turn
green over the next year or two. Some of them—this report
covers up to March 2017, so advocacy, I would say, is probably much
more securely green now than it was at the end of March, because
we’ve seen contracts awarded now right across
Wales.
|
[276]
But I think—and I wouldn’t
expect every recommendation I make to be simply accepted by
Government; there has to be some healthy debate. But there are
clearly areas that I’m disappointed on, that there
hasn’t been progress on, and I talk about these in my report.
I have learnt that change takes time, and, as I said, I do have
some optimism that some of these we will make progress on over the
next year. But I will continue to follow up on them—both in
terms of my annual report, but also the individual thematic reports
that I give during the year. I’m trying to not just say,
‘Here you are—here’s my report’, and move
on to the next thing; I’m trying to make sure I follow things
through.
|
[277]
Llyr Gruffydd: But your intention is to ensure that previous
recommendations remain in future annual reports until such
time—
|
[278]
Professor Holland:
I’ll be reporting on where I see
progress, yes.
|
[279]
Llyr Gruffydd: —as you’re satisfied that there’s
been sufficient progress. Okay. Thank you for that. More generally,
how do you measure how your work makes a tangible difference to the
lives of young people? Because, sometimes, it isn’t something
that you can measure very easily.
|
[280]
Professor Holland:
It’s a really difficult one. I
remember my first meeting with this committee, when I was
completely new in post—we had quite a discussion about it. I
think what I do is I’ve started with a clear three-year
strategy, so I know what I want to achieve. I’ve outlined
what I think I would like to achieve, what I’d like other
people to achieve, by 2019, and I’ve brought in a clear
process of planning within my organisation, so that we’re
setting out which outcomes and outputs we’re looking for at
the end of each line of work, each project, that we’re
working on.
|
[281]
So, underneath my three-year strategy,
I’ve got annual work plans, and all my staff over the last
year have received project management training. We’ve brought
in a complete project management approach. The majority of my staff
have had qualifications this year from the Association for Project
Management. That all sounds quite dry, but it’s actually very
important. It’s very important that I have a strategic
approach right through everything we do—our core work and our
project work—to make sure that we have clear, measurable
outputs and outcomes right from the start, so we know what
we’re trying to achieve and we have a way of measuring that.
All of those are reviewed monthly by my management team, and by my
independent advisory panels. And my independent advisory panels,
including the children on those, help me set those goals, and they
scrutinise how my team and I are achieving that. I will be
publishing a report at the end of year 3—so not just at the
end of my term—to say what impact I feel we’ve had so
far on children’s lives and outcomes, as well as
outputs.
|
[282]
Llyr Gruffydd: I was actually going to ask about that.
|
[283]
Professor Holland:
Because it’s actually quite easy to
have lots of outputs, isn’t it?
|
[284]
Llyr Gruffydd: Indeed.
|
[285]
Professor Holland:
Any of us can do that, as an
organisation. I think what’s important is: has it made any
change? Sometimes, that can take a bit longer to establish. Because
you can change a legislative requirement, you can put new funding
into a new project, but actually for that to have a change on
children’s individual lives can take longer to find out. But
we’re putting in processes to look at how we measure
that.
|
[286]
Llyr Gruffydd: Okay.
|
[287]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you, Llyr. John.
|
[288]
John Griffiths:
Thanks, Chair. I wonder how would you
characterise, describe, the position of children in Wales today
compared with countries that perhaps we could most usefully compare
ourselves with—you know, how child-friendly is Wales, where
do we sit in terms of how children are treated by various
institutions, how vulnerable children are safeguarded, the way that
children are treated in the family, society, in general. I know
it’s a pretty big question, but we’ve had the office of
children’s commissioner for some time now. Does the position
of children in Wales sit better now in terms of international
comparisons, do you think?
|
[289] Professor Holland: I suppose I could use two settings in which I could
assess that. One is of course that, in the year in question here,
we had the concluding observations of the United Nations
Committee on the Rights of the Child, which I think outlined both
where Wales and the UK had made progress, and they were able to
point to areas where we had made progress, actually over the
lifespan, as it turns out, of the children’s
commissioner’s office but also areas where we are still
lacking.
|
11:00
|
[290] The second
setting is that I’m an active member of the European network
of ombudsmen and commissioners. I was at the annual conference in
Helsinki three weeks ago, and we all presented where we thought
things were at for children in our country, and I enabled young
people from Wales, from Mountain Ash in fact, to take part in that
process too. It was really interesting because they came away
having met up with young people from right across Europe right to
the far east of Europe as well—‘Gosh, in some ways we
saw how privileged we are. You know, we have running water in our
schools, we have school nurses, we have all sorts of things that
they don’t have in other countries, but we also have a lot in
common.’ They were really struck that they were looking for
similar rights. We were particularly looking at healthy
relationships education there. There were similar challenges across
Europe on getting that right for the young people of today.
|
[291] So, the
international comparison I think would say that, in some ways, I
think we’re doing well in Wales. We’ve got the Rights
of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, we’ve got
some good solid legislative basis for children’s rights in
Wales, but clearly it’s my role to point out as well where I
think we’re still lacking, and I think that’s the point
of my annual report. It does give me a chance to say: ‘This
is where I think we’re at in the state of children’s
rights at the moment’ and, as I say, it’s a mixed
picture. We’ve made progress just this year for
children’s rights in Wales. In other areas we’ve made
some progress, not enough, and in some areas we haven’t made
progress. Does that answer your question?
|
[292] John
Griffiths: Yes, that’s fine, thanks.
|
[293]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. We’ll move on now to talk a bit
about casework. Michelle.
|
[294]
Michelle Brown:
Thank you, Chair. It’s nice to see
you again.
|
[295]
Professor Holland:
Thank you.
|
[296] Michelle Brown: I’d just like to
cover the casework. You dealt with 528 individual cases last year.
Can you give us a couple of examples of how that casework actually
led to policy development?
|
[297]
Professor Holland:
That’s an interesting question. I
think I would like to start by saying that my casework service in
itself works hard to provide individual resolution for individual
children of access to their rights. So, it’s got intrinsic
value in itself. Because it sits within my organisation, it means
it also has the advantage of feeding into policy change, but I
wouldn’t want to emphasise the fact that that’s
obviously the only point of having it. I think it has really
intrinsic value and we make changes—well, we’ve made
changes for over 500 children this year.
|
[298]
Casework feeds into our policy work in a
range of different ways and at different points, I would say, in
the cycle of policy change that we’re trying to achieve. So,
individual cases, especially when we have a number of cases in one
area, will lead to us being aware that there could be an issue and
will often lead to us planning a project where we’ll explore
in more detail whether these are one-off incidents where
authorities aren’t applying the rules they should be applying
or where there are gaps in the rules or whether it’s a more
systemic issue. It also allows us to evaluate whether changes that
have been put in place, some of the legislation we have in place,
are being applied properly and what children’s experiences
are of those changes. So, the whole policy cycle, I would say, the
casework feeds into.
|
[299]
Just to give you perhaps one example of
this—and, as I say, these things do take time—I think
my office first started talking about advocacy because of
individual casework. We then, as it now has become an active offer
universally across Wales, will be analysing and assessing the
effectiveness of that. For every child who would have a statutory
right to advocacy who approaches our office—or if someone
approaches it on their behalf—we would ask, ‘Does the
child have an advocate?’, and we can assess whether that
process is working correctly.
|
[300] To take more recent examples, because that process
started some time ago on advocacy, casework has informed the calls
I made on additional learning needs more recently and on the child
and adolescent mental health system as well. It’s one
I’ve discussed several times with this committee. It’s
not always a numbers game. Sometimes one case can actually
show a real crack in the system, but, in almost every occasion, we
would look to see whether that’s a systemic problem or just
related to one issue.
|
[301] Michelle
Brown: Okay. Thank you. How much feedback are you getting from
users of the service?
|
[302] Professor
Holland: So, since I came into post, I’ve brought in a
couple of systematic changes to our casework. So, we always put in
writing now our advice to service users, even for one-off queries.
And, as part of that written response—. So, this is advice
we’ve given verbally on the phone, because we know that,
sometimes, when you’re distressed, you can’t think.
It’s like going to the GP, and you can’t think
afterwards what the person said. So, we follow up with writing, as
long as they give us permission to do so. And, as part of that, we
would always actively invite feedback from each person who has
contacted the office. We write and invite that proactively. The
response rate is fairly low, I have to say, but very valuable to
us. And we analyse those results on an ongoing basis.
|
[303] Michelle
Brown: Thank you. Coming to the casework again, can you tell me
where the casework actually comes from? At what stage—.
There’ll be a problem. At what stage of resolving that
problem do cases actually reach you? Is it early on in the process,
or is it when people have exhausted any other avenue of
investigation?
|
[304] Professor
Holland: Every stage, I would definitely say. So, quite a
common one would be, very early on, a parent phoning us up to say,
‘My child’s being bullied. I don’t know what to
do next; I’m not happy with the school’s initial
response.’ That would be obviously at a very early stage. Or,
to think of one recent example, a young person ringing us up in
tears from the school gate because they’d just been told they
couldn’t resit the school year and they felt that was going
to hamper their progress on to higher education. So, they would be
very early stage. We also would be contacted by people who have
perhaps already taken a formal complaint against a service, are not
happy with the response, and need advice on what to do next. Some
of them are fairly universal experiences for children, sadly, like
bullying, or transport is another one, of course, that comes to us
very often. Others are very, very—children with very, very
complex needs, needing very specialised help. Either very complex
health needs, learning difficulties, mental health needs, in care,
adopted, often all of those things together, and need help
getting—. Often, individual services are all following their
path of what needs to be done, but, actually, it needs the
intervention of my office to make sure that they are all working
together to make sure that it’s a child-centred approach
rather than an individual service approach.
|
[305] Michelle
Brown: What sort of response are you getting from public bodies
and institutions when you intervene?
|
[306] Professor
Holland: Our approach as a team is always to seek early
resolution in the best interests of the child. So, we would try to
get something resolved, sometimes the same day, but as early as we
can. In most cases, we’re able to do that on an informal
level. We’re able to—. Very often, it takes either
contact from us, or us advising a parent or a child how to take it
forward themselves, to get the issue resolved. But I would say that
we have a positive working relationship with public services around
Wales, and we are usually able to help that child access their
rights through early resolution. And that would be the approach of
our office.
|
[307] Michelle
Brown: Thank you for that answer.
|
[308] Lynne
Neagle: Briefly, Michelle, because we need to keep going on to
other—
|
[309] Michelle
Brown: Does somebody else want to come in on this subject
area?
|
[310] Lynne
Neagle: No, but if you can just quickly ask your question.
|
[311] Michelle
Brown: Do you want me to crack on?
|
[312] Lynne
Neagle: Yes, please.
|
[313] Michelle
Brown: About the closure of the north Wales office, have you
been monitoring its impact, and what sort of impact do you think
it’s had on the number of cases being referred to you?
|
[314] Professor
Holland: Absolutely, we have been. We’ve had cases from
every local authority in Wales over the last year, and we’ve
engaged in participation work with children in every local
authority in the same year. And those two services that we provide
are actually often quite interlinked. So, the highest number of
children, in fact, that we engaged with in the last year were from
Conwy. That’s partly because of the great success of the
annual Conwy play day, which sounds like a very light event and we
were on the beach this year having treasure hunts in the sand with
children on the subject of rights. But, actually, during that
day—the head of my casework service was with me, on the beach
with me that day, and we addressed a number of casework issues and
took on some cases during that day. So, the two issues are
interlinked, but we do monitor across, and I can confidently say
that we haven’t seen any dip in response from north
Wales.
|
[315] I think
it’s important to understand that my casework officers who
were based in north Wales were part of a national response team,
so, when calls or e-mails came in, they were responded to by
whoever was on duty, whether they were in south or north Wales; it
wasn’t impacted on where they were located. And we’re
happy to—. Sometimes, we do some of our—. Most of our
work is done remotely by e-mail, telephone, letter, but, where
necessary, we’d meet a child and/or their family, and we have
done so, for example, in north Wales in this year, and it
wouldn’t make any difference whether they’re on Ynys
Môn or in the centre of Cardiff or the centre of Swansea
where my office is; they would have exactly the same service.
|
[316] Michelle
Brown: Okay.
|
[317] Lynne
Neagle: Okay, thank you. Right, we’ll move on now to talk
about finance—Darren.
|
[318] Darren
Millar: Thank you, Chair. I thought you were going to refer to
the proactive local AMs in terms of encouraging people to get in
touch with—
|
[319] Professor
Holland: Actually, that is a real issue. Proactive Assembly
Members, of which, of course, you’re one of those, in terms
of referring things to my office—. Assembly Members; it might
be a local advocate in particular, or it might be that I’ve
just gone and given a speech at a conference to a big load of
practitioners and said, ‘Remember we’ve got a casework
service’ and we might get a flurry from that, or a media
appearance when I’m talking about—.
|
[320] Darren
Millar: Can I put on record my thanks, Sally, to you and your
team, for the support that you give with some of the complex
casework that comes through my inbox and letterbox in the office? I
do appreciate that.
|
[321] Just turning to
the finance, having looked at your annual report, it’s clear
that your reserves have increased quite significantly this year.
This is something that concerns have been expressed about in the
past. I was just wondering how you can justify that increase in
your reserves.
|
[322] Professor
Holland: Well, obviously, I’m accounting officer for this
organisation and it’s really important that I can provide
reassurance to this committee and to the general public, including
children, that I act effectively as accounting officer and I think
it’s important that I can account to you in three ways,
really. I need to be able to account to you—and I’m
going to go on to do this—for any underspend or overspend in
one year, that I’ve got a financial plan for this year and
the years going forward based on reasonable assumptions, and,
thirdly, that I have established a robust system of financial
management, forecasting, and governance. I won’t go on about
this at length, Chair, because I know we’re pressed for time,
but if I could just briefly touch on those three areas.
|
[323] Darren
Millar: Yes, please do.
|
[324] Professor
Holland: I think that’s important to do. The underspend
over the last year was the result of a number of different factors,
actually. Much of this sum was the result of my prudent budgeting,
I would say, following a 10 per cent cut, really quite a
last-minute 10 per cent cut in funding, where I adjusted to that
and cut back on every budget line in the organisation. And now,
after a year of that, I’ve been able to adjust and see where
we can spend and where we need to continue those cuts.
There’s also a very practical explanation for some of that in
that I had a large number of members of staff taking periods of
unpaid leave during this year. Three members of staff were on
maternity and adoption leave, and, as a responsible accounting
officer, I had to account for the fact that they may come back into
work at the very end of their paid period of leave. In fact, all
three decided to take up to six months of unpaid leave each, and
that was about 14 per cent of my workforce that happened to be off
at the same time and that actually accounts, on a budget the size
of mine, for quite an underspend.
|
11:15
|
[325] I think
it’s important that you know what my plans are for that
underspend and for my reserves and I take on board your concerns
about reserves. In the past—. I have a reserves policy, which
is monitored regularly, and I do need to keep a certain amount of
reserves in place for provisions that, based on reasonable
assumptions, I know are coming up. For
example, during my term the lease on my accommodation will be
coming up. I need to make—. This is an office that has been
occupied since 2001 by my office. I need to make substantial
provision for dilapidations for that office, whether I move or not
at the end of the lease. I’ve also allowed for an anticipated
forthcoming pay award under the civil service framework. I still
haven’t had exact details on that, but I’ll need to
back pay that, because I work within the civil service framework. I
also have a very stable workforce, which I’m very pleased
about. It means that they will follow a normal salary progression
through their grades, and I need to account for that, so I would
expect, over the course of this three-year plan, my reserves to be
back at the level in my policy, between 5 per cent and 10 per
cent.
|
[326]
I want to reassure you, really,
I’ve got detailed, planned budgets for the next three years,
with clear plans on what’s going to be funded out of my
annual grant from Government and what out of the general fund.
I’ve also bolstered, I would say, the governance of my
financial management over the last two years. I
discuss—although it’s not required of me, in a spirit
of transparency I discuss on a quarterly basis my current financial
system with Welsh Government officials, with the branch that
manages my funding, including my reserves and my budget
forecasting. I budget on a monthly basis with my management team,
and we look at forecasts for the year ahead. I’m particularly
blessed, actually, by the experience of my newly reformed audit and
risk assurance committee, which contains members with a wide range
of professional backgrounds, including finance, the senior civil
service, medicine, law, higher education, and it’s actually
chaired by Jocelyn Davies, a previous Assembly Member—a
retired Assembly Member—well known to many of you, who was on
the Public Accounts Committee and is providing me with very good
advice on that.
|
[327]
I brought in this year training for all
my staff in project management and introduced monthly reporting on
any under or overspend on each project line, so adjustments can be
made. My project lines are the areas that there’s most
flexibility in. Apart from the circumstances I’ve described,
the staff lines are my most predictable costs, as is my
accommodation. I also want, of course, to point out that, again,
and this has always been the case for my office, we’ve had
unqualified accounts from the audit office.
|
[328]
Darren Millar: You have, but I just wonder whether it might be
useful in future accounts if you could actually specify if
you’ve got ring-fenced areas of your reserves for building
dilapidations or other matters, because I think it would make them
a little bit more transparent. I think many people will be
surprised that the Assembly sees its commissioners on an annual
basis saying they’re struggling with budgets and finances,
and yet you didn’t spend not far off 10 per cent of your
budget this year, and you’re carrying a reserve of around 20
per cent of your annual income. So, to give confidence that people
are getting value for money for the cash that’s invested in
your service, the service that you and your staff provide to
children and young people across Wales, I think it might be helpful
if there was some additional transparency. Because you’re
always going to have things that you need to provide for,
aren’t you?
|
[329]
Professor Holland:
Absolutely. I completely agree with you,
and, since the end of this financial year, I have discussed this
very issue with my audit and risk assurance committee and
they’ve provided me with that exact same advice, and you will
see that in my accounts next year.
|
[330]
Darren Millar: Yes, I think that would be helpful. Thank you,
Chair.
|
[331]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. John, on independent review. But I want to
deal with this section quite quickly, so that we get on to the
policy areas.
|
[332]
John Griffiths:
Well, I just wondered, really, whether
there have been any latest developments and progress with the
independent review recommendation that it should be the Assembly
that appoints, and indeed funds, the commissioner, rather than
Welsh Government. Is there any update, any progress, on that
front?
|
[333]
Professor Holland:
I’m not aware of any change in the
Government’s position on this. My position remains the
same—that I would like to be accountable to the Welsh
Assembly, in accord with the Paris principles. I’ve also been
in discussions with those setting up the youth parliament
about being accountable as well to the youth parliament once
it’s set up. I am aware that the Constitutional and
Legislative Affairs Committee plan to draft a Bill for
commissioners to be accountable to the Assembly, and that they have
written to the First Minister and the Llywydd to inform them of
this. Obviously, I’m following that with some interest.
|
[334]
John Griffiths:
Okay, that’s fine. In terms of new
legislation to consolidate your powers—again, going back to
the independent review—are you disappointed that, to date,
there are no plans for such legislation in this
Assembly?
|
[335]
Professor Holland:
Again, my position remains the same in
that I feel that the legislation surrounding my role is a bit
outdated, it’s complex and it’s not very tidy at all,
and this was all stated clearly in the independent review. I would
like to see that change being placed for my powers, but I work with
the ones I’ve got and try and make those the most
effective.
|
[336]
John Griffiths:
Okay, Chair.
|
[337]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Thank you for those brief questions and
answers. We’re going to move on now to talk about specific
policy areas. The first one that we wanted to look at was the
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in Wales, and
I’ve got Llyr first.
|
[338]
Llyr Gruffydd: You’ve previously called for the Welsh
Government to develop a clearly defined action plan for full
implementation of the UNCRC in response to the UN report, of
course, which made a range of recommendations in the middle of last
year. Is that plan in place, and if it is, is it showing good
progress?
|
[339]
Professor Holland:
It’s not in place. I have
repeatedly discussed this with the relevant Minister and his
officials. I would still like to see a clear response that’s
an overarching response to those concluding observations. In fact,
I would like that to be placed within or perhaps to form the
framework for a clear plan from Welsh Government on how they plan
to deliver for children over the rest of the term of Government. I
asked for this as part of the discussions around the
‘Prosperity for All’ document, which we know was
published recently by the Welsh Government. I would’ve liked
to have seen either a section of that, or a parallel report that
was accountable to the children of Wales, to say, ‘This is
what we plan to achieve for children.’ I think that the
anniversary of the concluding observations in June—although
there was a brief statement from the Minister—would have been
a good opportunity to say, ‘This is where we’re at in
terms of responding to the UNCRC.’
|
[340]
There actually are some positives the
Government could be responding on—they have made progress on
some of those areas—but also what their plan is on those
areas they have not made progress on. We’ve seen other UK
nations take an approach where they have brought all those policies
together to report to children. Northern Ireland and Scotland have
both done this. I do think it’s an important part of a
children’s rights approach that we’re accountable as
public bodies—whether you’re Welsh Government or
whether you’re a single school, that you’re accountable
to the children you serve. It’s something that I’ve
clearly asked for and it’s become my responsibility to bring
all that together and say, ‘This is where I think we’re
at for children’, but I’ve made it quite clear to
Government I think it would be best practice for them to do
so.
|
[341]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, what does that tell us about how seriously the
Welsh Government takes the UNCRC, then?
|
[342]
Professor Holland:
As I say, my call on any public body,
including Welsh Government, is that they should be accountable to
children, and for Welsh Government particularly, I think that they
have had a really strong opportunity to respond to the concluding
observations, and I’ve made that point clearly to Welsh
Government.
|
[343]
Lynne Neagle: Mark on this.
|
[344]
Mark Reckless: Overall, do you think we’re ahead of or behind
the other UK nations on the children’s rights
agenda?
|
[345] Professor Holland: I meet on a quarterly basis with the other UK
children’s commissioners and liaise with them a lot in
between, and the Irish ombudsman as well. And I think, a bit like
the international context, there’s a mixed picture there. I
think, in some ways, Wales has been ahead on children’s
rights over the last two decades. The Rights of Children and Young
Persons (Wales) Measure 2011 remains the strongest legislative
basis for children’s rights in the United Kingdom. I would
like to see it, as you well know in this committee, extended into a
due-regard duty that goes out wider than Welsh Ministers,
but it remains the strongest we have at the moment. My
understanding from announcements in Scotland is that they’re
hoping to incorporate the UNCRC more strongly into their
legislation, so we may see Scotland edging ahead on that.
|
[346] Mark
Reckless: You say you want a due-regard duty on the Convention
on the Rights of the Child in the additional learning needs
legislation. We discussed this with the Minister a week or two ago,
and one thing that he said that I was struck by on the other side
was that it would mean a teacher having a class of children, some
of whom had additional learning needs and others who didn’t,
and he or she would need to have regard to the UN convention for
some of the children in the class, but wouldn’t have that
requirement for the others. What do you say to that?
|
[347] Professor
Holland: I would expect the whole education system to be paying
due regard to the UNCRC. I would like to see the whole education
system based on that. I can’t imagine which aspects of the
UNCRC a teacher would be inclined to break, or not to deliver. I
can’t imagine a scenario in which they would be actively
looking not to deliver children’s rights to some children and
not to others. So, I see that my call on due regard on the
additional learning needs Bill as part of a wider agenda to ensure
that a children’s rights approach underpins the ethos and
values of our education system.
|
[348] Now, where that
duty is placed has clearly been subject to much debate in this
committee and elsewhere. I think that if it was placed on bodies
delivering education, then, inevitably, that would be carried out
by individuals within those bodies and they would be required to do
so. I do not see it as something—it’s not a good phrase
for me to use as children’s commissioner, but a stick to beat
individual professionals with. I see it as an enabling tool to
remind and encourage our individual staff to put children’s
best interests at the heart of everything they do, whether they
have additional learning needs or not.
|
[349] Lynne
Neagle: Okay. Can I ask how closely your office scrutinises the
Welsh Government’s approach to children's rights impact
assessments in Wales, and whether you could maybe tell us what you
think the one tangible difference is, as an example, that the CRIA
process has delivered in Wales?
|
[350] Professor
Holland: Well, clearly, children’s rights impact
assessments has been an evolving process, if I can put it that way,
by Welsh Government. I am in regular discussions with my link
officials in Welsh Government about how we can make them more
effective, less of a retrospective tick box and more of an active
part of planning and analysing the potential impact on
children’s rights throughout the cycle of policy
making—so when initial plans are being made, right through to
the drafting and implementation of policies. For every policy
response that we make—so every time we’re responding
formally to a consultation—you’re aware we do that
constantly in our office. We request the CRIA, and if there is one
available—and I have to say, in the majority of times,
there’s not one available at that stage. Is that correct to
say, Rachel? Yes. If it is available, we will analyse that as part
of our response.
|
[351] I think
it’s fair to say, and I think the recent independent
evaluation would back me up on this, that the quality has been
variable. I think we’ve seen a gradual increase in quality,
and the Welsh Government assure me that they are working hard to
ensure that they are real, living processes rather than a tick-box
exercise. Is there something you want to add? Rachel is the head of
my policy and does this process every day. Is there anything you
want to add to that?
|
[352] Ms
Thomas: So, there has been some recent reporting by UNICEF
about the use of CRIA in the four UK nations, and I think
they’ve quite clearly summed up what our experience has been,
in that there are some good examples of how CRIAs have been well
thought out, and how the policies will impact. But very often,
they’re published very late in the process and it’s
more about communicating the decision that’s been made rather
than showing how that thought process has informed the decision
making. And certainly, that’s been our experience for things
like the mytravelpass scheme, where when we requested the CRIA, it
came out after the decision had been made, and it said,
‘Well, this decision has already been made and we don’t
anticipate any negative impact on children as a result of the
decision.’
|
11:30
|
[353] The
recommendations from UNICEF in relation to Wales would be about
publishing all CRIAs, which we think would really help in seeing
that transparency and accountability to children about how those
issues have been taken into account. We also recommend ensuring
that within the Welsh Government the resources are there to ensure
the training and support is there so the processes can be approved
across Government departments, and also the use of independent
advice, for example the children’s rights advisory group in
Wales, which we’re members of, and we’d be more than
happy to contribute advice through that format.
|
[354] Professor
Holland: I think, on CRIAs, as in the issue of due regard on
professionals, for me my impetus is not about creating layers of
administration for anyone, but it’s about having real
processes that children can feel make a difference for them.
That’s how I would like to see CRIAs developing in the same
way as the due regard.
|
[355] Lynne
Neagle: So, are there any examples of Welsh Government actually
doing a CRIA at the start of a process to properly inform a
policy.
|
[356] Ms
Thomas: There are. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t
point to an exact example. I certainly noticed, in the
correspondence between the committee and the Cabinet Secretary from
the summer, he did refer to some CRIAs, although the example that
he gave, I think, was where we had critiqued the contents of it,
but it had then led to improvements, because we’d contributed
to that process.
|
[357]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. And is there an example of a CRIA that has led
to positive change that you can point to? I realise, obviously,
it’s not your process, but as observers—
|
[358]
Professor Holland:
It’s not our process. I’m
just struggling to think of one at the moment—I’m happy
to follow that one up in writing.
|
[359]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Okay, we’re going to move on now to
talk about advocacy. Darren.
|
[360]
Darren Millar: Yes. We’ve been promised a national advocacy
service. It was supposed to be implemented in June of this year.
It’s still not fully implemented across Wales, although there
are some local authorities with some arrangements. That means that
there’s a lack of consistency. It’s an issue that you
have raised on a number of occasions, which many of your
predecessors have raised and which this committee and its previous
committees have flagged up as a matter of concern for well over a
decade. What’s your assessment of where things are at and how
far we still need to go before that national advocacy service is
established?
|
[361]
Professor Holland:
I’ve been keeping a close eye on
this, as you can imagine, because it’s been quite a painful
process, really, from when we had the promise of it to reach the
stage where we’re at now. We keep in touch with the advocacy
providers, as well as directly with looked-after children, to
monitor this, and we’ll continue to monitor this, I must
assure you. My understanding—my knowledge, not my
understanding, is that every area of Wales is now covered by a live
contract. Is that correct, Rachel? Rachel’s been sitting on
the specific advisory groups for this.
|
[362]
Ms Thomas: The latest ones would have been past June, but most
recently all the contracts have now been awarded.
|
[363]
Professor Holland:
They didn’t meet the deadline of
June, but by September they were all awarded.
|
[364]
Darren Millar: So, they’re fully operational, yes?
|
[365]
Professor Holland:
They should be, yes.
|
[366]
Darren Millar: And in terms of your—. The awful thing is
we’re having to ask you. We haven’t seen anything
advertised. We’ve seen no statement from the Government
saying ‘This thing is now up and running’ and
‘This is the telephone number’, and that young people
can access this service now and into the future. I mean, what sort
of level of activity are you engaged with now, in terms of helping
to promote the advocacy scheme? Is that something you’ve
discussed with the Government?
|
[367]
Professor Holland:
Well, you’ll see in my report I
asked Government to actively monitor the impact, and I will be
doing so as well. I am confident that if any of the services
hadn’t been contracted to provide the active offer and
weren’t yet in operation—there are only two advocacy
providers providing all these services throughout Wales—that
they would have actively contacted my office, as they have done
many times over the last two years. In our casework service, we ask
on every case, ‘Does the child have an advocate?
They’ve got a right to an advocate; this could be a helpful
thing, going forward.’
|
[368] I think you’re quite right about—. The
point of the active offer is to make sure it’s available to
children in a proactive way. So, I would expect, as part of those
contracts, that active offer to be in place, which means that every
eligible child is actively met and offered—explained what an
advocate is, because how would any child know what an advocate is,
or any adult who’s not in that world? So, it has to be
actively explained to them about the potential benefits.
Obviously, not all will want to take it up and not all will need
it, but it has to be actively available to them.
|
[369] Darren
Millar: So, in terms of that promotional activity and the
awareness that there’s an advocacy service available, how is
that being monitored by you? Because you won’t know if
something’s not being offered, because the young person
simply won’t have a service—they won’t have an
advocate, will they?
|
[370] Ms
Thomas: The contracts that are awarded under the new system
require both local authorities and the providers to record all that
information, so the reporting on that hasn’t yet happened.
But there will be quarterly reporting and we’re part of the
senior leadership group that is next meeting in November, which
will report on that after the first quarter.
|
[371] Professor
Holland: We’ll be monitoring that first quarter at that
point.
|
[372] Ms
Thomas: And we continue to meet with the advocacy providers
regularly as well on that. But certainly, I think it’s a case
of getting those contracts in place first. I think that that stuff
will then come afterwards.
|
[373] Darren
Millar: But there is an active offer requirement within those
contracts.
|
[374] Ms
Thomas: Within all of them, yes.
|
[375] Professor
Holland: That’s been a really important part of this
final stage.
|
[376]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. We’re going to go to Llyr now on home
education.
|
[377]
Llyr Gruffydd: I was just wondering how disappointed you were when
the Government published its guidance earlier this year and the
fact that that guidance wasn’t statutory. Also, this is a
subject that we broach every time we have you here in committee,
and I’m just wondering what your future intentions are with
regards to this issue.
|
[378]
Professor Holland:
Obviously, my call is a very clear one. I
would say that progress has been frustratingly slow. I have learned
to be quite patient in this role, but I also have been actively
raising it throughout the year with relevant Ministers, including
with the First Minister when we met yesterday. I was disappointed
that, when the guidance was reissued, it was not statutory. I
didn’t feel that it took us very far forward, and I made that
clear at the time. I was encouraged that the route that I was
looking for on this policy had not been cut off by the Cabinet
Secretary for Education, and that she’s clearly considering
her options. That’s still her position as of our last
meeting, which was last month.
|
[379]
My understanding is that the process has
been that there’s been independent research commissioned,
which has informed the national independent safeguarding board,
which is reporting, almost at this minute, I think, to the Cabinet
Secretary for Education and then a decision will be made.
I’ve put it in again as one of my recommendations because
that means that we will have to have a clear response to this from
Welsh Government in the statutory framework that they need to
respond to, and I’d expect to see, this time, a clear
response either way. I think there’s such a strong feeling
about this from those implementing these policies on the ground. I
met with the directors of education—the all-Wales
ones—last week and they reiterated their support for my
position on this, as have the heads of children’s services. I
am a very optimistic person and I expect that to be a positive
response from here and I would like to see us moving forwards on
this issue.
|
[380]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, how much time are you giving the Government on
this?
|
[381]
Professor Holland:
I’m giving them until they respond
formally to this recommendation.
|
[382]
Llyr Gruffydd: I see, because previously in this committee, you
suggested that you would be willing to consider exercising powers
that you have—
|
[383]
Prfoessor Holland:
One of the powers that I have is to make
a formal recommendation to Government and for them to respond
formally to that. I think I’ll wait and see what the response
is before I make any other declarations. But, for me, the way
forward is quite clear—that the need to protect
children’s rights is quite clear here and I would expect to
see a positive response from Government to this.
|
[384]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you, Llyr. We move on now to talk about the
childcare offer. Hefin.
|
[385]
Hefin David: I’m just trying to find the page in the
commissioner’s report.
|
[386]
Lynne Neagle: Shall I take Mark—?
|
[387]
Hefin David: I’ve got it here. On the request to extend
childcare to non-working families, you recognised in the report
that the majority of children living in poverty have working
parents. So, effectively, what are you asking for in policy terms
with regard to the childcare offer? Is it an extension of Flying
Start universally? Is that effectively what you’re calling
for?
|
[388] Professor Holland: There are, of course, a number of ways in which
children from non-working parents do receive interventions, but
they’re not a universal right for those children; they depend
on local implementation of national schemes like Flying Start and
like Families First. I think that my greatest beef with all
of this is that we’re looking at tens of millions of pounds
of investment into the early years on this specific offer, which is
excluding our most vulnerable children. The evidence is quite clear
on this: that’s where the investment needs to go to improve
the life chances of children. We’re currently in a pilot
phase for this. I think the programme could be flexed in some way,
and could be adapted in some way, to make it a broader offer to
more children, because, for me, it’s about the impact on
children, rather than it just being a service for parents.
|
[389] Hefin
David: So, it’s a different kind of offer for non-working
parents you’d be looking for, rather than the current
provision for working parents.
|
[390] Professor
Holland: I think there are a number of ways forward that we
could have in place, but what I was concerned about was this new
gap that was emerging in terms of what we were offering the
children of working parents and those who are not. There is a much
bigger gap than we’d had previously—well, it’s a
new gap—and that would increase the school readiness gap the
following year for children.
|
[391] Hefin
David: With that in mind, will you be making a very specific
policy request in order to address this, rather than—? You
know, you’ve mentioned about flexing the programme. There are
specifics here. If you made Flying Start universal, I don’t
know what that would cost, but that’s the kind of policy
request you might make. Can you be specific?
|
[392] Professor
Holland: I would like to see parity in terms of quality of
childcare. I don’t think every child needs 48 weeks a year of
30 hours a week. I’m sure that not every parent would want to
take that up. We need to see real investment in quality. We are in
a pilot phase at the moment, and I would expect to see analysis,
really strong analysis, of the impact on children in that pilot
phase before I came out with any pronouncements on what the right
way forward was. That’s what I’d like to see.
|
[393] I’d like
to see if this is the sort of way in which a children’s
rights impact assessment could be used really effectively—I
haven’t seen one for this policy—and not just when
you’re formulating the policy, but all the way through.
What’s the impact? What we know now about the impact now that
we’re piloting?
|
[394] Hefin
David: Okay, so you might make an intervention after the pilot
stage.
|
[395] Professor
Holland: I’ll be asking the Government about their
analysis of the impact on children and asking what their plans are
to alleviate any disadvantage to any children, particularly those
who are most vulnerable in their early childhood.
|
[396] Hefin
David: Okay. Thank you.
|
[397] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. Mark.
|
[398] Mark
Reckless: So, to summarise, are you saying that the policy on
childcare that Welsh Government is developing is too focused on
supporting parents in working, rather than on child
development?
|
[399] Professor
Holland: Yes.
|
[400] Mark
Reckless: And do you recognise any political challenge in
explaining to people why Welsh Government should be taking
taxpayers’ money and spending that on childcare provision for
parents who are at home and not working and able, at least
potentially, to look after their children themselves?
|
[401] Professor
Holland: Clearly, there are two political challenges here. One
is for Welsh Government itself, which made a very clear manifesto
commitment on this—that’s been the response I’ve
had from Ministers so far. The second political challenge, as you
rightly suggest, is how the general public might perceive a call on
this. I saw on social media, having made my call last Monday, how
some people’s initial reactions to this was, ‘Why would
we pay people to look after someone else’s children when
they’re not working?’ But that, for me, is completely
looking at it from an adult point of view as being a service for
parents. For me, the point is that we know quite clearly that
good-quality early education and good childcare for children have
long-lasting effects. We know that from decades of research. From
the United States in particular, the HighScope study showed that
investing in those early years for the poorest children has
made—. These were children in the 1960s—. Compared to
those who didn’t receive the care, it has made a difference
to them right up into their 40s in terms of engagement in the
criminal justice system and contribution to tax. This is a
long-term invest-to-save. It is a complex one to get across to
people, but, actually, I think that as soon as you start saying
that this is about children, not about parents, people do get it.
And, of course, it’s my role as the children’s
commissioner to talk about the potential impact on children of any
policy that Government brings forward, and that’s what
I’m doing here.
|
[402] Mark
Reckless: But why did you not speak out in that way before
Monday?
|
11:45
|
[403] Professor
Holland: I’ve followed my usual way of working on policy
issues, which is to try to engage with and achieve change
alongside, first of all, before I would necessarily put the
balloons up and raise alarm bells, as I did last Monday. I’ve
raised this with Ministers since the new Government has been
formed, in formal meetings.
|
[404] For example,
last autumn, almost exactly a year ago, along with the future
generations commissioner, we met with a range of relevant
Ministers—for education, for children, for lifelong learning,
for education and skills. We met together and we discussed our
analysis of the offer from our very different roles and remits. Of
course, I raised the issue about the potential impact on children
with the four Ministers at that meeting a year ago.
|
[405] I and members of
my team have engaged with a Welsh Government stakeholder group on
this over the last year. I’ve consistently raised this issue,
through the right means, I think, through that stakeholder group,
over the last year. So, it wasn’t the first time I had raised
it as an issue with Government, and I don’t think it would
have been a surprise to them that I made this call.
|
[406] Mark
Reckless: Okay.
|
[407]
Lynne Neagle: Hefin.
|
[408]
Hefin David: Just to round off this area, I just feel
there’s a slight contradiction from the answers you’ve
given today and what was said in the report. You say in the
report:
|
[409]
‘I welcome the planned expansion of
free childcare for 30 hours a week to the majority of three and
four year olds.’
|
[410]
Whereas the answers you’ve given
today suggest, actually, that you don’t quite welcome it to
the extent that it can be adjusted.
|
[411]
Professor Holland:
I welcome the recognition of how the cost
of childcare can be a real struggle for parents, especially those
on low incomes. I welcome that and I welcome, I suppose, investment
for children by Government. But I think I say quite clearly in the
report my concerns about it as well.
|
[412]
Hefin David: Okay.
|
[413]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Just to move on, then, to child poverty,
we no longer have a target to eradicate child poverty by 2020 or
any specific performance measure. If you were going to give the
Welsh Government a report for their progress in tackling child
poverty, how would you mark them at the moment?
|
[414]
Professor Holland:
I would say that, although there’s
a lot of activity—you know, every time I’ve raised it
with the Cabinet Secretary, he’s able to list for me a lot of
activity around child poverty under his portfolio—it’s
very difficult for myself and, therefore, I presume, for everyone
else in Wales to see an overarching strategy here. What I really
would like to see is a number of things, really, from Welsh
Government. I’d like to see a really strong use of the
evidence base on child poverty, including, obviously, the aspects
we’ve just discussed. A number of organisations have brought
forward evidence on potential ways forward, like the Joseph
Rowntree Foundation and the Bevan Foundation—on concrete
measures that devolved Governments can take, as well as the UK
Government.
|
[415]
I would like to see a stronger response
to what children and families say is most effective for them. I
think, as I said in last year’s annual report, a clear
delivery plan that brought together all those strands that the
Cabinet Secretary will tell me that he is working hard on would
give a really coherent and transparent account of what’s
going on. It was a key concluding observation, of course, from the
United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. So, for me, it
would form an important plank of that overarching response that
I’ve been looking for.
|
[416]
There are some quite clear areas—.
Whilst recognising some of the limitations for our devolved
Government in this area, there are obviously some key levers that
Welsh Government could use, which we’ve discussed in this
committee before. The Government, for example, did provide some
very welcome funding regarding holiday hunger over the summer. I
visited a number of food and fun clubs—they’re called a
number of things. I visited some in Rhyl and some in Newport and
really saw the benefit and heard directly from children and staff
supporting them of the benefit of that kind of
intervention.
|
[417]
There are a number of other areas where
I’d like to see them moving forward. As I say, we do have an
emerging strong evidence base from some organisations that have
looked into this very deeply and over many years about the ways
forward.
|
[418] Lynne
Neagle: And one of the things you’ve called for is for
the Welsh Government to use their tax-raising powers to alleviate
child poverty. Can you just tell us specifically how you would like
them to do that?
|
[419] Professor
Holland: Clearly, the Welsh Government’s tax-raising
powers have started to become a real area of national debate at the
moment. I don’t think it’s my role to tell them in
which ways they should raise the taxes—I don’t know if
that was your question—but I certainly would like to see the
Government using every lever, including tax-raising powers, to
invest heavily in what I think has got to be the highest priority,
which is reducing inequalities in outcomes and prospects for
children and reducing child poverty. That’s what I’d
like to see the money used for.
|
[420] Lynne
Neagle: Okay, thank you. Hefin on adverse childhood
experiences.
|
[421] Hefin
David: The Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children has
made much of the ACEs concept. What’s your opinion of the
concept, as it’s at?
|
[422] Professor
Holland: Well, the concept of adverse childhood experiences or
ACEs is irrefutable, I think, and it’s been good to see, in
the last couple of years, some really specific Welsh evidence on
this because, like so many areas of evidence, most of the evidence
came previously from the United States. So, I really welcome that
new evidence, which confirmed for me, as a former practitioner,
and, I’m sure, for practitioners all around Wales, what they
would already recognise in how the lifelong chances of people are
affected by their early experiences, but I do—. There’s
a ‘but’ coming here, and the ‘but’ is that
I certainly have concerns about any discourse that puts most of our
response to child poverty—we’ve just been discussing
child poverty—just in this context. So, I think it’s a
really important piece of evidence on where we should target our
services, but I don’t think it’s an overarching
explanator of action that we should take. It explains the
disadvantages that children face; it doesn’t give us an
action plan.
|
[423] A real concern I
have, really, is that it is a deficit model. It just does talk
about what children lack, so, for me, it’s an important part
of our understanding, but I would actually like to see our response
to ACEs being framed in a much more constructive way under a
children’s rights approach, which is strength based and which
says that children have a right to achieve their potential and we
need to remove those barriers they’re facing, including these
many adverse experiences, to enable them to achieve their
potential, which is their right to do so. So, it’s not just a
discourse of, ‘These poor children who suffer these multiple
ACEs’; it’s, ‘In Wales, we have a commitment to
help every child reach their potential’, and I do think that
I’ve made this clear to Public Health Wales, who, obviously,
have led on the evidence base—the strong evidence
base—on this work, and I commend them for it, but I have made
it clear to them that I think that the connection with poverty has
probably not been drawn out strongly enough. I would see ACEs as
being mostly a symptom of poverty. That doesn’t mean that
everyone who lives in poverty—that every child living in
poverty—has these experiences, and we know how resilient many
families are and provide the best possible childhood for their
children despite living in poverty, but there’s no dispute of
the correlation between ACEs and poverty, and I feel that’s
been underplayed.
|
[424] Hefin
David: Yes, you’ve anticipated a number of questions I
was going to ask, actually, but just to round it off: ACEs as a
diagnostic tool. So, you’re saying, ‘Well, there are
three or more ACEs and then we have to intervene’, and
that’s probably not helpful language, then, you
wouldn’t have thought.
|
[425] Professor
Holland: I quite agree. I’ve heard some people express
concern that we will start to categorise children as four ACEs,
three ACEs, two ACEs, and of course, whilst, again, the evidence is
clear that the more ACEs that you suffer, the more likely you are
to have difficulties, for one child, one of those experiences, like
a bereavement of a parent or an experience of abuse early on, could
have an absolutely devastating effect and completely change their
life experience. For others, for all sorts of reasons, perhaps the
support of those around them, it will not make that difference. So,
how we support children’s resilience and remove some of those
barriers is an important way forward, and I think we’re in
agreement here.
|
[426] Ms
Thomas: With policy setting in mind, you certainly
wouldn’t want to have to have, ‘Oh, this child
doesn’t have enough ACEs to access support. They need to have
another one.’
|
[427] Hefin
David: Yes, you don’t want to be putting numbers against
children’s names.
|
[428] Professor
Holland: Absolutely not. It helps our understanding, it’s
a very useful evidence base, but I don’t think it’s the
only way we should be making policy in terms of what we do to
counteract poverty.
|
[429] Lynne
Neagle: Okay, thank you. We are moving on now to Michelle.
|
[430] Michelle
Brown: Thank you, Chair. You said that the First
Minister’s given a commitment to deliver change following
your recommendations about children’s rights in residential
care. How much progress has been made so far, and are you content
with the pace of progress?
|
[431] Professor
Holland: This is a real ongoing issue for me and my office,
both in terms of casework coming in and my engagement with
agencies, working with a very small group of children, but a
particularly vulnerable group of children with very complex needs.
I was very pleased to have full acceptance from the First Minister
of all four recommendations in my report. I had a very positive and
proactive response. I was also pleased that the Government
immediately set up a task and finish group to work on those
recommendations and, of course, my office is actively involved in
that.
|
[432] Another positive
around this has been the engagement above and beyond that task and
finish group by a range of agencies in trying to work out some of
the sticky, tricky issues associated with the needs of the children
here. For example, a big issue for children in residential care is
the frequency with which they go missing and the risks that they
face when they are missing. There’s been a very proactive
response from the police throughout Wales and the Care and Social
Services Inspectorate Wales to work together on this, to analyse
patterns of children going missing and look at how that could be
prevented. So they are all the real positives around that.
|
[433] Issues of
difficulty in terms of implementing intentions around residential
care come regularly into my office about how we actually keep
children safe in residential care and provide the best quality
provision for them. In terms of the task and finish group, my
assessment would be that it’s been a bit under-resourced this
year. In fact, I wrote to senior officials about two or three weeks
ago after the last meeting of the task and finish group to express
my concern about the resourcing of that group and progress on that.
I’m waiting for a response to that letter.
|
[434] Michelle
Brown: Thank you.
|
[435] Lynne
Neagle: Okay. Darren.
|
[436] Darren
Millar: I just wanted to ask about home-to-school transport. I
know that this is something that you referred to in your opening
remarks, and it’s been a feature of your casework in recent
years. The Learner Travel (Wales) Measure 2008, the legislation
itself, has been at odds somewhat with the guidance that the Welsh
Government issued, and that’s caused some confusion in some
parts of Wales. To what extent is your casework helping to inform
the Welsh Government’s current review of its guidance, so
that it can get that right for the future to avoid the confusion
for learners and their parents?
|
[437] Professor
Holland: Well, clearly, it’s an issue that my office has
been regularly engaged with, as has this committee and as have
individual Members around the table. I think one thing I need to
put in context is that, although quite a large number of cases come
into my office on transport and education, only a small number of
those actually come under the learner travel Measure, which, of
course, is quite specific. So, a lot of them involve things like
the suitability of escorts, parental choice around faith schools,
Welsh-medium schools and children with additional learning needs
and whether they get the right support to get to school or not post
16—another issue that was discussed under the Additional
Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Bill.
|
[438] Through my
casework, we actually don’t have evidence of systematic
all-Wales problems with the Measure. Clearly, we’ve been in
correspondence about some specific issues around one or two local
authorities. However, in terms of the effectiveness of the Measure,
I’ve had sight of the correspondence between the Cabinet
Secretary and this committee, and I have to say that the fact that
cases are being settled on an individual basis as high up as his
office feels to me like a really inefficient way for the Measure to
be implemented. In every case that’s come to my notice, the
cases have been resolved on an individual basis or, in one case
that you’re aware of, on a group basis. So, we haven’t
been able to take it forward for systematic change, in a way,
because in each case the local authority has said, ‘Okay,
you’re right’ or ‘We’ll flex our offer in
this way.’
|
12:00
|
[439] I feel
it’s an inefficient use of resources by the local authority
who are making families go through a number of hoops to get the
support they need to get to school, but also when it goes as far as
Welsh Government, by Welsh Government, it doesn’t feel to me
like a good use of their time.
|
[440] Darren
Millar: And, of course, it’s potentially just scratching
the surface; a lot of people will just accept the decision of the
local authority.
|
[441] Professor
Holland: I quite agree, and it might depend on an active
Assembly Member or advocate to bring that to my office. I
can’t say that—. If things haven’t come to my
office, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist
elsewhere.
|
[442] Darren
Millar: Do you think there should be a systematic review of
that legislation, full stop? I mean, given what you’ve said
about additional learning needs, people who want to choose a faith
education, some of the other challenges that you presented as part
of your case work.
|
[443] Professor
Holland: A systematic review by—
|
[444] Darren
Millar: Review of home-to-school transport.
|
[445] Professor
Holland: —by Welsh Government.
|
[446] Darren
Millar: Yes.
|
[447] Professor
Holland: Okay.
|
[448] Darren
Millar: And the Learner Travel (Wales) Measure 2008, you know,
the post-16 side of things: do you think that legislation should be
wholly reviewed?
|
[449] Professor
Holland: Well, clearly, I wrote to the Cabinet Secretary to ask
about his plans to review the learner travel Measure. Over the last
year, I received a response that it had been reviewed and updated.
I’m not clear in what way that has been reviewed and updated,
and I don’t—. My answer is that I don’t feel that
we’re in a settled basis with this Measure yet because cases
are having to be dealt with at Government level on a case-by-case
basis. So, for me, that would indicate a need for further review
and further work on this area.
|
[450] Darren
Millar: Thank you.
|
[451] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. In terms of CAMHS, your report welcomes the
new ambitious waiting time targets, but says that progress has not
been even across Wales and that children are therefore subjected to
unequal access. Given that we’re now past the two-year mark
with Together for Children and Young People, what do you think that
says about the effectiveness of the programme?
|
[452] Professor
Holland: Well, yes, we’re two and a half years into what
was planned to be a three-year programme. I’m
hopeful—and I call for it, obviously, in my report—it
will be extended because I think it still needs that national push
and that national leadership. It has taken quite a long time to
make change. I think that was to be expected. The state that our
clinical mental health services were in was like—. To create
change there was like turning a big ship around. I think that this
year I’ve started to see some real changes and difference,
but it feels like it’s just starting to happen and that if we
don’t consolidate, if we don’t ensure that those are
maintained, then it could very easily slip back, which is why
I’ve written to the programme director and now put it in my
report to seek reassurance that that national leadership will be
maintained. I don’t think it’s ready for the national
programme to end and for it to go back out to health boards. I
think that progress could slip back very quickly.
|
[453] One of the
reasons I think that is is because I think that while clinical
services have really stepped up to improve the situation on waiting
lists—and it has been uneven in progress, but I think
we’re almost there—both in terms of the targets, in
terms of mainstream clinical CAMHS but also neurodevelopmental
pathways starting to reach some of its targets, I would say that
those are a couple of areas where we still need to work to avoid
that slip back. One is to ensure that we now know that children are
being seen in a more timely manner; we don’t yet know what
their experiences are of that or whether it’s made them feel
better; whether it’s improved their mental health. So,
I’ve asked the Together for Children and Young People and
been reassured that there is clear work going on to make those
measures next. But also, of course, if we continue to have the rate
of referrals to the specialist CAMHS, then, again, the progress
will slip back. So, there’s still a long way to go, I would
say, on progress in terms of preventative work and early
intervention.
|
[454]
Obviously, I sent a fuller statement to the inquiry and I know
I’ve got an opportunity to talk about that in more depth in a
few weeks’ time, but that would be my main concern, and I
think I’ve been particularly frustrated over the last year at
the fact that we’ve had two very,
very well-intentioned programmes working in this area in parallel
with each other in Welsh Government. So, the preventative stream of
the Together for Children and Young People programme, the
prevention and early intervention streams, have now been merged,
and there’s working on how we can have the best health and
well-being provision for children in schools—both very
similar aims, actually, in enhancing children’s well-being
and preventing mental ill-health or helping early when it does
occur. I think they should be working on a joint programme together
to do that.
|
[455]
There was an encouraging announcement
recently on direct access to mental health provision within
schools—something that’s been a clear need. Teachers
and children have been crying out for that. That’s one step,
but that’s still about responding to mental health problems,
to mental illness, rather than the early prevention programmes.
That’s definitely got to—we’ve got to make
traction on that, I feel, to have any sense of the progress being
sustained.
|
[456]
Lynne Neagle: Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions from
Members? No. Okay. Well, we’ve come to the end of our
session. Can I thank the commissioner and her team for attending
and answering such a wide range of detailed questions? As usual,
you will be sent a transcript to check for accuracy in due course,
but thank you very much for your time this morning.
|
[457]
Professor Holland:
Thank you all for a set of very
stimulating questions.
|
[458]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you.
|
12:06
|
Papurau i’w
Nodi Papers to Note
|
[459]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. We’ll move on now, then, to item 4, which
is papers to note. Just one paper today, which is a letter from the
Chair of the Public Accounts Committee highlighting their work on
the Welsh Government’s oversight of FE colleges’
finance and delivery. Are Members happy to note that? All that
remains, then, is for me to remind Members that the next meeting is
next Wednesday, when we’ll be taking evidence into the
outreach elements of Flying Start as part of our work on the first
thousand days. We’ve got three panels, comprising
representatives from Welsh health boards, Public Health Wales, the
Royal College of Nursing, the All-Wales Heads of Health Visiting
and Flying Start network co-ordinators. And it’s
Thursday—yes. Okay, so that’s next week. Can I thank
Members for their attendance? See you soon. Thank you.
|
Daeth y cyfarfod i ben am 12:07. The
meeting ended at 12:07.
|