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As we approach the end of term and our hard-working teachers look forward to a well-earned summer break, I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of education and the specific role of our schools in making Wales a better place.

We all have memories of our schooldays.

My education was almost uniformly positive and enjoyable – Ysgol Glyndwr in Bridgend (a pioneering Welsh-medium school set up by parents frustrated at Glamorgan County Council’s reluctance to provide Welsh education in the area), then Trelales primary and on to Bryntirion Comprehensive.

I guess it’s a truism that you don’t take much notice of your local schools or properly get under their skin until you are a parent.

As our daughter prepares to start full-time education this September, my interest in the education system is sharpened.

Not in the sharp-elbowed way displayed by so-called “helicopter parents”, some even moving house to get their child into a specific school. No, for me, it is first about the relative role and purpose of teachers and schools, alongside parents and our government.

A few thoughts from me as a parent.

Choice is an overrated concept. What I want is our daughter to have an education locally within her community that is inclusive and thought-provoking, one that teaches her how to learn, that stretches and challenges her. I want her to emerge as a confident, bilingual young woman with the same broad range of opportunities as any other across the world.

The Welsh Government’s political ambitions are set out in Prosperity For All: The National Strategy. Its goal for education is that “all schools should develop as learning organisations”, as “a nation’s prosperity, cohesion and well-being are built on a successful education system”. Nothing much to disagree with there.

But it started me thinking.

In various public debates that I’ve participated in recently, ranging from women’s rights to public health and sport, to the future of the Welsh language and tackling child poverty, schools are almost always identified as a problem while, simultaneously, a huge part of the solution.

Now, education is a big area and schools policy is undoubtedly complex. But, at its heart, maybe we are making it more complicated than it needs to be.

A few caveats - first, I am not an educationalist or an expert on schools. Second, my own school days are some time ago. However, I am basing my remarks on what I think are some pretty uncontroversial principles - Wales has deep-seated structural problems around inequality and economic inactivity, public policy should benefit all citizens, education policy should reflect and promote the Wales we want.

Education experts might sniff, but sometimes, when we face immense political challenges, it’s best to strip things back to basics. So, here’s my attempt.

Schools should play a major role in our children’s educational development, but they cannot do it all.

Children spend more time out of school than in it. Our teachers are charged with nurturing the learning of the next generation, by broadening their knowledge, motivating them to learn and sparking their intellect and interests.

If children arrive in reception class unable to hold a knife and fork, dress themselves, or use a toilet, then early years teachers’ already hard-pressed time is diverted from these objectives.

Of course, we mustn’t ignore realities and austerity means limitations in addressing the real structural inequality and poverty that brings about such unevenness.

The Welsh Government has an ambitious target to create a million Welsh speakers by 2050. The scale of ambition and the objectives behind it are to be applauded. Yet it’s obvious that we will only come close to achieving this if we change the way we educate our children.

If I had a pound for every time a friend has told me: “I’d love to be able to speak Welsh but we were only taught a few words in school/Welsh was a Cinderella subject/nobody took Welsh seriously/I dropped it at the first opportunity.”

So, if we are serious about sweating the huge asset that is our ancient language and the opportunity for bilingualism this presents, education’s relationship with Wales’ languages needs to fundamentally change.

Despite the growth in Welsh medium education, currently only a third of pupils attend Welsh medium or bilingual schools. In English medium schools, Welsh is taught only to Key Stage 4.

It appears that there are five different “types” of schools recognised and funded by the Welsh Government.

Now there are plenty of international templates out there for different approaches to language teaching such as Catalonia and the Netherlands, but how about a simpler approach - all primary education in Wales to be properly bilingual so that every child emerges at 11 being able to understand and communicate in both Welsh and English?

This would, of course, require a complete reorientation of teacher training and professional development and the way the curriculum is delivered, but it would be worth it.

Next, at a time of acknowledged tension and civic dissonance, perhaps we should call time on private and faith schools.

Let me explain why.

There are currently 17 private/independent schools in Wales and around 200 church/faith schools.

You won’t find many prepared to argue against the need for better religious, ethnic and class integration. Yet, the existence of independent and faith schools immediately separates out children from wealthier families, as well as different religious backgrounds.

In the case of the former, pupils are offered advantages that, in truth, they scarcely need - a wider choice of subjects, smaller class sizes, enhanced preparation for exams and better mentoring for university entrance and careers.

Moreover, teachers there have been trained using the public purse, while the schools enjoy special charitable status which brings enormous tax benefits for these businesses. They are essentially purveyors of privilege and that isn’t very inclusive to the 93% of us who don’t use private schools.

Then there’s church or faith schools. No one is doubting their long and mostly honourable history dating back to the Victorian era, but we live in very different times. Wales, like the UK, is becoming less religious.

Yet, despite our government’s oft-stated objectives for inclusion and integration, it supports “continuing statutory provision for the existence of state-supported denominational schools, maintained by local authorities and funded by the Welsh Government”.

By common consent, there have been some clumsy attempts at religious integration of late and, while the current debate on multiculturalism has been perverted by tinges of racism, the claim that we are a more integrated society now is a hard one to sustain. I know that faith schools have tried to admit more children from outside the said faith to avoid religious silos, but I’m not sure this is enough.

If the state’s role is to promote integration and equality, it’s counter-intuitive to allow schools which are distinguish by religious faith, whether that is Church in Wales, Roman Catholic or Muslim.

Again, the Welsh Government has eschewed academies and free schools, but a stronger, more consistent intellectual argument would surely be to put anachronistic faith and independent schools in the same bracket?

And, finally, there’s the small matter of the health of the next generation. It’s a starkly sobering statistic that our children are the first generation expected to live shorter lives than us, their parents. How on earth did we get to this parlous state of affairs?

When I was chair of Sport Wales, it was frighteningly apparent to me that, without concerted, strategic interventions in schools around physical literacy, fitness, health, sport - call it what you wish - we were fiddling while Rome burnt when it came to getting more people active.

If PE continues to be the Cinderella subject it currently is, scarcely assessed by Estyn and starved of status in initial teacher training with lessons cancelled at the drop of a hat, then we are condemning many children to sedentary lifestyles, poor health and all the negatives which accompany that.

So, as we await the end-of-term reports for our daughters and sons, maybe it’s time to think differently about Welsh education. Surely we have a collective responsibility to create a school system that works for the nation and all its people.

I can’t help feeling that we are currently willing great equality, inclusion and fairer life chances for all our citizens without making the necessary changes in schools to actually achieve this.

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