After weeks of speculation and a day of reshuffling, we finally know who Wales’ new Cabinet Secretary for Education is going to be: it’s Lynne Neagle.
Yes, the MS who was picked for the role in Vaughan Gething’s brief but dramatic administration will remain in the role in the first Eluned Morgan government.
The news will surely be welcomed by many in the education sector, who will be relieved there won’t be a new figure in the top job bringing with them yet another set of policies and plans.
However, the significant challenges we outlined when Ms Neagle first took up her post in March remain.
Just to recap, education in Wales is facing crises on multiple fronts:
- The ongoing funding crisis in local authorities has hit education budgets and left many schools in deficit.
- Schools are struggling with significant post-pandemic attendance and behavioural issues.
- The PISA results for Wales were dire, with the lowest scores ever recorded and the gap between the other UK nations widening.
- The reading and numeracy test results showed reading standards of 7-14-year-olds have fallen since the pandemic.
- There’s an ongoing recruitment crisis and a shortage of teaching and support staff in key areas.
Since then, we’ve also had the news that GCSE and A-Level grades have once again fallen in Wales.
With the wider economic outlook being so grim it’s hard to see how Ms Neagle will be able to make much of a difference.
No doubt the Welsh Government was hoping that a change of administration in Westminster might bring with it promises of more funding for Wales, or at least an end to the years of austerity, but that is looking less and less likely as the year goes on.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has already warned that his government’s first budget this autumn will be “painful”, so any extra funding for Wales is likely to be very limited at best.
Even then, any additional cash is likely to be targeted at the Welsh NHS, which is in an even worse state than Wales’ education system.
As a side note, it will also be interesting to see how Ms Neagle manages to work with her new cabinet colleagues, particularly the new Cabinet Secretary for Finance, the former First Minister Mark Drakeford.
Earlier this summer a visibly angry Mr Drakeford gave Ms Neagle a dressing down in the Senedd after she shelved plans to cut the length of the summer school holidays.
With Mr Drakeford now holding the Welsh Government’s purse strings, we sincerely hope his relationship with Ms Neagle has improved since that dramatic intervention for the sake of our cash-strapped schools.
We will wait and see what plans the Cabinet Secretary for Education has to tackle the multiple challenges our education system faces, while not holding out much hope that things will improve any time soon.
Meanwhile, we maintain our open invitation for Ms Neagle to come on the Impact Podcast, like her predecessors Jeremy Miles and Kirsty Williams, to speak to school leaders and teachers directly and answer their questions.
We’ll be returning to the key priorities for Ms Neagle and the Welsh Government in our podcast on September 25th, listen here: Podcasts – Impact Wales