Skills and innovation
Our education system must do more to equip Welsh pupils with the skills to compete and excel.
Skills and innovation overview
Business is passionate about education. Thousands of Welsh teachers and lecturers work tirelessly to improve the life chances of their students. However, the system is letting hardworking pupils and teachers down. Only radical changes will deliver the step change that our economy and society urgently need. A recent OECD report ranked Wales's secondary school pupils 34th in the world for standards in mathematics and in 28th place for reading. With level three skills fast becoming the minimum level needed for employment, this is simply not good enough. Welsh pupils are entering a global labour market that is rapidly changing and fiercely competitive. Our education system must do more to equip them with the skills to compete and excel.
A competitive business sector needs excellent universities to produce the graduates, postgraduates, research and innovation that are required to drive economic growth and deliver prosperity. At present Wales trails its competitors in most sectors on both R&D and innovation spend. We are well behind EU countries and most other parts of the UK.
With the need for radical improvements now widely accepted, the Welsh Government must kick-start the new term with a major drive to boost educational outcomes. We agree with the Task and Finish Group on the Structure of Education Services in Wale, which states that: "Learners and their families have a right to expect that we are not prepared to accept anything that is of second best quality."
However, the past 12 years of devolution have shown that the government cannot achieve this alone. Faced with falling budget settlements, the new Assembly Government must forge a partnership approach with the best of the third and private sectors. Doing this would unleash a wave of untapped expertise; delivering increased educational outcomes of our nation's students and better value for money - the current mixed market in education must be built upon. Private and third-sector providers of education services are already playing a role in tackling failure in the Welsh schools system and there is a real potential for this to be expanded.
The Welsh Government must increase its efforts to foster an R&D culture in Wales. This begins by getting those businesses with no R&D activity to commence it. For others, the government will need to support the growth in such activity and for a select few the executive's role will be about ensuring world-class R&D players continue to operate in Wales.
