Richard Kelly is a lecturer in adult education, a school governor in Wales, and author of Conservative Party Conferences: The Hidden System (Manchester University Press).
At around 3pm on Friday, Baron Hart of Tenby – former Tory chief whip, scurrilous diarist and Brian Clough lookalike – joined the panel for BBC Wales’ coverage of the Senedd election.
While not exactly jubilant, Hart seemed far from gloomy, agreeing with Professor Laura McAllister that there was reason to be cheerful about his party’s results. After all, we were told, the party’s projected vote share was almost 11 per cent! It was on course to win up to 7 per cent of the seats! And – Duw mawr! – it was even poised to win a seat in the Plaid Cymru heartland of Ceredigion-Penfro. Dim yn farw eto, as we say after visiting elderly relatives in Ysbyty Gwynedd.
For those of us who had just endured the Welsh election, and who had some memory of other Welsh elections this century, Hart’s sanguine demeanour was surprising. In the six Senedd/Welsh Assembly elections prior to last week’s, the Conservative vote share averaged 21 per cent and was almost 26 per cent in 2021 (when it also won 27 per cent of the seats). In the Westminster elections of 2017 and 2019, the Tory vote in Wales was 34 per cent and 36 per cent, roughly the same as Plaid Cymru’s last week. So, although Welsh Tories may have dodged complete annihilation, their latest vote still marked a huge collapse of support.
Post-mauling, the obvious question is: was such a collapse inevitable?
Given the party’s loss of over 500 council seats in England, its paltry support in Scotland, and its dire ratings in UK opinion polls, there is a case for such Brythonic fatalism. In which case, Darren Millar’s blue Welsh army fought a half-decent, rearguard action. But this conclusion ignores a serious misjudgement by the Welsh Tory leadership – one that has grave implications not just for the Conservative Party in Wales, but for all youngsters being educated west of Offa’s Dyke.
Bluntly, education – addysg – could and should have been at the heart of the main Opposition’s campaign. That it was plainly not was weird for several reasons. First, the advent of voters aged 16 and 17 meant that more voters than ever were engaged in full-time education, and therefore had a vested interest in it being up to scratch. Secondly, there is always a huge number of voters who are parents, grandparents and carers of youngsters currently or imminently in Welsh schools; they too tend to be interested in how those schools are doing. Thirdly, by the time of the election, there was a spate of fresh evidence indicating that schools here were doing badly under devolved government; and – crucially – were not performing nearly as well as in England.
In its most recent scores for literacy, numeracy and science, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) put Wales ten points below the OECD average, noting that, post-Covid, PISA scores in Wales had fallen much more severely than in England. As Nation.Cymru reported, related attainment levels in Wales were “on course to dip below those of Romania” by 2040.
Such grim findings were corroborated in March by a report from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies. The IFS confirmed that education services in Wales were “substantially poorer than before the Covid pandemic” (much poorer than in England) and that pupils in Wales from households with average income were doing no better than pupils from the poorest fifth of households in England. Neither could this be attributed to differing levels of relative poverty: among all grades of household income, the performance of pupils in Wales was worse than across the border. Better to be schooled in deprived areas of England, it seemed, than in the most affluent areas of Wales.
The IFS also denied that such disparities were the fault of ‘unfair’ UK government funding.
In Wales, public spending per pupil had risen by 14 per cent since 2019-20 (a higher increase than in most English regions), while combined per person spending on health and education was higher in Wales than in all English regions bar Greater London. In its conclusion, the IFS delivered a potentially devastating verdict on Cardiff-rule: “A lack of funding…does not appear to be the key driver of current under-performance relative to England”, it declared; “policies and the way services are delivered” was a more likely explanation.
This objective condemnation should have been pure gold for the Welsh Tories.
Indeed, it should have been plastered across their manifesto and shouted about throughout their campaign. Instead, in their communique mailed to all voters, the Welsh Conservatives did not even mention ‘education’ or ‘schools’ within their six key pledges. But they did find room to talk about 20mph speed limits on certain Welsh roads (see attached photo).
This apparent indifference to education was made even more bizarre by another factor: that Wales’s dismal status quo could easily be linked to decisions, made by successive Welsh Labour governments, not to emulate successful educational reforms in England – reforms introduced largely by outstanding Tory education ministers. So, mindful of consequential Tories like Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, Millar’s team might have highlighted the following examples of bad education policy in Wales:
- Persisting with ‘skills-based’ schools’ curricula, thus disdaining the ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum promoted by Gove.
- Rejecting the multi-academy trusts encouraged in England after 2010. Welsh education ministers have sneered at the idea of ‘setting schools free’, leaving excellent head teachers shackled by both Cardiff-based and county-based bureaucracy. As Laura Doel of TUC Cymru remarked: “School leaders will be interested to know where the increased spending identified by the IFS has gone. Because it has not reached the front line.”
- Scrapping the school league tables instigated by the Major government, thus denying parents vital information about their school’s relative performance. (The IFS had cited “less data available for parents and teachers” as a likely reason for the under-performance of Welsh schools.)
- Refusing to endorse a phonics-led approach to reading, as championed in England by the heroic Gibb: a policy that has proved hugely effective in the battle against childhood illiteracy in England and one of the greatest social reforms of the 21st If Millar had more imagination, he would have made Gibb one of his senior policy advisors.
For good measure, Welsh Tories might have highlighted that subject leaders in Wales have been given much less freedom than their counterparts in England. So, when choosing which GCSE or A-Level courses best suit their pupils, subject leaders here can rarely choose between the specifications offered by various awarding bodies (AQA, OCR, Edexcel etc.). Instead, they must follow any relevant specifications prescribed by the Welsh Joint Education Committee: a closed-shop, quasi-cartel arrangement that should outrage any neo-Thatcherite and (far more important) any ambitious pupil and his/her parents.
When he was in Opposition, Tony Blair made ‘education, education, education’ the centrepiece of New Labour’s message and was duly rewarded. Thirty years later, the Welsh Tories missed a signal opportunity to do the same – and Welsh youngsters may suffer as a result. So no, Baron Tenby, there really wasn’t any reason to feel relieved about your party’s performance.
But there was every reason to feel guilty.
Richard Kelly is a lecturer in adult education, a school governor in Wales, and author of Conservative Party Conferences: The Hidden System (Manchester University Press).
At around 3pm on Friday, Baron Hart of Tenby – former Tory chief whip, scurrilous diarist and Brian Clough lookalike – joined the panel for BBC Wales’ coverage of the Senedd election.
While not exactly jubilant, Hart seemed far from gloomy, agreeing with Professor Laura McAllister that there was reason to be cheerful about his party’s results. After all, we were told, the party’s projected vote share was almost 11 per cent! It was on course to win up to 7 per cent of the seats! And – Duw mawr! – it was even poised to win a seat in the Plaid Cymru heartland of Ceredigion-Penfro. Dim yn farw eto, as we say after visiting elderly relatives in Ysbyty Gwynedd.
For those of us who had just endured the Welsh election, and who had some memory of other Welsh elections this century, Hart’s sanguine demeanour was surprising. In the six Senedd/Welsh Assembly elections prior to last week’s, the Conservative vote share averaged 21 per cent and was almost 26 per cent in 2021 (when it also won 27 per cent of the seats). In the Westminster elections of 2017 and 2019, the Tory vote in Wales was 34 per cent and 36 per cent, roughly the same as Plaid Cymru’s last week. So, although Welsh Tories may have dodged complete annihilation, their latest vote still marked a huge collapse of support.
Post-mauling, the obvious question is: was such a collapse inevitable?
Given the party’s loss of over 500 council seats in England, its paltry support in Scotland, and its dire ratings in UK opinion polls, there is a case for such Brythonic fatalism. In which case, Darren Millar’s blue Welsh army fought a half-decent, rearguard action. But this conclusion ignores a serious misjudgement by the Welsh Tory leadership – one that has grave implications not just for the Conservative Party in Wales, but for all youngsters being educated west of Offa’s Dyke.
Bluntly, education – addysg – could and should have been at the heart of the main Opposition’s campaign. That it was plainly not was weird for several reasons. First, the advent of voters aged 16 and 17 meant that more voters than ever were engaged in full-time education, and therefore had a vested interest in it being up to scratch. Secondly, there is always a huge number of voters who are parents, grandparents and carers of youngsters currently or imminently in Welsh schools; they too tend to be interested in how those schools are doing. Thirdly, by the time of the election, there was a spate of fresh evidence indicating that schools here were doing badly under devolved government; and – crucially – were not performing nearly as well as in England.
In its most recent scores for literacy, numeracy and science, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) put Wales ten points below the OECD average, noting that, post-Covid, PISA scores in Wales had fallen much more severely than in England. As Nation.Cymru reported, related attainment levels in Wales were “on course to dip below those of Romania” by 2040.
Such grim findings were corroborated in March by a report from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies. The IFS confirmed that education services in Wales were “substantially poorer than before the Covid pandemic” (much poorer than in England) and that pupils in Wales from households with average income were doing no better than pupils from the poorest fifth of households in England. Neither could this be attributed to differing levels of relative poverty: among all grades of household income, the performance of pupils in Wales was worse than across the border. Better to be schooled in deprived areas of England, it seemed, than in the most affluent areas of Wales.
The IFS also denied that such disparities were the fault of ‘unfair’ UK government funding.
In Wales, public spending per pupil had risen by 14 per cent since 2019-20 (a higher increase than in most English regions), while combined per person spending on health and education was higher in Wales than in all English regions bar Greater London. In its conclusion, the IFS delivered a potentially devastating verdict on Cardiff-rule: “A lack of funding…does not appear to be the key driver of current under-performance relative to England”, it declared; “policies and the way services are delivered” was a more likely explanation.
This objective condemnation should have been pure gold for the Welsh Tories.
Indeed, it should have been plastered across their manifesto and shouted about throughout their campaign. Instead, in their communique mailed to all voters, the Welsh Conservatives did not even mention ‘education’ or ‘schools’ within their six key pledges. But they did find room to talk about 20mph speed limits on certain Welsh roads (see attached photo).
This apparent indifference to education was made even more bizarre by another factor: that Wales’s dismal status quo could easily be linked to decisions, made by successive Welsh Labour governments, not to emulate successful educational reforms in England – reforms introduced largely by outstanding Tory education ministers. So, mindful of consequential Tories like Michael Gove and Nick Gibb, Millar’s team might have highlighted the following examples of bad education policy in Wales:
For good measure, Welsh Tories might have highlighted that subject leaders in Wales have been given much less freedom than their counterparts in England. So, when choosing which GCSE or A-Level courses best suit their pupils, subject leaders here can rarely choose between the specifications offered by various awarding bodies (AQA, OCR, Edexcel etc.). Instead, they must follow any relevant specifications prescribed by the Welsh Joint Education Committee: a closed-shop, quasi-cartel arrangement that should outrage any neo-Thatcherite and (far more important) any ambitious pupil and his/her parents.
When he was in Opposition, Tony Blair made ‘education, education, education’ the centrepiece of New Labour’s message and was duly rewarded. Thirty years later, the Welsh Tories missed a signal opportunity to do the same – and Welsh youngsters may suffer as a result. So no, Baron Tenby, there really wasn’t any reason to feel relieved about your party’s performance.
But there was every reason to feel guilty.