Welsh Affairs

Valerie Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend is right, because a culture developed in which everything was judged by the amount of money that was put into it, rather than the outcomes that were derived from the investment.

When we talk about reputation, we need to accept that the way in which Wales is currently reported is not positive. I am very saddened by that, but it is largely because the column inches in the press tend to focus on health and education. They are essential to attracting inward investment, because middle and senior management would have to use the national health service and send their children to the schools. That must be added to the way in which Wales is perceived and the challenge that we have in attracting investment thereafter.

Let us focus on education, because without doubt a nation’s future is built on the quality of its education. In the past few years alone, there has been a determination to develop different qualifications, sometimes for the sake of being different, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) mentioned earlier. When there was a drive to introduce greater rigour in GCSE outcomes, in Wales we saw political intervention. In England, politics was kept out of it completely, and the policy direction was set for greater rigour and stronger assessments of standards. In Wales, there was a determination to change that.

What worries me most, as the father of a 10-year-old, is that qualifications in Wales could be seen to be secondary to their counterparts in England. I really hope that, for those who gained GCSE qualifications last year, employers will accept Welsh qualifications as being of the same standard as those in England. However, there was an upgrade in more than 1,000 cases, and that may make employers and higher education institutions question them. For example, the Welsh baccalaureate is not accepted by some universities, and that is sad. That reputational damage is now being perpetuated by the outcomes of what the programme for international student assessment judged to be tragically lower standards. As we seek to attract investment to turn the economy around, the quality of public services is essential.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

I hope the hon. Gentleman does not feel that I am just trying to look on the positive side, but he must be aware that Cardiff university is a Russell Group university and that it accepts students from the Welsh education system. It also has two Nobel laureate prize winners.

[Alun Cairns]

Cardiff university is a fantastic university. The funding structure in Wales is starving the university of funding, as compared to its counterparts in England. The question we need to be asking ourselves is this: how can Cardiff university maintain its standards and status when, because of the different funding structure, there is more funding going into higher education in Wales? That is another sign of the reputational damage being caused by the decisions that are being taken.