September 2007
I overheard a conversation on a Cwmafan bus-stop recently. A grandmother was telling her friend that her granddaughter had qualified in Medicine at Cardiff. It reminded me of that strong sense of pride within families whenever children achieve their full potential.
We seem to put great store on the importance of education to give young people a good start in life and rightly so. Our new Prime Minister Gordon Brown has for some time emphasised the significance of what he calls 'higher level skills' in ensuring that Britain is better prepared for the global challenge. We will not be able to compete on cost, he says, because China and India and many other Asian countries have lower labour costs. But such countries are also improving their skills with millions graduating every year.
If Gordon Brown and Jane Hutt, the new Welsh Assembly Education Minister visited us locally they would certainly be well pleased with the progress that schools, colleges and universities were making. When I met this month the Neath Port Talbot Cabinet Member for Education, Councillor John Rogers of Taibach he was proud to tell me about the outstanding results of local comprehensive schools at GCSE and at A Level. The progress made in recent years by Neath Port Talbot Education Authority in pupil achievement is second to none in Wales. We should make more of the 'value for money' provided for local residents and their children by our local educational system.
And this also certainly applies to Neath Port Talbot College. When I met its Principal Mark Dacey at the Margam Campus he was able to tell me that over 1,000 students collected A Levels with an overall pass rate of 99.4% which is well above the Welsh average.
Having met with the Vice-Chancellors of Glamorgan and Swansea over the Summer I know how impressed they are with local students: so much so that they both have ambitions to develop a greater presence in our locality building in particular strong links not only with local schools and colleges but also with local businesses.
Whenever I hear people complaining about their local rates - as we still seem to call them – I am reminded of the old National Union of Teachers slogan, 'if you think education is expensive, try ignorance!'
