On Thursday, we’ll have the sixth election to the Senedd, formerly the Welsh Assembly.
This election hasn’t caught the imagination. For too many, it may not even have caught their attention.
Fewer than half of those eligible to vote actually ever do at these elections.
Extending the vote to include 16-17 year olds this time does not seem to have changed much.
If you believe in politics and value suffrage, it’s all a bit disappointing.
But the lack of anything seismic or even obviously significant does not mean we can be entirely certain of what to expect.
Margins matter in elections.
Labour’s political hold over Wales goes back a century but it does not automatically give it a majority in the Senedd. A semi-proportional voting system and localised movements in actual voting rein it in.
Labour is defending five seats where its’ majority is under 1,000.
Five is also the most constituencies to have changed sides at a single election to the Senedd.
Labour is ahead in the polls.
Polls have a margin of error of a few percent. Marginal seats are usually won by a percentage of the vote that is well within this margin of error. Accurate forecasting of results is difficult, even if that isn’t always made clear.
All things considered, one might cautiously say that history, experience and polling point to a likelihood of Labour winning the most seats by far but falling short of winning 31 or more. In the 60 seat Senedd, this is short of a majority.
Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Director of the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University says :
“There is every possibility that post-election negotiations will be required before the exact complexion of the next Welsh Government becomes apparent, let alone which policies or combination of policies it will be seeking to implement.”
Impact school support has produced a handy policy pledge crib sheet. Looking at the Labour and Plaid Cymru pledges, one can see how a coalition might work. In short, there’s little ideological dispute. Not in education, at least.
Of course, Labour has had a Lib Dem Minister for Education for the last several years. The outgoing Labour Government needed Kirsty Williams’s vote to secure a majority in the Senedd.
Kirsty Williams has stood down.
It is a reminder that small numbers have big consequences in the Senedd. A grand coalition is not needed when the lead party just needs one or two votes.
We might have to wait awhile for the outcome of Thursday’s election to become clear. It might be longer still before the new Minister is appointed. But there’s no waiting by in education.
£600-£900million is a big number. It’s the figure that might be needed to address the impact of Covid on schools and young people, according to experts in school funding.
That would be an increase of between 33% and 50% on current education spend in Wales. Whatever the outcome on Thursday, such spending is improbable.
It is essential that the new Minister leads by prioritising what matters and demands that this is pursued efficiently. This will be made more tricky perhaps because the new Minister will also certainly have a new top tier of officials in the Department (due to retirement).
These priorities and the pursuit of them should be led by research into exactly what the pandemic has done to our schools and young people. Without evidence, getting things right is just a matter of luck.
We do not start this process with no knowledge or evidence. Some research is already identifying lost learning in mathsand literacy and regression for some in the good habits of learning and behaviour.
It is also clear that our disadvantaged have felt these impactsthe most.
The good news is that it is also clear that some good things have emerged from the pandemic.
More learners are developing independent learning habits. More teachers are getting better at exploiting the effectiveness and efficiency of digital resources.
Digital resource provider GCSEPod and a few others havedone amazing things in a short time to increase capacity, help usage be impactful and widen access.
Blended learning is advancing.
end
Asgo 