NAHT Cymru president Kerina Hanson called on congress today (26 May 2022) to support our campaign to ensure all support services for schools receive the funding they need to realise the Welsh government's ambition. You can read her speech in full below. 

The core purpose of schools is to provide a high-quality education for every child and young person in Wales. 

The Welsh Government's national mission is to tackle the impact of poverty on educational attainment and achieve high standards for all. 

Our National Mission for Education states: 'It is our duty to provide future generations with the skills and knowledge they need to play a full and active role in their communities and wider society.' 

School leaders are ready to take on the mission. 

However, that core purpose is under considerable pressure; schools continue to take on more and more in supporting communities; for many families, schools are the only place open every day that will listen and help as pressure on other services increases. 

The role schools play has broadened, often without consultation. Increasingly, schools are taking on a wider remit supporting children and young people requiring specialist intervention and filling the void created by cuts to other essential services. 

The lack of capacity we see in our support services is having a significant impact on our most vulnerable learners.

To name a few of the issues we are facing, schools have extended waiting lists for vital mental health support, limited access to educational psychologists, over two-year waiting lists for children and young people on the Neurodevelopmental pathway, and reduced access to speech and language specialist support.

Much of the support we are waiting for or have limited access to leaves schools struggling to provide for the needs of those in our care, we continue to welcome these children into our schools, often with multiple complex needs with little or no support from those best placed to help us.

Many schools have become central to communities in filling the gap left from inadequate funding from other community services, as a colleague who has recently opened a food bank at her school said to me, 'If we don't do it, who will?'. The never-ending commitment of school leaders and staff never fails to amaze me, but it is incredibly sad that this is where we find ourselves as schools in the 21st century. Is this what we are looking for in reimagining education in Wales.

Our members acknowledge they have a crucial role in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of learners, tackling inequalities and ensuring that our learners are ethical and informed citizens of the world.

But we believe the vision for 21st Century schools that tackles the impact of poverty on educational attainment and achievement must include wider support services.

Significant and continual underfunding of these services places additional pressure and workload onto schools and is proving detrimental to school leaders, teachers, support staff, and, crucially, our learners. 

We need to be clear about the role and function of schools in the 21st century. Give us and the services that support us the time, resources and funding to fulfil that vision. 

We know there are excellent support services that want to help our children and young people but have no resources or capacity to do so. There must be adequate and coordinated funding to enable support services to fulfil their roles and allow all families to prosper and thrive. 

NAHT Cymru calls on Congress to support our campaign to ensure all support services for schools receive the funding they need to realise the government's ambition – from social services, speech and language therapists, and child psychiatrists to youth workers, leisure services and those support staff directly employed by schools.

Our National Mission for education states - 'Education has never been more important.’

If we are to prioritise Education, then schools must be able to carry out their core purpose with adequate support from those key services that support the welfare, wellbeing, additional educational and medical care and wider community support.

NAHT Cyrmu believes Education for all children and young people will only be a when the issue of overall system funding is addressed.