Recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, published last month by the OECD, indicate that Wales' education system has fallen further behind England. While England showed an improvement on its 2023 scores, Wales' performance declined.
In reading, Wales was close to the average of countries participating in the PISA exercise. However, in both maths and science, Wales' results were significantly below the average. It appears that children in Wales are almost two full years behind those in England in terms of educational attainment.
The results were particularly poor for children who took the tests in Welsh. The Welsh government's fiscal deficit, where spending exceeds tax receipts, has been over 20 per cent of GDP for at least 15 years.