Janet Ryder, the Plaid AM with a Sunderland accent, has finally made her mark on Welsh politics.
For some years, she has featured as a hard-working member of the Plaid team, focusing on education
She put across her brief, but seemed to make not much impact, on either ministers – apart from her continual nagging in her efforts to keep them to their policy promises – or Labour Party backbenchers.
But beneath her surface, there clearly lurks some steel.
It was last week that she quit suddenly as Plaid’s education spokesman; but only yesterday did it become clear why.
Mrs Ryder had been said by the party to be “unhappy with progress on the learning and skills measure” currently being considered by the Assembly for passage into legislation.
In fact, the real reason had been to do with one important aspect of the organisation of post-16 education. And it had been an argument with coalition policy. The coalition government was in danger of making a mess of the situation, she felt.
Her attention was directed to the sixth-form level, where there is much talk of amalgamating sixth forms, with sixth form colleges and further education colleges taking the place of the current sixth forms.
Mrs Ryder was concerned that the changes were being rushed; that too little money was being provided to enable the changes; and that the interests of Welsh-speaking children were being subordinated to those of the larger number of English-speakers.
This of course links into the issue of Welsh-medium university education; if children educated through Welsh are shunted into “bilingual” – which so often means largely English-medium – institutions at sixth-form level, the continuation onwards through the Welsh language is endangered.
In other words, Welsh-medium university education might be endangered.
Mrs Ryder was worried that the concerns of the teachers’ unions UCAC and NUT were being ignored to too great an extend by the government.
I see from an old copy of the Western Mail Assembly Handbook – none exists now; it had been scrapped – Mrs Ryder has a history of independence within her party. She was said to have been “one of several who failed to back [then-party leader] Dafydd Wigley at several vital points”.
So let it be remembered. Whatever some say about her, Mrs Ryder is a politician of some principle. Would there were more of them.
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