Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:35 pm on 4 October 2022.
Dawn Bowden
Labour
4:35,
4 October 2022
Thank you, Sam, for that question. I think that's a very, very important point that you raise: our history, our heritage, how we've evolved, and why we are as we are today is hugely important, and it's something that children do need to understand and learn from a very early age. And that is one of the benefits that the new curriculum does give us; it gives us that flexibility to be able to introduce those kinds of things into the national curriculum. And I'll just give you an example. I was very proud to have been invited to an event at the National Museum Wales at Saint Fagan's recently, where a whole range of schools had been engaged in projects about their local communities, and that was a very good example of how you will engage very young children in finding out about their own area and bringing it to life, and they brought along their projects, and some of them won prizes and so on. And, you know, in the area that I represent, of course, a former coal-mining and iron industry, we see that as being hugely important to the culture of the area. So, I have no doubt that, when schools look at what the national curriculum will be able to deliver in those areas, that local history, that local culture, whether it is language, whether it is the industry, whether it is the topography, whatever it is in an area that has made that area what it is today will be included in a child's education. Not to do so would be quite scandalous, and I have every confidence that the new curriculum will allow us to do that.
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