The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0050/00500.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 24KB | 421 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00500}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{United Kingdom
Education and Social Welfare}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC}
$Affiliation{Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC}
$Subject{wales
welsh
national
health
education
care
cardiff
per
local
authorities}
$Date{1990}
$Log{}
Title:       United Kingdom
Book:        Wales
Author:      Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC
Affiliation: Embassy of the United Kingdom, Washington DC
Date:        1990

Education and Social Welfare

     Public provision is made in Wales, as in the rest of Britain, for
education at all levels and for a wide range of health and personal social
services and social security benefits.

Education

     Overall responsibility for education in Wales (apart from matters
relating to the university, the pay and conditions of service of teachers and
student grants) rests with the Welsh Office and is administered by eight local
education authorities. In 1987 there were 250,000 pupils in the primary
schools of Wales and 210,000 in the secondary schools. The average numbers
of pupils per teacher were 22.1 and 15.9 respectively.

     While the education system in Wales and England are very similar, a
significant difference is that the Welsh and English languages are both used
as media of instruction in a number of Welsh schools. Most of these are in
the traditionally Welsh-speaking, largely rural areas. However, designated
bilingual schools continue to be established in the anglicised, mainly
industrial areas of Wales to cater for children whose parents wish them to be
educated through the medium of both languages.

     Expenditure on schools in 1989-90 is projected to be over 650 million
Pounds, 8 per cent more than in 1988-89, and includes provision to meet the
staged introduction between 1989 and 1996 of a national curriculum in
maintained schools under the Education Reform Act 1988. Welsh will be one of
four core subjects in Welsh-speaking schools, together with English,
mathematics and science, and will be one of the foundation subjects elsewhere
in Wales, along with history, geography, technology, music, art, physical
education, and - for secondary school pupils - a modern foreign language.

     A Curriculum Council for Wales has been established, to act as an
advisory and development body. The wide-ranging measures introduced by the
Act also include provision for the regular assessment of pupils' performance.
Specific grants will be paid to local authorities in support of the
development of core subjects in the curriculum, the establishment of local
management for schools, governor training and the in-service training of
teachers. Under the Act secondary as well as larger primary schools are given
responsibility for managing the major part of their budgets, including
staffing costs, in addition to the option to withdraw from local authority
control.

     The Act also encourages teachers and pupils to have a closer association
with industry and commerce. This will build on developments already pioneered
under the Government's Technical and Vocational Education Initiative, which
aims to make the curriculum more practical and relevant to the world of work,
developing, for example, business skills and the use of information
technology.

     All school-leavers aged 16 or 17 not wishing to go on to further or
higher education or directly into employment are now offered one-year or
two-year training placements in industry under the Government's Youth Training
Scheme. In 1987-88 some 19,080 young people entered the scheme in Wales.

     There were some 90,400 enrolments at 41 further education colleges and
non-university higher education institutions in 1986-87, as well as 22,700
students at the University of Wales, which has six constituent colleges
(University College of Wales, Aberystwyth; University College of North Wales,
Bangor; University of Wales College of Cardiff, which amalgamated with the
University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, Cardiff in 1988;
University College of Swansea; University of Wales College of Medicine,
Cardiff; and St David's University College, Lampeter).

     The Education Reform Act introduced changes to the funding arrangements
of universities and to the management of local authority further and higher
education colleges, which should assist institutions to become more flexible
and more responsive to the economic and social needs of the country. Although
local authorities will remain responsible for the funding of their further
and higher education colleges, the management of the colleges will be
delegated to governing bodies on which governors representing employment
interests will predominate. The University Grants Committee has been replaced
by a Universities Funding Council with executive powers to allocate funds to
individual universities and to the university colleges in Wales. A statutory
Welsh Committee of the Council has been established to ensure that Welsh
issues are taken into account and to provide a channel for liaison with the
local authority higher education sector.

     The Government's LINK programme is encouraging industry to undertake
joint research with higher education institutions (see p 11), and science
parks were established at Aberystwyth and the North East Wales Institute
of Higher Education (Deeside) in 1985 and at Bangor and Swansea in 1986. They
provide single managed sites linked to the university or institution for
groupings of high technology companies, facilitating the commercial
exploitation of the results of academic research and also helping to revive
the local economy by providing jobs in modern industries. The Government is
encouraging universities and other institutions of higher education to include
an enterprise element in their courses under the Enterprise in Higher
Education Scheme. The Polytechnic of Wales was one of 11 institutions in
Britain chosen to take part in the first phase of this scheme.

Health

     The National Health Service in Wales is provided through the Welsh
Office, which has a general strategic planning responsibility, and by nine
district health authorities. The services are designed to promote improvement
in the health of people through the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of
illness. Provision is being made to meet the increasing requirement for health
care of the growing number of elderly people, to introduce new treatments and
to provide community care for those not needing continuing hospital care.
Increasing emphasis is being given to the promotion of good health and the
extension of preventive measures, for example to combat such problems as
coronary heart disease, cancer, AIDS and the misuse of drugs and alcohol. A
special health authority has been established to develop this work.

     Expenditure on the National Health Service in Wales has risen by almost
45 per cent in real terms over the last decade, This has been complemented by
improved efficiency and management: in the period 1985-86 to 1987-88
cumulative efficiency savings by the district health authorities amounted to
34.6 million Pounds. In 1988-89 a total of 1,479 million Pounds was spent on
health services, of which over 916 million Pounds was on hospital and
community health services. Six major hospital developments will have been
completed during the 1980s.

     Some 3,000 staff are contracted to work for the family practitioner
services, of whom nearly 1,770 are general medical practitioners. The average
number of patients on each doctor's list is around 1,850 (the average for
Britain is about 2,020). An increasing proportion of family doctors work in
modern, well-equipped health centres, where they form part of a medical and
nursing team; dental, social work and other services may also be provided in
the centres.

     There have been substantial increases in the number of primary health
care staff in recent years, and the rate of increase has generally been higher
than that in England. For