Waste Watchers

The Welsh Liberal Democrats will expose an example of the waste and inefficiency of Labour and Plaid Cymru in government on each day of the Welsh general election campaign



More than £22m has been wasted by the Welsh Assembly Government on training teachers who do not go on to teach in Wales.

Figures released by the Welsh Liberal Democrats in August 2010 revealed that between 2004/05 and 2007/08, Wales trained an excess of almost 3000 teachers, at a cost of over £7500 per surplus teacher.

Commenting on the figures, Mike Priestley, Welsh Liberal Democrat Candidate for Aberconwy, said:

"At a time when budgets are stretched, it is wasteful and irresponsible for the Labour-Plaid government to spend taxpayers' money on teachers that Wales does not have vacancies to employ.

"With education spending already £604 per pupil less than in England, Wales can ill afford to be subsidising the English education system. In maths, for example, we have trained 133 teachers at a cost of £1.1 million who are not teaching in Wales at all.

"The Government were advised in the 2006 Furlong Report to cut the number of training places in half but this advice was ignored. The Education Minister stated in 2008 that she would be supporting a reduction of 50 per cent of training places in primary and 25 per cent reduction in secondary training places, but this saving has not taken place.