Welsh Labour:
• Protect schools budget from spending cuts
• Continue roll-out of Academies independent of local authority control, encourage universities to set them up as well as private organisations
• Give school pupils guarantees of one-to-one English and Maths tuition if they fall behind
• Encourage comprehensive schools to pool budgets in school chains, allowing stronger schools to raise standards in weaker schools
• Replace school league tables with school report cards
• Consider ways to widen access to universities, while retaining tuition fees
• Introduce a renewable licence to teach for teachers.
Welsh Conservatives:
• Pilot a "free schools" initiative in Wales, giving head teachers greater control over school budgets, parts of the curriculum, administration, and discipline
• Reverse Welsh Assembly Government’s decision to phase out the grant that allowed Welsh domiciled students at Welsh universities not to pay top-up fees
• Scrap the Assembly Government’s free breakfast scheme for primary school children
• Invest money saved by scrapping free breakfasts to close the education funding gap between Wales and England.
Welsh Liberal Democrats:
• Replace Academies with "Sponsor Managed Schools", to be run by educational charities and private providers, but under local authority control, not Whitehall
• Provide £2.5bn for a "pupil premium" to cut class sizes and run catch-up classes for struggling children
• Replace National Curriculum with a Minimum Curriculum Entitlement to allow teachers more flexibility
• Create a General Diploma made up of GCSEs, A-Levels and vocational qualifications
• Create an Education Standards Authority to monitor school standards independent of government
• Increase the apprenticeship numbers, and places on university and vocational higher education courses
• Scrap university tuition fees over six years.
Plaid Cymru:
• Believe government formula for allocating public spending across the UK (the "Barnett Formula”) is unjust – Wales should be allocated more funding and the extra money would be used to protect "frontline" education services in Wales
• Committed to an early years' curriculum which emphasises learning through play
• Oppose Foundation Schools on principle
• Supported the 14-19 Learning Pathways scheme for Welsh pupils
• Would draw up a strategy for Welsh medium teaching
• Support the introduction of a compulsory modern language GCSE in secondary schools
• Supported ending the SAT exams in Wales
• Oppose any further increases in tuition fees, and will seek the abolition of tuition fees "as and when public finances allow".