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Delyth Jewell, who is the deputy leader of Plaid Cymru, is one of four regional Senedd Members serving the South Wales East region.

The child poverty rates in our region are a testament of shame. 36% of children in Merthyr live in poverty, and 35% in Caerphilly.  

But behind those statistics are children who are growing up to go without, whose parents are facing the coming Christmas with despair, wondering how they’ll explain to their children why Father Christmas hasn’t brought them what they asked for.  

This is an issue I raised with the First Minister in plenary this week, because child poverty isn’t just about skipping meals or empty bellies: it’s about blighting children’s sense of joy and wonder, and robbing them of the happiness they should get out of being children.  

One of the strictures that keeps so many families in our valleys poor is the cruelty of the UK benefits system, with a two-child cap on benefits that punishes children for being born, and which the End Child Poverty coalition has found affects one in every ten children in Wales.  

The data, obtained by the End Child Poverty Coalition, has revealed just how significant the impact of the two-child limit on benefits is in Wales, with more than 65,000 children in Wales being affected by the two-child limit – 11% of all children.

This week, I used my question to the First Minister to demand that he add his voice to those of all of us calling for this cruel policy be scrapped.  

The Wales Expert Group on the Cost of Living Crisis has already called on the Welsh Government to establish an emergency payment to all households with children, with extra for large households, to help families through the coming months.  

The PISA results were another major issue in the Senedd this week.

Andreas Schleicher of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said, “your education today is your economy tomorrow”.

There is no single proven more effective anti-poverty measure than education. It was therefore deeply disappointing to see the latest international test results for Wales.

The PISA results published this month should be a wake-up call for the Welsh Government.

Too many young people in Wales are living in poverty, pupil absences are unacceptably high and many schools are facing a significant deficit in their budgets.  

Despite the hard work and dedication of an overstretched workforce, the pupil attainment gap is widening, and we cannot ignore the link between poverty and these disappointing results.

Every child, no matter their background should have an equal chance of succeeding in life.  

We need more than platitudes and excuses from the minister for education in response to these results. Wales had a pre-Covid recruitment crisis in the education sector, the magnitude of which ministers failed to grasp.  

Continuing and entrenching cuts to education will do nothing to put Wales on a path towards a turnaround in raising educational standards.