With the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) elections here in Wales just around the corner, the team got together in Cardiff Met's broadcast centre to discuss what we learnt from the six parties in relation to some of the big themes facing education today.

Tom is joined on the studio sofa by Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Finola Wilson from Impact Wales to discuss school standards, the future of Curriculum for Wales, funding, teacher recruitment, and more.

You can see this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/f_6xr3HAyjk

We hope you found our Senedd Elections Special project interesting - we certainly did!

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Recorded in studio B0.17 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 20th March 2026

For Cardiff Met Sport Broadcast & Media

Studio technical support: Rhys Evans, Jamie Hicks, Caitlin Meredith

Sound: Peter Lambern

Director: Adrian Rapps

For Impact Wales

Producer: Darren Evans

Any opinions expressed by the presenters are their independent views and not those of their respective employers.

Podcasting solo today, Tom is relieved to have not one but two remote guests to keep him company!

Donald Mbeutcha and Sara Gattward are from Every Future Foundation, an organisation that aims to support schools with anti-racist education, mainly in London and the surrounding area.

Whilst the Welsh government have made a commitment to an anti-racist Wales by 2030, and we have organisations like DARPL (founded by colleagues here at Cardiff Met) doing great work to make this vision a reality, we thought it would be interesting to find out how things look over in England, in a city seen as more multicultural than most of Wales, and where there is not a specific, time-bound commitment in relation to anti racism.

Thanks to Donald and Sara for coming on for what turned out to be a really interesting discussion! You can find them and their work at everyfuturefoundation.co.uk

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Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 24th October 2025

Our notorious Easter holiday light episode is back for 2026, and we’re delighted that we have Emma’s dulcet tones on the recording! In order to achieve this, we recorded this way back in July 2025, and Tom’s got his fingers crossed that everything we bring to the table ages well in the intervening nine months.

Building work outside our normal studio means that we’re in a temporary setup for this recording, so YouTube viewers can see our big screen misbehaving, and everyone can hear the sound of grass being mown outside the window. July recordings are fun!

In this episode, Emma, Sian and Tom bring two items each and discuss everything from school teacher retention to the importance of air conditioning and the unpaid labour of mothers. We hope you find something interesting in it to amuse you during your school holiday break. We’ll be back with our normal service in two weeks’ time.

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Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 22nd July 2025.