Written question WQ87828

We want all practitioners to have access to quality professional learning to enable them to deliver high standards and aspirations for all. The National Professional Learning Entitlement, published in September 2022 is playing a key role in our journey to achieving this. It sets out how the continued development of practitioners will support the schools or settings in which they work and their learners to realise the four purposes of Curriculum for Wales, supporting learners with additional learning needs and embedding equity, well-being and the Welsh language across the whole-school community.

We met all development costs associated with the new entitlementWe are committed to ensuring that practitioner development is adequately resourced, with dedicated professional learning funding for schools and time for practitioners to engage with high-quality opportunities. Over the last five years, we have awarded more than £15m to regional consortia to implement a national Curriculum for Wales development programme to equip all schools to realise the new curriculum.

A further £55m professional learning investment has been awarded directly to schools to allow time and space for practitioners and leaders to work together across schools and networks to realise the new curriculum. This can be used flexibility to enable schools to work together to meet the specific needs of their own settings and to enable all practitioners to deliver high quality teaching and learning.

In 2022-23, we invested more than £1.85m in the delivery and development of the National MA Education Wales. Seven universities worked together to deliver this programme. The Masters will ensure that all teachers in Wales have the same high-quality opportunity to enhance their professional knowledge, engage with cutting-edge research and to improve their professional practice. To ensure the future sustainability of the Masters, plans are also underway to develop an EdD.

In 2023-24 we will allocate approximately £36m to support the development and delivery of professional learning. This will further support stakeholders and partners to work together as they develop and deliver professional learning to ensure that practitioners across Wales have access to a consistent and quality programme of professional learning.

Practitioners can access information on professional learning via the ‘Professional Development’ area on Hwb.

Since the start of the 2022-23 academic year, the professional development pages on Hwb have attracted 30,300 unique page views.

Following the launch of the National Professional Learning Entitlement (NPLE), the dedicated entitlement page on Hwb has attracted more than 5,000 unique page views.

Unique page views on a monthly basis:

September 2022 425 (launch date September 27)

October 2022 2,065

November 2022 1,164

December 2022 907

January 2023 292

February 2023 109

March 2023 209 (to March 24)

A new Welsh education consortia website launched in autumn 2022 to provide equitable access to information regarding professional learning provision for practitioners across Wales.