Children, Young People, and Education Committee

Thank you, Chair. 'Yes', I think, is the answer. Any inspectorate, I think, has to fit into the system it works within, but I think there are almost two sides you can work on. The first is pure accountability: you just go in, you check if they’re complying with the law, you check that the standards are good, and that’s it, you walk out of the building. The far end is that you become like the body that Education Scotland used to be, which is that they do everything, they do school support and they do the accountability. Now, we’ve tried to set ourselves not quite halfway, as the accountability bit, which is statutory, is still absolutely essential. So, the core of what we do continues to be going into schools, colleges, wherever, and making sure that the standard of education and training that learners get is appropriate. And that will not change.

The one thing we’ve been trying to develop over the past number of years—and I’m thankful to other chief inspectors before me for it as well—is that we have a huge repository of expertise. We have 80 inspectors on the payroll, we have hundreds of peer inspectors out there, we’ve hundreds of registered inspectors out there, who go into schools, colleges, everywhere, every week, and see best practice, but also weaknesses. What we’re trying to do, increasingly, is to use that expertise to try and support improvement. So, the ethos we’re developing is that, yes, accountability is absolutely what we do, but it’s also doing good as we go.

So, on the one side, we’ve tried to change and are continuing to change, I think, the relationship between us and the people we inspect, so that it’s not one of fear and anxiety. Everyone dreads the call, I know that, but it’s one where people recognise that there is value in Estyn being on the premises, and you will benefit from the fact that people are really getting under the skin of what’s going on in that situation.

The second aspect is that we do an awful lot of work and we identify an awful lot of best practice, either the thematics or on our travels around the education and training system, and we need to publicise that better. A lot of the solutions for some of the weaknesses we have are here, but we need to get that message out there. Because not one size fits all anywhere, but the more that we can actually advise people and signpost people to, 'Look, you might want to have a look at this', or, 'There is very good practice in this place', I think, the better, which is one of the reasons why we’ve invested quite heavily in communications over the past couple of years, as well as some other areas, to try and make sure that people actually value and recognise what we do as well. And one of the examples is the annual report. We now have an official launch for it. We've moved to a model where we have the short summaries published in September. We don't do press on it. That is specifically for the profession to use. It's short, it's pithy. We now do podcasts. We now do Facebook Lives about things. And we're also increasingly getting out and about, trying to facilitate improvement. So, I think, absolutely, we are trying to make sure that we're not just part of identifying what the problems are, but we're part of trying to help Government and others about how to solve them as well.

Thank you for that answer. Anybody else want to come in? Yes, Jassa.

Yes, I think that summed it up really well. I think the other key bit in the support and improvement aspect is those external inspectors that Owen mentioned, particularly the peer inspectors. For decades now, we've had peer inspectors as part of every inspection team. Those are serving leaders and practitioners within the sector we're inspecting, and they find that invaluable, that we invest in training. It's an assessed course, so they're qualified to do the job, as such, as an inspector, but they bring that up-to-date expertise. But they gain loads from it, and take that back into their own institutions in terms of their own improvement and self-evaluation and so on. So, I think that's another aspect that we really value, but the profession values in terms of that capacity building and improvement as well.

Okay. Thank you. Owen.

I just wanted to finish off, if I may, thanks, with the fact that we're very hot on the fact that we ask people to evaluate what their practice is. We're pretty hot ourselves now on evaluating what our practice is. So, in addition to all of us being regularly out in schools and colleges—I visit a setting every two weeks on an inspection myself; I always have a bit of time with the leadership, just to have a chat about how we're performing—we've started things like a perception survey, which we'll be publishing soon, and we gather huge amounts of feedback from where we go about, 'Look, did you take some value from what we did?' And my mantra's been very clear: if it's gone well, tell your mates; if it hasn't, then tell us, and we can learn from it.

Carolyn.

It's very welcome to hear what you're saying. At one time, we used to have curriculum advisers, then we had the school improvement bodies, which are ending. So, it sounds like you've got a role to play now, in a way, in filling that gap of offering help and advice when you go in. Is there a two-way situation where they could actually come to you and learn best practice? You said you've got a website, so perhaps they can do that as well.

Yes, absolutely. I'll perhaps turn to Claire.

Yes, that's a really good point. There's a lot of information on our website, but, as Jassa said, one of the key strategies is to get involved in inspection with us, because, when we train our peer inspectors, we develop those professional evaluation skills, so there is, definitely, a two-way. We train them, they join us to help us deliver consistent inspections, but also they gain—so, they take practice back to their schools as well. So, it's certainly a win-win.

We have invested quite heavily in improving the website, so people can find stuff on it, because it was a bit impenetrable before. So, absolutely, if you see our thematics—. And when we're on the premises, we will quite often refer to best practice we've seen, and signpost.

And possibly the last bit of the jigsaw, in that ethos of being more supportive, rather than just going in and doing upon, is that, last year, we introduced the interim visits. So, now, instead of what was every eight years getting the magic call and the boots of Estyn in your school, or wherever, we're trying to take the sting out of it, trying to take the anxiety out of it, by having that less-confrontational session—quite short, sharp. We'll go in and discuss with the head or the leader what we're going to look at, and typically look at recommendations they may have had from a previous inspection. And this is all trying to make sure that we don't get to the position, after what will be six years at the moment, where schools or colleges are in difficulty. We'd like to identify that beforehand and reach out and give some support. It's not for us to do—that's for the school's support system—but it's for us to signpost and look and share that best practice that we get on a national basis.

I think that's important. I don't think we're there to replace, necessarily, that specialist advice, professional learning and support that could be provided by local authorities, or nationally through the new national professional learning body. But I think we've got a role to play, particularly in that area of self-evaluation, improvement planning, which is really our bread and butter in terms of the skills that we use on inspection, but also that we evaluate on inspection. I think there's a role for us to really share that specialist practice, perhaps in other ways as well as through our peer inspector programme. And I think an important point is one of the things we do do is train some of those school improvement professionals as inspectors to join our school inspection. And we're constantly looking at other ways that we can involve that part of the school improvement system more in our inspection work so that they're gaining from that not just the insights into that provision, but also those evaluative skills as inspectors as well.

Thank you. How significant is it that so many schools received recommendations from Estyn inspection reports? For example, half of secondary schools inspected received a recommendation to improve teaching, which would appear to be something relatively fundamental. How serious does a situation have to be to warrant such a recommendation? And just how concerned should we be by the frequency of such recommendations?

We try and focus on what matters, and teaching, as you say, is absolutely at the heart of what we see and what we expect to see. So, yes, it is a concern that so many recommendations are given to schools on what is a fairly basic tenet of what we should be doing. But what it tends to do is that, when you pick up issues with teaching, it's then that the knack is to work out what is the underlying problem here. What is causing this? Is it recruitment issues? Is it a lack of leadership? Is it a lack of evaluation, and then follow-up and professional learning? So, I think although the symptom tends to manifest itself as problems in teaching, there's normally a number of things that underpin that, and I think one of the skills we have is to try and find out what is causing this and to help the school understand that. Claire, I don’t know if you want to come in there.

Yes, you're right, in this last academic year, around half of secondaries had a recommendation on teaching, and about 20 per cent of primary schools. And a lot of the issues are to do with inconsistency across secondary. Sometimes we find some pockets of best practice, but they're not sharing the best practice across the school, or they don't know where the best practice is because there are weaknesses in self-evaluation, so they haven't identified that. And so we look at a high proportion of teaching when we inspect, so we pick up very quickly where there are weaknesses in teaching, and we feed those specific weaknesses back to the school.

Now, on every school inspection, there'll be a nominee, which is usually the headteacher, who joins the team. So, even though lots of the detail won't make its way through to the report, the nominee will know all the minutiae of where the weaknesses are in teaching, but also where the strengths are in teaching, so that, when the inspection team leaves the school, they can work with the staff to improve teaching. But it is a concern, and we are publishing best practice where we see it to try and revitalise the system.

Okay. Thank you. We now have some questions from Joel, please.

Thank you, Chair. I was just wondering if I could pick up something, Claire, that you mentioned there about some schools are not sharing best practice. I note then, from your written evidence, you mentioned that a sense of competition has a negative impact on collaborative efforts between schools and colleges. So, can you just outline a little bit more about that, if that's okay? It seems quite a frustration then, when they're all in the same boat, but they're having these mini competitions with each other to see who's better.

I think that comment in the report is to do with the choices that students make post 16, and it's to do with how much information is available to those students so that they can make the right choices. So, Jass, I don't know whether you want to say a little bit about what we found on this.

Yes, it's interesting—that is particularly in relation to that, and a lot of the work we've done post 16 has found not only that colleges and schools are not necessarily collaborating as well as you'd hope to see, but also even schools between themselves. So, I think there is something systemically that needs to happen to generally encourage collaboration more across the system, and I know that's a key plank in terms of the vision for school improvement support going forward that the Welsh Government has shared. I think some of the concerns we have are that collaboration really needs to be based on open and honest discussion, because there is practice to be shared, but there also needs to be honest discussions where colleagues see, perhaps, aspects of practice in other schools that could be improved. So, I think trying to create an atmosphere where schools can openly share practice, discuss pedagogy, teaching approaches, will definitely support improvement.

And where we see that happening well—. So, we did have a couple of local authority inspections last year where they have managed to create that climate of collaboration, of open sharing of things like data and information so that you can analyse that in a more forensic way to then spot, 'Well, actually, there seems to be some really good practice happening in this school over here—let's see what they're doing in terms of mathematics and share that practice.' I think that's one of the things, creating that right ethos, where all schools are signed up to that collaboration. And then, obviously, when it gets to that aspect of making choices or thinking about post-16 and A-level provision and so on, the more collaboration there can be, particularly to ensure that things like courses run where there are small numbers and so on, that would be great to see as well.

Perfect.

Owen, did—? Sorry, Joel. Did you want to come in there, Owen, again?

Yes, just one point, because it's going to be quite a pressing question for the next year, year and a half, I think. With the collaboration agenda now and the school improvement programme, every local authority is working on how they're going to get schools to collaborate. Now, I've been quite clear that collaboration without a purpose is just networking, and the thing is that I think all the local authorities—and I think generally they're doing this now—they're trying to work out what is the purpose of what they're trying to achieve, whether it's literacy improvement, whether it's numeracy improvement or elsewhere, and then to have that shared purpose that all the schools can work together on. I think that will be critical to see whether the system works or not in the future.

Thanks ever so much. Hang on, I'm getting feedback on the loop. Thanks ever so much for your response there. I just wanted to ask a couple more questions, if I may. I note from your report that in 2023-24 you inspected 31 schools, if I remember rightly, and 10 of these required follow-up inspections, two were placed into special measures and two others were judged as requiring significant improvement. I just wanted to get a better idea of this, in a sense. Is that an anomaly in terms of previous years or is that a general reflection of the progression? And what's being done, really, to mitigate that going forward, if I may?

So, you're referring to the number of secondary schools that were inspected.

Ah, yes, sorry.

Now, this was finishing off the cycle, so there were quite a number of secondary schools that hadn't been inspected for a long time, and we often find towards the end of a cycle and at the start of a new cycle that there's a slight increase, but it probably would not be referred to as a significant increase in the number going in. But it's been a very challenging time for secondary schools. They're still grappling with curriculum reform, ALN reform, qualifications reform. Inevitably, after the pandemic, when you're dealing with adolescents, there has been an increase in issues around well-being and mental health issues and gaining the right support for them to reintegrate and make progress. But all of this makes the leadership of secondary schools very demanding, and you are right that around 10 per cent from the particular year we're talking about went into follow-up. Across all secondary schools, about 10 per cent of them are in a statutory category. So, that is really concerning for us and we are working with Welsh Government and local authorities to see how these schools can be offered more support.

Lots of the issues to do with secondary, obviously, are around attendance, and that is something that we are quite concerned about. You'll know that there are different groups of pupils that this has affected in greater proportion, particularly those eligible for free school meals. The quality of teaching—we've already started talking about that, but, in the schools that cause us concern, there are inconsistencies. But there's a higher proportion of teaching that is quite weak. There are weaknesses in self-evaluation and improvement planning in these schools, and also issues to do with the development of literacy, numeracy, digital skills. Often, there are weaknesses in the development of Welsh language skills as well. But, when you put all of these issues together, you can identify some serious concerns about the quality of leadership.

You mentioned about weaknesses in some of the teaching there. Why is that, then? Is that a lack of support for their end? Is that an overwhelmment in terms of it? Because, anecdotally, some of the stuff that gets fed back to me is that a lot of teachers spend a lot of their time trying to almost control disruptive classes rather than actually teaching.

It is a very complex issue. If there was only one aspect, it would probably be easier to solve. But there are weaknesses around professional learning, particularly for subject areas. So, we've had quite a lot of generic training for teachers across the new curriculum, but we haven't had high-quality professional learning in subject areas, and that's particularly affected secondary schools. The job is very demanding. I think that we are seeing children with increased and complex well-being needs, and, often, teachers are dealing with those on a daily basis, and trying to get the right support for them. There is a lot of reform, so teachers are working hard to keep up with the developments. In secondary, you've also got the qualification challenge and the changes that are coming in, and, obviously, there's a lot of preparation involved in that. But there are weaknesses in the way schools are providing professional learning, even within the school—that they're not identifying where there is some good practice so that they then could develop the skills of other staff. So, in summary, it's quite a complex issue, but there are a number of areas that need to be addressed.

You mention in your written evidence that it's disappointing that some of the recommendations you make are the same recommendations year on year. I take it the issues you've outlined there are the reasons why, then. Do you actually see, maybe, progression happening, so that next year there'll be fewer recommendations?

So, you are right, on occasion, in both cycles of inspection, in the first—. Well, with the previous one, there was an eight-year cycle. We can go back in this cycle, and our teams are giving very similar recommendations. But when they do that, those are the schools that tend to go into a statutory category, because what our inspectors pick up is that there isn't the capacity and leadership to bring about that improvement. But one of the ways we are following up on the recommendations is through our new interim visits. So, in previous cycles, we did one visit to a school, unless they were in follow up. But in this cycle, we will carry out a core inspection during the six years, but we'll also carry out an interim visit, where we go back to the school—it's not an inspection, it's more a professional dialogue. But we will look at the progress the schools are making against the most important recommendations, and in many of these schools, the recommendation we look at is improving the quality of teaching. So, we're following it up. But we're also having conversations with local authorities about how they can support these schools as well.

Owen.

I'll just, if I could, pick up one of the points you made—your constituents were obviously referring to it—about behaviour. This is a very hot topic at the moment. We read with interest the NAHT's research yesterday. The Welsh Government are having a behaviour summit—I think at the end of this month. But we've been doing some work on thematics—we do four or five thematics a year, looking at things in depth. And we've been looking at behaviour in both schools and post 16, and we'll be publishing that quite soon. But without saying too much, there are some quite clear things coming out of that thematic. You know, there are issues out there, particularly since the pandemic and particularly, as Claire mentioned, in secondary schools, but where we see that behaviour is less of a problem, it's where they have quite strong policies that have been developed with pupils and parents, and where they've involved support services in doing that, so it's a shared endeavour. There are very clear expectations, but consistency of application, then, so everyone knows what the boundaries are and how they're applied. So, again, in the vein of, you know, trying to collect best practice and really look at what works, we'll be publishing some material on that in the coming months.

I've got one more question, if it's okay, Chair. Thank you. Claire, you mentioned there then about some of the issues schools are having in terms of implementing the new curriculum, the ALN legislation and qualification reform, but then also you mentioned the Welsh language priorities from the Welsh Government. I just want to get a bit more of an idea about that, then, in the sense of whether the Welsh Government is helping the situation, if that makes sense, in terms of the legislation that's coming out there, and for teachers and schools to try and adapt to that.

A majority of schools are making good progress on the national priorities. I think, where the schools have weaker leadership, sometimes they don't identify the right priorities for their learners in that school and sometimes they make less progress. But there is considerable guidance coming out from Welsh Government and through what was the regional school improvement services. So, there has been guidance, there has been support, but more support is needed. We are having discussions with Welsh Government officers about more practical advice for schools, so that schools that are struggling really need more exemplification, they need some of the curriculum unpacked in more detail, so that it's very clear what the minimum age-related expectations are for learners at every stage. So, that will help schools, then, to be able to plan more accurately around the curriculum and, obviously, related to those national priorities.

And I think that one of the issues that schools have had is that there certainly has been a plethora of priorities. Education is one of those fields where everything is a priority. I think Government, in fairness, have been trying to reconcile that over the past couple of years, just to have a clearer focus on, 'Look, these are the important things; let's focus on these.' Now, what history tells us, what the evidence shows is that to make big progress and the steps that we'd like to see in things like literacy and numeracy, you have to focus on them for many, many years, and that's what we'd appreciate.

Thank you. Thank you, Joel. We now have some questions from Carolyn Thomas, please.

So, what are the main challenges in primary schools, and how are they different or similar to those in secondary schools, both in terms of the type of challenge and the severity?

Yes, certainly. I mean, the size of primary schools varies hugely in Wales. We have got two or three very large primary schools, but in comparison to secondary schools, they're much smaller organisations. And the leadership of those organisations and bringing about change can be more swift, because you've got a smaller group of staff. And also most of the teachers spend the day with the same group of children, and they know them very well and then they can plan for their development very carefully. There are lots of strengths in our primary schools, generally. They work really well with families and with the community to remove particularly barriers to learning, to support well-being of our younger learners as well. They're acutely aware of family circumstances and are sensitive to support children and their families, as they did throughout the pandemic, to remove barriers. A majority of primary schools have also made really good progress on the Curriculum for Wales. They move very quickly from developing with the children, their parents and the community a very strong vision for the Curriculum for Wales, and they are moving that forward swiftly to implementation.

Leadership is strong in many of our primary schools as well and they've worked together really well. Coming back to Joel's question about collaboration—collaboration between schools is quite strong. And also collaboration between primary and secondary is emerging as a strength as well in the system.

There are some challenges in primary as well. One of them is around pupil progression. About 40 per cent of our primaries need to do some work on that. And I mentioned that earlier, about minimum age-related expectations, so there's some work to be done around that in primary. And there are a few weaknesses in a minority of primary schools around self-evaluation and improvement planning as well. And in about a third of primaries, there's some more work to be done on the consistency around teaching as well. And probably the last thing I'll mention—I've already mentioned it once already—is Welsh oracy skills in English-medium schools. There are about a quarter of primaries that are still needing to do more work to develop the Welsh language skills of the learners.

Okay. Thank you. Anybody else?

The one thing to pick up perhaps from what Claire said is that primary school provides the foundation for everything that follows. And you know, a decade ago, reading in primary schools was relatively weak. Now, I think it's improved quite significantly over that period, but what we are not seeing, which is Claire's point, is that progression from basic reading skills through to more advanced reading skills and keeping up with what you would expect for that age range. The problem is, if you don't solve that, of course, they will go to secondary schools, where the way secondary schools tend to teach is different to primary schools, and sometimes those children just do not catch up. I think that's one of the things, you know—. If we were to focus on anything in primary, that would be it.

The foundation phase was introduced as a different way of learning, and I remember at the time being really pleased with it, but then there were concerns that it went a bit too far one way and needed, you know, going back to the middle a little bit so there was some focused learning as well as learning through play. Do you think that's made a difference, or how do you feel it's going?

Yes, I think that there's been a lot of learning in the early years settings, the non-maintained nursery settings, and more recently they have successfully introduced the Curriculum for Wales. Welsh Government produced more model curriculums for them and assessment arrangements, and that has been really embraced really well by the non-maintained settings. And in the annual report, we've published lots of case studies from that sector, and there's quite a bit of learning for primary from the way they've adapted and implemented the curriculum as well. So, learners in our non-maintained settings are making good progress and developing their skills so that they are moving on as confident little ones when they go into primary schools.

Okay, thank you. You report that nine of 47 independent schools—19 per cent—are not compliant with the Independent School Standards (Wales) Regulations 2024. This has been the case for several years now, although annual reports say the proportion in compliance has actually been going up. How significant a problem is this and how does it affect pupils in these schools?

Okay. I'll pick that one up, Carolyn.

Okay.

So, the majority of those independent schools that are non-compliant there are independent special schools. So, those are independent schools that are providing specialist provision, which is funded usually by local authorities, so they place pupils in those schools. There are some strengths in those schools where they're doing it well, and, you know, the rest of them are. They're quite small provisions. Those staff really foster positive relationships with pupils and they're really quite nurturing and supportive environments. They're quite often integrating therapeutic approaches really well, and working closely. Sometimes there's a residential element to that, so they're working quite closely with those care teams where that's the case. Generally, the curriculum’s fairly broad, and there are quite a lot of enrichment opportunities, particularly tailored to those pupils’ particular needs, so a stronger focus on outdoor education, vocational training, work experience and so on. So, there is generally that quite good tailoring and that good patience to nurture and support those pupils.

And those schools that are continuing to progress, coming back to the earlier discussions, tend to make good progress on their recommendations, so we've got a track record of not just inspecting these schools once in the inspection period, but we have regularly monitored them, because that's something Welsh Government wanted us to do to help support their ongoing registration. And where they've listened, you can really see that impact.

But, as you say, now 10, as of today, of them are not compliant. And one of the key challenges for that sector is leadership instability and staff instability. These are quite small provisions, quite often leaders and staff come and go. They can be working with quite challenging young people, sometimes, and that really has an impact on that consistency in education, consistency in safeguarding approaches, and a few of those schools, as of today, lack a substantive headteacher—they've got people acting—and that's really impacting their ability to improve and make progress.

Some of the areas we've talked about for secondaries apply here as well, so things like that progressive skill development, particular gaps in things like digital skills, and sometimes not accessing qualifications, particularly at GCSE level, so quite a narrow range for learners. And then some of those issues about things like behaviour management come up. So, I think it is worrying.

One of the concerns we have is that local authorities place learners into these settings. What we make sure we do is share our reports with those placing local authorities. We're quite surprised sometimes that they continue to place learners in some of these, because there are a few that are not making progress and haven't made progress for a little bit now. In some cases—Flintshire are a current example—we're really concerned about a particular school in the north, an independent special school, and Flintshire, on the back of us being concerned, have been really monitoring quite closely the learners that they place in that school, and you can see that almost joint effort is starting to have an impact on the quality. But, certainly, I think local authorities could be doing more as well to support improvements for their learners that they're placing in those schools.

I was a Flintshire councillor for 13 years.

There you go.

How well are the pupil referral units serving the historically high number of children educated other than at school? And what are their prospects for reintegrating these learners into the school environment? So, that's another question, isn't it?

That's a really interesting one. I think one of the things that we're noticing is that the capacity in pupil referral units is a real issue across the system at the moment. A lot of secondary schools are reporting to us that, come the start of the year, they're already full. So, where we're talking about behaviour management, and we mentioned the thematic, one of the things that's coming out of that is there's actually not necessarily that external provision that could be a short-term placement into a PRU with that idea of coming back in. Particularly for younger pupils, there's a real issue across the system, which is meaning that lots of schools are establishing their own kind of almost internal support provisions.

But in terms of the PRUs that we inspected, as usual, there's a little bit of a variety. Similar to the independent special schools, actually, they're quite similar types of provision. Where they're working really well, they've got that real strong focus on well-being. The young people make really good progress from quite a low base in terms of things like their attendance, their behaviour, their ability to self-regulate, and then you can start to make that progression. We're continuing to find that there's not enough of that opportunity to perhaps go back into school. A few of them still do it really well, particular with younger ones. We are seeing the age range lowering, over time, of the pupils that are accessing pupil referral units, and definitely we see more of that genuine intention and support to return to school with some of the younger pupils, but it gets less as they get older. And that’s probably appropriate once they get to key stage 4 and that end of secondary phase, where it’s probably better that they’re there with an established pathway. But we’d like to see it a little bit more in key stage 3.

I remember there being an issue of going from that small environment, with that intensive help and support, and trying to move on to higher education, into college, basically, into a larger setting, and really struggling. Is that something that you still come across now?

Yes, we don’t pick that up specifically from the PRU—the pupil referral unit—inspections, because, obviously, the pupils that are there haven’t made that [correction: haven't made that transition yet]. But a lot of the pupil referrals do actually have good programmes running towards the end, for the sort of older learners, where they may have links with colleges, or they may be accessing some provision through a local college.

So, they tend to have quite good links, and usually those learners, if they’re going to go on to college, there’s quite a good transfer of information to the college, so that some of the colleges’ support systems are probably better for learners who are maybe struggling a little bit in secondary. But that doesn’t mean they still don’t find that transfer to a bigger setting difficult. The colleges, we find, tend to have quite good induction, transition and well-being support early on, so some of them do manage to settle and make that progress.

Okay, thank you.

Can I ask—? You’ve mentioned minimum age-related expectations, but we hear a lot from schools about the benefits of stage not age. How do those approaches marry up?

I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think, where schools are really struggling to set high expectations, the minimum age-related expectations can be very helpful. But it is important that they are minimum, that there are still high expectations. But it will help the schools that are struggling, really, with this aspect of the curriculum, to start structuring and start moving, because we have seen some lowering of expectations, where schools don’t understand fully how to implement the new curriculum. So, by almost making it quite straightforward that they are minimum age-related expectations, it’s going to help those schools.

But I think, when you look at stage not age, that is to do with expectation, and there is a danger if you pigeonhole a child just because that’s their chronological age, there is a danger of under-expectation. So, I think stage really gives you more flexibility, but for schools that are having difficulty, they need more specific advice, so that they raise the expectations of individual learners.

And we see it done really well. Some schools have got quite significant challenges on their doorsteps. They have a very high proportion of English as a second language, quite transient learners, particularly amongst the refugee population, and when these children come in, quite often they’ll have a number of age ranges within a grouping to get the collective ability up. But having the age appropriate, at least they know they’re trying to catch up to a certain standard to make sure that they can progress successfully from primary. So, I think, as Claire said, they’re not mutually exclusive; they can actually work very well together.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you, Chair. Welsh Government published data in relation to personalised assessments that indicated a decline in English reading, Welsh reading and procedural numeracy since the pandemic. Does this chime with Estyn’s own observations?

In nearly all the primary schools many pupils develop their basic reading skills. So, the development of reading in primary schools is strong. They use a variety of methods, but when we inspect reading, we always look at the impact of what they’re doing because we’ve got no preferred option.

But what we have identified are weaknesses in higher level reading skills, and that's a weakness that we see in primary and across secondary. So, yes, those assessments pick up the range of reading skills, so, even though children are developing their basic skills really well, it's the higher order, more advanced reading skills that still need to be developed in the majority of schools.

Thank you so much. We constantly have debates here in the Welsh Parliament in relation to phonics versus cueing. You're all nodding your heads, so I'm sure you're aware that this is constantly going to be an ongoing battle. But what have you observed, being Estyn yourselves, about the way young people are actually taught to read and the techniques that are being used at the moment, because every school has a different perspective? So, does that approach mainly consist of the use of phonics, do you find, in your experience, or is cueing the more viable, preferred method?

I think where we see the best practice it's a blend, it's horses for courses, it's depending on the pupil that's in front of you. Phonics is a very good tool, we're not against phonics in any way, but, as Claire mentioned, where we see teaching strategies applied best is where they take the range of strategies available and apply them. It normally will involve phonics, but for some pupils, actually, cue cards can benefit them at certain stages of their development. So, I think we try to keep an open mind, a bit. There's a lot of evidence out there, meta analysis of these types of things, that's saying that that blended approach is probably the best way of doing it, and so, no, we don't have a preferred method.

But the one thing I probably would pick out, though, because, obviously, this is a slightly English-Welsh argument, where they have taken a very, very firm line on phonics as the way we've got to teach this, the one thing that has come out of the approach over the border, and this is something I alluded to earlier on, is that they have focused on reading for many years, phonics or not. I think that's the sort of thing that, actually, we can learn from. Phonics are important, as well as other methods, but that relentless focus on reading and literacy, and numeracy as well, is something we clearly advocate.

Yes, our more successful schools use a blended learning approach. They tailor their strategies to the needs of the children in their school, but they also develop a very strong reading culture across the school to develop that lifelong love of reading. So, it's a blended strategy, but it's also a relentless focus on developing the reading skills of their children.

Okay. Claire, in your initial comments, you mentioned the struggles with the advanced reading and advanced learning. What can be done to get everyone to that advanced stage and advanced level?

I think there are a couple of things. There are different challenges in primary and secondary, so the development of reading in primary is done every day. When the children move from year 6 to year 7 in secondary, they've got a range of teachers, a range of subjects, and achieving consistency in supporting the development of reading is more challenging. So, there's definitely a professional learning angle to this, so we to make sure that teachers are equipped and there is consistency. That's another thing that we need to achieve in secondary schools is a consistent approach to developing the reading skills, because, often, we find that there are weaknesses in literacy, and it's to do with inconsistency, but also to do with under-expectation. The texts and the tasks that children are sometimes given, particularly in early secondary, are not as demanding as they should be, and, therefore, they're not stretching the pupils to develop those higher order reading skills. So, there's professional learning, there's consistency, but there's also a need to raise expectations of learners to keep on developing their literacy skills.

Thank you so much—

There is some evidence from the behaviour thematic review we've referred to a couple of times. Logically, you'd probably expect this, but poor literacy skills are something that can lead to frustration, which leads to behaviour challenges. So, one of the examples that we're sharing in that report is around a school that's, in year 7, taken a very different approach to how they arrange their curriculum, so that they can provide that more intensive, ongoing support for literacy and numeracy at that start of a secondary school career for groups of learners who need it in more of a primary-style approach, while keeping some elements that are delivered with their peers. So, I think there's not one answer to it all, but that relentless focus, I guess, is what's needed.

Okay. Thank you so much. You say that the majority of primary schools but only a minority of secondary schools plan well to develop pupils' literacy, numeracy and digital skills across the curriculum, despite these being statutory cross-curricular skills in the Curriculum for Wales. So, what are the main reasons for this and what are the implications?

There's quite a lot of guidance out there. If you think of digital, for example, we've got the digital competence framework, but not all schools are using it.

Why?

Partly because, sometimes, staff move on, they don't have someone driving it. Where we see really good practice around digital, there's usually a middle leader who has been identified as the champion for digital in school and will drive it and will ensure, then, that the staff have the professional learning and the resources, and then there's consistency, which is really important, across all these areas—that there are consistent approaches to developing literacy and numeracy and digital across schools. Therefore, professional learning is absolutely essential. It hasn't always been there or, sometimes, the quality has not been good enough to make sure that staff feel competent to deliver these aspects.

Mathematics—shall I come to numeracy?

Go for it.

We are really concerned about numeracy, but our view is that, to improve numeracy, we have to get the teaching of mathematics right. There is too much variation in the teaching of mathematics. Even though we have pockets of excellence—we've got a group of excellent maths teachers dotted around—there is inconsistency and there are weaknesses in the teaching of maths, and the only way we're going to make progress on numeracy is to get mathematics right. So, we have had a discussion with the Welsh Government about professional learning for mathematics teachers and the need for a national approach. It's an ongoing discussion, but if we're to get numeracy right, we have to get the quality of maths teaching right first, because standards in mathematics are too low.

Just as a couple of points on that, the first thing is, Claire is absolutely right—if you speak to secondary heads and you talk about maths, they will frequently tell you that when they advertise for maths teachers, they'll get one applicant if they're lucky and, sometimes, that person isn't employable. So, we have too many people without the requisite skills, really, teaching maths, and that is a problem for the system, and it is something that we've discussed with the Government.

The other point is that you mentioned that it is not cross-curricular enough and we do see that. Everyone tends to think that literacy is the job of the English teacher or the Welsh teacher and that numeracy is the job of the maths teacher. Well, the point of the curriculum is that it's embedded in virtually everything that you do and we're not seeing that enough. But, if you haven't got strong maths expertise in that setting, you're going to struggle.

Okay. So, Claire, you mentioned—sorry, Chair, this is my final supplementary question to this—obviously, in relation to the element of maths, which I appreciate, the employment side of it, the recruitment side of it, the qualification side of it and the training side of it. So, where are we faltering? I appreciate that it's not seen as a 'wow' career by some people, to be a maths teacher nowadays. A lot of people love teaching, but they'd rather be an English teacher or a science teacher or something that's more considered a 'fun' subject teacher—let's put it that way. But, when it comes to those who are there—and I appreciate that there are some fantastic maths teachers out there—how do you bring everyone on a par with each other, because with maths teachers out there, clearly, there's an imbalance somewhere? You mentioned training, what would be the best way to do that—via Government, via you? Who should take the responsibility to be able to provide that training and what sort of training do you think they need?

I think it's a multifaceted approach. Our view is that you need some sort of national group that identifies excellence in mathematics teaching and plans for the professional learning, which involves all the partners, so that would be local authorities, school improvement services, and it would involve our best mathematics teachers in Wales. We would tap into expertise outside Wales to develop a strategy of professional learning for teachers on the ground in mathematics. So, we need to have high expectations, develop a national strategy for professional learning, and then have a model where we cascade that through local authorities, where we have maths experts who will support the schools to develop the capacity for improvement. So, that's our view. We've shared our view with officers in the Welsh Government, but there needs to be determination to improve standards in mathematics.

Okay.

If I could just augment that, you're absolutely right—maths is the same in Benllech or Blaenavon; there should be a national approach to improving maths, circulated through the various partners, but it's a national approach. One of the key phrases Claire used was 'on the ground'. This type of professional learning is not—. Big conferences are great for some things, but that is not the route for improving maths in the classroom. And it's the proximity, being able to, on the ground, help people to understand how best to bring maths to life, because it can be fun. It's how you do that. So, it's the proximity, getting that training directly to the people who need it.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Vaughan, please.

Thank you. I've been really fascinated. I've been making some notes and looking at some of your inspection reports of local authorities as well. I wanted to try to come back to some of the points that you've been making around—and there's a bit of going back and forth, I think, here—self-evaluation as part of the school improvement system and how effective it is. You report that only a minority of schools demonstrate strong practice, despite this being a priority within the system for some time now. In all of these, it comes back to that this doesn't appear to be an individual leadership issue within one or school or one local authority; it's more widespread than that. And so it's about not just the analysis of why you think that, but then how you think that gets to be improved and what the prospects are for that improvement.

I'll start with my perspective as an individual Member. I cover two local authorities: the Vale of Glamorgan, which has very different socioeconomic, overall, indicators to Cardiff, but in Cardiff it's really divided. The north of the city is very different to the south of the city. And so, actually, I worry a great deal more about people in the south and the east of my constituency when it comes to education prospects than the overall position in the Vale of Glamorgan end, because all the demographics tell you that there are more challenges. In trying to understand it, it doesn't appear that the issues about self-evaluation and implementing it to deliver improvement is entirely related to the socioeconomic perspective that a school has. So, I'm trying to understand what that looks like now, what the prospects are for improvement, and who needs to be part of that improvement. The easiest thing for a committee to do is to point to people and say, 'You must improve', or to demand that the Minister does something, when actually, whoever the Minister is, they can't have all of the levers at their desk. If it was that easy, we would have dealt with it by now. But I'm trying to understand how you see that. Like I said, there's the problem, there's the analysis—what do you think are the prospects and who needs to be part of doing that for it to happen?

At the root of it, I genuinely think that people have 101 different views of what self-evaluation means. I think if there was absolutely step working, it would be really clear what good self-evaluation is, because, to your point about whether it's socioeconomic and do we see schools in more deprived areas being poorer at self-evaluation, no. We go into some very good schools—well, good schools in very good areas, as you might say—that are not good at self-evaluation and not good at progressing the pupils to the potential that they have. And yet we see schools in areas that have many challenges who are very, very good at self-evaluation. So, I don't think it is a socioeconomic issue. It may be other issues to do with whether they can recruit staff and things like that—that might be the bigger root.

But I think, on self-evaluation, if there was any body that has spent more time on self-evaluation than any other, it's probably Estyn, because, at the end of the day, we go out to schools and, in four days, we have to get under the skin and work out what on earth is going on there. So, evaluating classrooms, evaluating practice and leadership is what we do. Now, what we're seeing, typically, is that inconsistencies come around where, first of all, they're evaluating with the incorrect expectations. So, what they're seeing, they think is perfectly adequate, but they're not really tracking against others. And this is partly data, but partly this collaboration issue again about what the standards are.

The second point is that if you don't set the right expectations, if you're not actually doing the evaluation properly and getting in front of classrooms and having a look at books and things and making sure that the right effect is being achieved—the impact of the teaching is correct—then, we see that as an issue. We see, quite often, that once they decide there is a problem somewhere, sometimes correctly, it's not particularly research focused on how they implement practices to try and improve that. And so, we see them quite correctly identifying x, y and z as their priorities, but then putting in things where you think, 'I'm not quite sure why you've thought those might work'.

And the fourth point then is that, having implemented new practices where they think, 'Well, we're weak on that', quite often they don't go back then to see if it's worked. So, I think it actually is a national issue. You see some schools doing it really well, and so there's plenty of best practice out there that we can use, but one of the things that we've been trying to—. To the final bit, 'What are you going to do about this?', we've seen some brilliant practice. If you look at some bodies, such as Swansea and their teacher training, they are using mirrored classrooms where you can actually observe practice and then sit down in groups and work out between themselves what they have seen, what could be improved on, and then they go back and evaluate. You can do these things using iPads now, but a good head of department, a good headteacher, will be doing this naturally, and we see that in the best schools.

Through our peer network, we train—we do a huge amount of training as a body. It's one of the things that people don't think about Estyn, but we do a huge amount of training every year, and I think, last year, 700-odd teachers went through either peer inspection or other methods of training. What we do in the peer inspection is very, very focused on evaluation so that those people can go back to their schools and actually evaluate what is going on, and so, when we arrive, they know what we're looking for. But there is probably, if we're lucky, one peer inspector in every school—certainly not one peer inspector in every secondary school. And so, I think one of the things that we're actually discussing with Government is, 'Look, this is what we do with evaluation. You're absolutely correct—the whole premise of the new curriculum was around successful self-evaluation. Let's do something around getting out to schools, actually making sure that every single school understands, first of all, what self-evaluation means, but then the steps you need to go through to make sure that that's successful.'

I don't know if Claire wants to—

It seems to me that there isn't, as ever, a single answer to the question—you can summarise the self-evaluation, but it's school leaders, not just the leader as the head, but school leaders, and it's then leadership at a local authority level. And also, is there something that the Government can do as well about the clarity, together with you, about what self-evaluation is and how that's to be addressed? Because there is always something here about 'clarity helps', but you don't want three different models of it, because then it isn't clear, and you don't want 22 different models of it either.

Absolutely. And I think this goes through to literacy and numeracy as well. There are an awful lot of guidelines out there, and the guidelines quite often are a little academic or a little 'civil servicey'. As someone who is an ex-civil servant, I recognise a good civil service tool when I see one.

I was going to say that I recognise you from times past. [Laughter.]

Sometimes you just need to write things in speak that the profession understands and be very clear what things are. So, I think, actually, in getting clarity through the guidelines, it's simply, 'This is what good self-evaluation looks like'. There is a merit in that even.

And does that exist at present, or are you saying that that is something that could usefully be one? Or is it, 'It already exists, but we want everyone to look at this one thing, not these seven things over here'?

There is a lot of guidance available for schools on self-evaluation—

Yes, but is that clear and consistent or is it a variety of guidance that doesn't add up to a coherent whole?

I think there's a lot of guidance. So, there was a lot of work done on a national resource around evaluation and improvement, but it's quite a large resource, and where there is weaker leadership, sometimes, you can't see the wood for the trees, so it needs to be broken down. So, over the last two months, we’ve been meeting with officials in the education improvement team to make sense of the information out there to provide more guidance, working with local authorities. So, we are hopeful that there will be some more guidance and consistency in professional learning around self-evaluation in the near future.

Because I think the phrase 'there's a lot of guidance' can sometimes be used to say, 'There isn't a problem, just follow the guidance'. And sometimes it can be that there's too much and it's not coherent, and I think you're saying it's the latter.

I think coherence is really important, and you mentioned, Vaughan, that this is between what’s happening at school level, local authority level and nationally. And we’ve got a really good opportunity now with that reform of the school improvement system to actually bring greater coherence, because I think what you’ve heard us say on a number of occasions is that you need something that is very clear—national expectations that everyone understands that are shared, which then can be cascaded through into some of that local delivery of professional learning and support.

And I think the issue with self-evaluation almost crystallises the issue we’ve had up until now, which has been that there is some national guidance—some really helpful national steer there for that—but you’ve also had a set of organisations that have developed additional approaches and delivered those locally, and not necessarily worked coherently to deliver a consistent set of professional learning expectations. So, there’s an opportunity now, actually, with a national education improvement team and professional learning body, to really set those to hopefully ensure that we don’t have 22 different approaches, but that we do have capacity nationally that leads into some of that local capacity to directly support schools.

Because self-evaluation and planning for improvement are part of the comments made in Estyn inspection reports for local authorities as well.

Yes, absolutely.

And given that the consortia are going, and there'll be clarity that local authorities are the education authority—they’re the improvement authority for their schools—if there’s a national perspective, and then making sure that every local authority then understands what they have responsibility for, I can see how that can be coherent, but it’s really about making sure that happens. And so, some of this, I guess, is about how that’s delivered, so the clarity in the guidance. But then, if you’re the Cabinet Secretary, do you take an approach and say, ‘I’m alongside you and I want this to happen, and I know you do too,' for the trade unions in the sector, both teaching and support staff, for local authority leaders and officers, and school leaders? Or do you take, if you like, a more Leighton Andrews, directional, finger-wagging style, where you berate people and say, ‘You’re not good enough. You have to improve, otherwise I’m coming for you'? Because, actually, it’s easy to generate headlines in one of those approaches; it’s more difficult in another. But it’s about what gets us to the best point where improvement takes place, because that’s a better job for teachers to do, a better job for local authority officers to do, a much better outcome-based system for our children and young people. I get the second and third-chance education, but I’m much more interested in how we get more of that right in the first chance, and this is surely part of it.

It is. I mean, having lived through these various phases, the clarity's good. So, the clarity of—[Inaudible.]—approach is good, but on the delivery of it, you have to make sure this is a shared endeavour. So, I think the work with trade unions, the work with the profession, the work with heads—. For example, when we develop our new frameworks, we work closely with the unions, we work closely with the headteachers reference group, we test things, and I think that approach works, to be honest, and you'll get long-standing improvements if you go down that route.

So, I think, yes, Government should say and be very clear that, 'Look, this is what we expect. There are some very clear guidelines, and this is them—this should help you on this.' But the rest of the system needs to heave to to support that, and I think, actually, when you've got that clear guidance from Government, the rest of the system, if it's good, will heave to. So, we're part of that. We would like to do more on sharing our expertise and self-evaluation. We're taking steps to do that, but it's not enough. The local authorities need to be developing those skills, the same as any school improvement partners will need to as well.

So, one example of what we're doing, as part of the new framework, is we've been trying to demystify what we do. So, the nominee, typically the head, when we go around looking at classrooms, we now get the heads to come with us so that we share, ‘Look, this is what we’re seeing, this is what we’re looking for. It’s a chance for you to feed back as well if we’re not seeing it right.’ But we’re trying to make sure that everyone adopts what is a fairly consistent approach to evaluation. I think that, as Jassa mentioned earlier on, the key will be to have that clarity from Government, as you say, but that shared endeavour between the various partners and what they can contribute to making sure it’s consistently delivered.

And do you have a view at the moment on the capacity? I guess not the willingness, unless you’re going to tell me otherwise, because—you tell me if this is wrong—it seems to me that one of the things the pandemic did was it really highlighted in a way that hadn’t happened before, because we all took it for granted, the importance of education within schools for not just education, but the whole range of social outcomes at primary and secondary levels. Now, actually, one of our challenges is that, despite that highlighting on a bigger, national level, we have an attendance challenge that comes from that as well.

So, my starting point would be that I don’t think school leaders, whether in schools or local education authorities, aren’t willing or committed to the improvement, but I do worry about the capacity for some, because when I read some of the previous inspection reports, both before the pandemic and afterwards—and some of that’s difficult; the 2022 inspections compared to 2024 are very different, because obviously you’re just out of the pandemic in 2022 and two and a half to three years post pandemic in 2024-25—. But I’m trying to understand if there is a general concern about capacity to deliver alongside the commitment, and not just how that’s highlighted but then where those resources come from. Because, again, the easiest thing to do is to say, ‘You’re getting this wrong, you’re not good enough.’ It’s much harder to say, ‘Here’s how you can get better’, and to get people to come with you.

I think the key, actually, goes back to something Jassa said earlier on. Ten years ago, or 12 years ago, when the consortia became more of a voice, you had significant issues with local authorities and delivery. At one stage, 15 or 16 were in a category of some form or other. Now, there have been improvements, but if we end up with 22 different approaches to evaluation, 22 different approaches to numeracy development, 22 different approaches to literacy, it would be a disaster. And I think, particularly for some of the local authorities that have got less capacity because they’re smaller, there is that need to make sure that people are working together, that we’re getting the best use of the money spent. What we must absolutely avoid is going back to a model where we have 22 groups delivering the same thing.

I think, as well, something that will help with that capacity is the information that we have in the system. And I think, about that time we had the consortia, we almost went one way and had quite high accountability at the model categorisation [correction: within the model with categorisation] and so on, which I don’t think was necessarily helpful to supporting improvement. It was used in an accountability way, rather than tailoring support where it was needed best for schools. It took a lot of specialist expertise in terms of specialist subject expertise, which we’ve mentioned earlier, out of the system and made it quite a generic school improvement support model.

We have come back the other way. I think we’d argue perhaps that we’ve come a little bit too far the other way in terms of the richness of information that’s available to support self-evaluation and planning for improvement. What we do see is that, in the best local authorities, they actually overcome those limitations by having good relationships with their schools—quite open sharing of information and data, which helps them really self-evaluate in quite a forensic way to target their improvement where it’s needed, but that’s not consistent across the piece. So, I think one of the aspects that would certainly help capacity would be, again, slightly rebalancing in terms of the amount of information that’s available to schools and local authorities to support that self-evaluation, really.

There really is value in a local understanding of how to make these things happen. Local authorities will clearly have a significant role in this, but we would really encourage the co-operation of those local authorities now in developing this new system, with really clear guidance about what—. The perfect scenario is you have very clear guidance of expectations, you have the partners all understanding what their roles are, they’ve bought into it, and then the accountability mechanism, which is us, actually making sure that that then happens and supporting it where it doesn’t.

You may want to provide a written note for this, because I'm not sure you'll be able to answer this question off the top of your head, or with the data in front of you, but I think the committee would be interested in the latest number of schools in follow-up, whether that's significant improvement or special measures—and not just the numbers, but whether there's a pattern we can see and whether there is a marked difference between primary and secondary, or, indeed, if there's a concentration in particular parts of Wales, whether that's geographically or by the socioeconomic make-up of the school.

Again, going back to my experience, I've seen challenges in all of the socioeconomic make-up, but the overall outcomes are different and we look at a wider picture. If you've got that information now, that's great. Otherwise, it may be that we can write to you to get that in writing afterwards, unless you've got all the numbers in your head now, Owen.

I've got a lot of the numbers, but the breakdown by geography, for example, I haven't got in front of me. It will take a while to go through the figures, but, if you're happy, we'll write.

Yes, I think that's more sensible.

That'll be brilliant. I'm really conscious of time at the moment as well.

I've got one final question, and that's about narrowing gaps in attainment. Again, this has been an objective for some time, and understandably so, because education should be a vehicle for social mobility and progress. And that means you have to not just have talented and gifted learners in advantaged socioeconomic cohorts, but, actually, we'd still need a proxy for people who would be eligible for free school meals. And it's not just whether the system is adequately focused on that, but about how the system learns from that. And I'll explain what I mean by that. I've looked at Cardiff, Ynys Môn, Ceredigion and the Vale of Glamorgan—so, geographically spread and different socioeconomic make-up. I also looked at Merthyr, actually, because Cardiff has a higher than the national average percentage of free-school-meal pupils who are eligible—it's higher than Merthyr's proportion, which often isn't thought of, but that's the fact. It's got a significantly higher than the national average proportion of ethnic minority families as well, where English is an additional language too, but it's got a lower than national average group of additional learning needs cohort, which I found surprising, but it has higher than national average outcomes for its free-school-meals cohort. So, it's got additional challenges that other authorities don't have, and, actually, it's doing a better than national average job.

Now, I think the national averages need to raise anyway, but where there's better practice, how does a school system not just—? I think 'focus' is probably the wrong word—it's how does a system learn from itself about what 'better' looks like? If you have a school in the poor, southern arc of the city of Cardiff, what does it do well, if it does it really well? How does that translate not just to the north of the city, where there will be free-school-meal-eligible pupils, but what does that mean for those same socioeconomic cohorts, whether they're in Holyhead or a part of Aberystwyth? I'm interested in what that learning looks like and, again, how that comes through not just in your work, but what that means for a whole education improvement system?

I think, where we see schools that are successful in narrowing the gap, they have consistently good teaching, and that would explain some of the anomalies. If they focus on teaching and they plan a very structured, appropriate curriculum, they engage those learners. Yes, they also have community-focused approaches, they also have engagement officers, but they make sure that, when children are in school and they're in the classroom, they're getting a high-quality experience, regardless of their background or the other challenges they're facing.

We have schools in Wales in disadvantaged areas that are very successful and have a very strong record. Cefn Hengoed in Swansea—one that we've mentioned before—year on year on year are developing their quality of teaching as well as other resources for the learners. A lot of the barriers schools can support, but they can't support with all barriers, and so it's important that schools work in partnership with parents, community, local authority services, to make sure they tap into the other services that can help support children to overcome barriers to learning as well. But we would say that, fundamentally, securing high-quality teaching will benefit all groups of learners, so that always needs to be a priority, and there's obviously some learning that needs to go across the system.

Also, it's difficult to identify when one local authority might perform better than others, but there are some pointers, probably. One of the things that Cardiff, I think, does particularly well is it works well as a council, so the number of different departments within the local authority tend to work quite well together in supporting the educational priority. That could be children's services, it could be social work, so that tends to be a factor when you see good performance on dealing with challenges like this. But then there's other stuff that's more anecdotal, things like availability of other services, youth services, child and adolescent mental health services, and then there's recruitment. Some areas find it more difficult to recruit than others, and that can have an impact.

There's one other factor we haven't mentioned, but I think it's probably quite interesting to mention, and that's that you can look at an area and say this is a more deprived area overall, but there are still quite substantial pockets within that. So, individual schools obviously have a variety of pupils who would be affected by poverty. One of the things we've done to try and ensure that the focus is maintained and kept high on this is a continuous push with all our inspectors, and a push across all schools, so it's not just those schools where there are high levels of deprivation where we're having a focus and asking questions about, 'Okay, so how are you supporting pupils and families who might be affected by poverty?' It's across all those schools, even if the number of learners in them is quite small. But I think that kind of approach from a school would be quite different depending on whether it's a large proportion of their learners who might be affected by poverty or quite a small number. But we're trying to make sure that those, where there's a small number, are also picked up and that that focus is kept high.

I'd like to ask a dozen more questions, but I know we can't.

I thought you might.

And there's a broader question about how many priorities the school system can actually successfully implement, because you can't have 20 priorities as then you don't have any, really. But perhaps we can save that for correspondence, Chair.

Okay. We now have some questions from Cefin, please.

Yes, thank you very much. Good morning to all of you and thank you for the report. I'm going to ask my questions in Welsh.

There have been several references to attendance at schools already this morning, and you've noted that in secondary schools in particular there has been a decline since the pandemic in terms of attendance—around a 10 per cent decline as compared to attendance levels pre pandemic. Is there an explanation that you might be able to give in terms of why that has happened? People refer to the pandemic as the catalyst, or that's when things changed, but what exactly has caused that decline in attendance levels, truth be told?

We are about to publish work on this subject, and we have clearly looked at this in detail over the past few months. It's not simple, and what's important to consider—and Jassa mentioned this earlier on—is that we don't have enough data sometimes in Wales to understand what the root of the problem is. So, if you look at the whole picture, yes, we have a problem that attendance is lower than it was before the pandemic and we have a bigger problem in terms of the difference between underprivileged kids and privileged kids. But if you look under the surface of the data, what you tend to see is that, in some schools, they're doing very well, but in others, they really have had really big problems in urging children to come back to school regularly. And also, not just to come back to school, but we've seen a number of problems with truancy within schools; they're on site but they don't actually go to lessons.

From the schools that we've mentioned, and the colleges, what we tend to see—and to some extent this was happening before the pandemic—is that that social contract between parents and schools has changed. We saw an example of that yesterday with the work of the NAHT—more bad relations between schools and parents; they don't support the school in what they're trying to do. From time to time, there are reasons for that, such as whether there has been adequate discussion. We see that more children since the pandemic have problems with anxiety, and they find it difficult to socialise, and this happens in primary schools, of course, but the problems tend to be bigger—. Social media has had an impact on this, that much is true, and I think that that, we have to admit—we don't understand quite how much, but this comes up quite consistently.

Also, there are simple things. In the past, when everybody worked in an office or in a factory, or whatever, or on the farm, children had to go to school. But now—this is something completely practical—more parents are at home. So, if a child doesn't feel well, it's much easier to keep that child at home, or if that child doesn't want to go to school, it's far easier not to send them to school. Now, what we've seen is a huge increase in the number of children who are home schooled, and somehow we need to try and encourage and ensure that those services are in place to allow those children to return to school, so that we can help them in that regard.

But to return to what we've discussed, we've seen incredible practice in some communities that have a number of challenges with how to get children in. And where that has worked is where the school has built up good relations with the community and with parents, and they have used things such as youth services, and that they use the work that the council does to support them also. And also it goes back to a point that Claire made earlier about the standard of the curriculum—it needs to be something that you're interested in and that you want to go into school to learn about.

The final thing, perhaps, is to mention behaviour. I mentioned social media; behaviour can be a challenge for people, it scares people, in terms of attendance. Behaviour isn't always as bad as the press claims it to be, but it is a problem and we have to ensure that we do everything in our power to ensure that everybody behaves appropriately. I don't know whether Claire or Jassa would like to come in.

Thank you very much for that. It's clear that the picture is a very complex one when it comes to attendance, and so I look forward to seeing your report on the work that you are currently doing. But, of course, you published thematic work on this a year or so ago and there have been recommendations made with regard to some of the things that you mentioned that are good practice in some schools, such as family support officers, education welfare officers and so on. To what extent have those interventions worked, and where they are working, why isn't it being done in other schools?

It hasn't worked sufficiently, I would say, or the situation would have improved. As we said, it's going to take around a decade for the situation to improve to the standard that we would expect it to be, pre the pandemic.

The way that we will work now is that we will visit schools every three years instead of every six years, or eight as it was before that. So, hopefully, over time, we'll see more and more of a priority given to ensuring that they do share good practice, that they do learn and that they do look at this. But to be fair, this is a case where the Government has been very clear that this is something that we need to focus on, but sometimes some have dragged their feet in this regard. We've seen some local authorities really getting hold of this, looking at the data on a weekly basis to ensure that they understand the situation, and that they can support where needed. We've seen other local authorities that really haven't yet given it enough priority.

One thing I would add, perhaps, is capacity. We do hear of and see some examples where there is insufficient capacity and standards in the education welfare officer service, for example. But also, sometimes, that the school's work doesn't align with the work of the authority sufficiently well. So, perhaps there's duplication, that they do the same thing in terms of engagement with families and so on. So, they don't maximise the capacity that is there. But also I think, where we do see this working well, perhaps there is better working across services too, to share data, and to ensure that, if this family isn't coping, for any particular reason, and is unable to support the children to come to school, the other services can step in to help with that process too. So, that's a good example of what is happening in some places, and where it is working.

And also we must mention that, of course, if a child had difficulties with going back to school, or have difficulties within the school, historically they may have been sent to a pupil referral unit or a special school; the capacity isn't there now. So, schools themselves have to deal with the behaviour issues or those challenges that didn't really exist a decade ago. The pandemic may have worsened things, but as the cuts have come through, that's made it even more difficult.

If I can just ask one further question on attendance, your report notes that around half of secondary schools are facing issues with attendance. The guidance from the Welsh Government, of course, sets an expectation for school heads to intervene when that persistent attendance gets to 10 per cent. But your report suggests that there are too many cases where heads aren't intervening until it goes down to around 80 per cent. So, do you police this? Do you monitor this and put guidance in place to remind school heads of the guidance?

We don't police it, because it's not our role to police it, but we do look at the data regularly, and if we do have concerns that things aren't picking up, we do bring it up with the Government and local authorities. Because we have quite a close relationship—we meet local authorities regularly, so we do bring it up. I have to say, some schools and some local authorities haven't prioritised it sufficiently, but I've seen some schools where you go in, you can see what they've done, where the local authority has supported them in doing so too, and the statistics still stay the same. So, it is a complex problem.

Yes, this is a theme that has arisen several times this morning, following many of the questions from Vaughan. Namely, you see good practice, you see where things are working well, but every school then doesn't adopt that good practice, or local authorities don't share that good practice. So, who is then responsible, at the end of the day, for ensuring that every school follows that good practice and that every local authority applies that good practice?

I think this was the point that Vaughan was making earlier on; sometimes, there's a role for the Government to be stronger, and just to hold people to account and make sure that they ensure that this is a priority. Because, to be fair, they've been very clear, but I think there's a role to meet regularly, just to monitor the system, and look in and evaluate, as we look at the data, why this is happening in these schools—because I think you have to go down to a school level, because every school is different—why this school hasn't improved and what we can do to support them.

Thank you very much. That's a great help.

The next set of questions are on teacher recruitment and retention. We know—you note in your report—that teacher recruitment is a significant challenge at the moment, particularly in some subjects. You've listed them: modern languages, the Welsh language, teaching through the medium of Welsh and so on. But you also note in your report that this has an impact on the quality of the education. So, could you explain to us what the link is between failing to recruit sufficient numbers and the lack of quality of education, and how, ultimately, is this impacting learners and their development?

There are a number of ways in which the teacher recruitment and retention affects the quality of teaching in the classroom. In some schools, they are struggling to recruit qualified teachers in certain subject areas, so then they look at alternatives. One alternative is to see whether there are teachers in the school with a second subject who can fill that gap. So, staff are regularly asked to teach across a number of subject areas. And if schools don't put appropriate professional learning in place for those staff, then the quality of teaching is not good enough.

The other alternative is to employ short or long-term supply cover. There is a shortage of those areas in the supply pool as well. So, again, you may get someone who's not qualified in an area, and when they're coming in short term, it's quite difficult to equip them. So, schools are doing their best to provide them with advice, guidance, materials, but, inevitably, it does affect the quality of teaching and the quality of learning in certain subject areas. So, that all contributes to why it's quite challenging for schools to recruit, and so they are challenged in subject areas. But there is a challenge recruiting headteachers as well in some areas, and we see that. Schools are telling us they're re-advertising for the second or third time, or they've got a very small number of applicants for posts.

I think, maybe across that challenge, and into initial teacher education, the fact that the numbers are just not there means that, sometimes, I guess, the level of quality in schools and initial teacher education provided will be almost taking people who might not have had the grades before, so that professional learning requirement, then, is more to reach, I guess, the quality that we'd want.

If I could just pick up—

If I can just pick up on two points there. First of all, when you teach pedagogy in initial teacher training, there are some things that are similar for every subject, but there are elements that are specific to certain subjects. Teaching Welsh is different from teaching maths, et cetera, so those people don't possess those skills unless they're experts in the subject.

The second thing, of course, if we look at recruitment—. There's a crisis in recruitment at the moment, and we're starting to see that retention is now dropping also. So, there are problems on both sides. As well as weakening the standard of teaching that's happening, it also reduces the options available to children. And we are seeing secondary schools now having to cut back the curriculum because they can't recruit teachers to those subjects.

And that can have an impact on FE as well. We're seeing that effect there too.

My final question is on retention of teachers in the profession. The Education Workforce Council has suggested that the picture is relatively stable, but yet, in your 2022 report, you note that that was the year that saw the highest number ever of teachers leaving the profession. How can you reconcile those two situations—the stability and then one year seeing the greatest decline ever in the number of teachers?

First of all, I wouldn't have expected that to continue in such a stable way. The way that the council measures the number of people is based on how many have registered. I'll have to check this with the council, but my understanding is that the fact that you've registered as a teacher doesn't necessarily mean that you're teaching.

Right.

So, there are people who are registered but they're not teaching in schools. But, anecdotally, what we've heard from the schools that we've been to is that people are leaving—key people with the skills that we need. What we would expect is that this stable situation doesn't continue, even with the new registrations.

To start, we saw that, with the Welsh language, there was a problem. The way that the Government goes about creating the capacity for teaching in the future is actually a good thing, and perhaps we should look at that model for the rest of the workforce. But, between the fact that we don't recruit enough people and the fact that people are leaving the profession, the situation will get worse before it gets better, and that's why, I think, to be fair, the Government has taken action and is now doing a piece of work to see how we can tackle the situation.

It's interesting, because the impact is felt throughout the system. We mentioned earlier support around the school and specialists to help to develop mathematics, for example. And if you don't get the people coming through from that initial teacher training, it then has an impact, as Claire has said, on the retention of the heads in schools and other people who can support the schools. So, it is a problem.

And something to keep an eye on is that, as cuts come in, if you look at people who leave, they tend to be the more experienced people who are paid the most. So, that can take more expertise out of the system.

I'd like to discuss recruitment and retention of teachers with you all day, but—

Just on that point, there are a number of ideas that I think we should look at for the future. This idea that teachers have to be stuck in the classroom every minute of the day should be up for discussion.

Yes, that's true.

Mae'r ffordd dŷn ni'n creu lle i athrawon addysgu eu hunain yn rhywbeth y mae'n rhaid i ni ei drafod. Dwi ddim yn credu bod y system INSET yn ddigonol. Sori.

I agree. It's a discussion for the future. Thank you.

I'm so sorry, we've run out of time. We do have extra questions. Is it okay if we write to you for those answers?

Yes, of course.

Thank you very much, and thank you for your time this morning. We really appreciate you joining us. You'll be sent a transcript to check in due course. Thank you again.

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you.

We'll now take a short break, until 11:20.