4. Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Education: National Academy for Educational Leadership

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:04 pm on 22 May 2018.

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Photo of Kirsty Williams Kirsty Williams Liberal Democrat 4:04, 22 May 2018

Can I thank Michelle Brown for her observations? It's important for Members to understand the way in which the leadership academy has been set up, as a company limited by guarantee that is arm's-length from the Welsh Government, because I wanted to be able to create some kind of independence, on a day-to-day operational basis, from Welsh Government. We announced last week that the organisation will be led by a new chief executive, Huw Foster-Evans. Huw is somebody who will be known to many people here as a—. He started his career as a classroom maths teacher and moved up through the ranks. He's been a headteacher, understands very well the workings of regional consortia, local education authorities, and is extremely enthusiastic with regard to the potential for leadership. Having spoken to him following his appointment, he sees leadership being the core on which we will deliver our educational reforms. The board has an independently appointed chair as well as a number of board members, all of whom have recent experience in business and in education, that will oversee the day-to-day running of the academy. I expect to receive regular reports from both the chair and the chief executive about the work and, of course, I'm sure Members here and, as you are a member of the children and young people's committee, that the committee itself will want to have an in-depth look at the work of the academy and will want to meet those personnel. An invitation was issued, I believe, for people to come along to the event last week, so people could have met at the official launch. I know people's diaries are incredibly busy over lunchtime and that's almost impossible. Llyr was there and I hope, Llyr, that you would say to colleagues who weren't able to attend that there was a real sense of excitement and anticipation and enthusiasm for what we are doing. 

Equality issues in education are really, really important ones, Michelle. It's really interesting; you say about lack of female leadership roles. Well, many, many, many, many of the headteachers I meet in leadership roles—headteachers of schools—especially in the primary sector, are female, and that reflects the nature of the primary school workforce, but we need to see greater diversity in our teaching profession across the piece. I want those at the front of our classroom to reflect the nature of the classroom itself. We are a diverse community with a diverse population and I would like to see a greater diversity in the teaching profession and, of course, the leadership academy, I'm sure, will want to give advice to me about what needs to happen if we're to encourage that diversity and we're able to take action with that. Again, one of the things I expect the leadership academy to do is to feed into public policy advice, to give advice to me, as the Minister, about what more we need to do to support the very premise that you painted: a diverse, successful set of school leaders and a school leadership system that people aspire to be a part of; they want to be a part of that system—rather than seeing leadership as a career-ending opportunity, rather a career-enhancing opportunity. So, that's very important to me, that we get that diversity.

The usual accountability and assurance measures will be put in place, and the chief executive and the board will be held publicly accountable for the way in which the budget of the organisation is spent. As I said in answer to Llyr Huws Gruffydd, as we approach September we will be in a position to give greater detail to Members about the new national professional learning programme that is available. We're already working very, very hard with the OECD to develop our system of schools as learning organisations, and we have to recognise that the old ways of doing professional learning, which often involve coming out of your classroom for an entire day, coming to sit in a hall, being lectured at by the stage, on the stage, and then going back to your classroom and it having no impact on your practice—those days are over. Often, the very best professional learning opportunities come when the children are actually in the room. They come by liaising, not with another school, but actually with your colleagues within the school, or having the opportunity to work across a cluster, and our new national professional learning opportunity programme will reflect that when we launch it in the autumn.