Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:35 pm on 19 February 2019.
Now, the Member made the point around non-maintained settings, and the report itself doesn't say whether the drop in numbers is a good thing or a bad thing. What it does say—and the Member is right to point out—is that it is not simply the preserve of the maintained settings to offer excellence to our youngest learners. In fact, the quality of our non-maintained sector is commented upon by the chief inspector, and the non-maintained provision for our youngest learners is one of the strengths of our system.
You will know now, and you referenced it, that we are working with colleagues in the health and social services department to ensure that there is a greater joining up of the childcare offer alongside foundation phase, with an opportunity for co-location to make it easy as possible for parents, and you will also be aware that Estyn and Care Inspectorate Wales are now working on joint inspections for those establishments as well, which, again, I think is a better way of moving forward.
If I could turn to Siân Gwenllian, she talked about accountability: where does accountability lie in the system and whose job is it to be accountable? Well, the reality is that accountability lies at different levels, and so it should. Accountability begins with the professional accountability of every single person working in our education system—that professional accountability that drives so many of our educators to ensure that they strive every day to do a fantastic job for the children they work with. The first line of accountability, then, after that, lies with our school governors who, on a day-to-day basis, on a weekly basis, are there to hold the senior management of their schools, of which they are governors, to account. Of course, our regional consortia, our school improvement services and local education authorities have a responsibility for individual schools in their areas, but also on a regional basis. Estyn is there to provide independent assurance for the system as a whole, and Welsh Government are accountable for the quality of the system as a whole.
Now, we do need to move to a situation where Estyn does provide more support for school improvement where a school has been found by Estyn not to be as good as it could be. Let me give you an example of why this is so necessary. I think back to a school in my own constituency, which, over many years, was deemed to be a school in need of special measures. Each time Estyn came to that school, they reported and they disappeared only to come back several months later with a different set of inspectors who asked the schools to jump through a different set of hoops. And when the school was unable to do that, they went away again, only to come back months later with a different set of people again. Now, that's not the way I want our inspectorate to behave. We need to have Estyn, our inspectors, around the table with our school improvement services, with our LEAs, to create a plan for that school and to work with others to ensure that that plan is delivered and that that school moves out of a category more quickly than some of our schools do at the moment. And it's a vision that I share with the chief inspector, because I think Estyn has more to do than it is currently doing at the moment.
With regard to frequency of inspections, the issue lies in the fact that you can put your child into the Welsh education system at the moment, and your child can go through the education system through the entirety of their career and not be subject to a school inspection. What we do know is that some schools that are in a category can improve really, really quickly, but we also know that the good schools can go down really, really quickly, and this system that is being proposed today and will be consulted upon gives us the opportunity to provide parents with better real-time data and information about what is going on in their schools. Plaid Cymru might not want—. They said they want greater accountability—Plaid Cymru may not want that accountability, but I think parents want to see more timely, up-to-date data about what's going on in their children's schools than is currently available. And we have to get away—. Plaid Cymru have to acknowledge that we are moving to a different type of inspection system, and we're doing it to help us make sure that all of our children get a fantastic education.
Can I just say, about Caroline Jones—? She says that we have the worst system in the world, but I'm very glad that then she went on to clarify that by giving some examples of fantastic schools in her own region that are doing a great job. She says we're not doing enough for our more able and talented students. We have introduced a more able and talented programme, we are extending our Seren programme not just to sixth formers and post-16 learners, but to younger learners. And with regard to school buildings, band A, which is coming to an end, and band B, which is shortly to start, will see the biggest investment in our school and college building programme since the 1960s. Can I—