Item 5 is next, and that's a statement by the Minister for Education and Welsh Language on evaluating and improving education and learning in Wales. I call on the Minister, Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Firstly, I want to take this opportunity to express my continued thanks to the profession for their ongoing commitment to curriculum reform and prioritising the well-being of their learners, despite the many challenges that they faced over the last few years. Wales is on an ambitious path to education reform, to raise standards and aspirations for all, so everyone can reach their potential. At the heart of our reforms, the Curriculum for Wales empowers practitioners to design teaching that engages learners, and supports and challenges them to progress to their full potential. Pupil assessment and public accountability are both critical to raising standards and supporting our reform programme. However, they each have a very different role to play. Assessment is about understanding an individual pupil’s needs, and it should be used in the best interest of pupils, enabling teachers to adjust teaching strategies to support their progress. Accountability involves judgment on overall performance and is critical for public confidence.

The evidence is clear that when assessment and accountability are blurred, there is a detrimental effect on teaching and learning. Schools complain that they are often confused on what is expected of them and that they are pulled in opposing directions. Yesterday, our new school improvement guidance was published to address this issue. It provides a clear framework for evaluation, improvement and accountability. As you would hope and expect, we have placed the learner, their well-being and their progression at the centre of this. The guidance helps makes clear the difference between assessment and accountability, as well as the different roles played by assessment and accountability, so that schools are clear about what is required of them. It also sets out how parents and the wider public will be able to access more up-to-date, detailed and informative information.

National categorisation was suspended in 2020, and the guidance confirmed that it will be replaced by a robust self-evaluation process where good practice is shared and failure is urgently addressed. The OECD have identified a prominent role for self-evaluation as a feature of high-performing school systems. They have previously described how replacing national categorisation with a robust self-evaluation system will provide a much more detailed overview of the actual strengths and areas for improvement of a school compared to the colour-coding system. I am pleased that we were able to draw on their advice in the development of the new self-evaluation process.

Schools’ self-evaluation will be the starting point for all evaluation and improvement work. Schools are encouraged to incorporate peer review into their self-evaluation to further develop a culture of partnership. Regional consortia and local authorities will work with all schools to agree a level of support that schools need and will confirm to schools’ governing bodies the support that they will provide or broker. This approach to school improvement will mean schools will need to continue to be open about where they wish to improve, and have access to high-quality support from consortia, local authorities and other schools tailored to their needs. I want them to collaborate with each other, not to compete to the detriment of their learners. Parents will now be able to access more up-to-date, detailed and informative information by accessing a summary of each school’s improvement priorities, and each school’s development plans will also be available for all to see.

Conversations between a learner, their teachers and their parents and carers are key. I have therefore introduced regulations on the provision of information by headteachers to parents and carers, which include expectations to engage with parents and carers termly, focusing on how learners are progressing, so both home and school can support learners' improvement. Accountability within the school system will continue to be maintained through effective school governance and more regular Estyn inspection of schools. From September, Estyn will inspect schools under their new framework, which supports the new curriculum, with plans to increase the number of inspections from September 2024. The commitment to increase inspections will reduce the gap between reporting on individual schools, as well as ensuring that parents and learners have access to up-to-date independent information about their school.

Effective professional dialogue between practitioners and schools is another key means through which we will raise standards. That is why yesterday I published a direction requiring practitioners to work together within and between schools and settings to develop and maintain a shared understanding of how their learners should progress. These discussions are essential to help learners have a joined-up experience as they move between different schools, and to ensure equity across Wales.

At the start of May, we launched the national resource for evaluation and improvement on Hwb, providing practical guidance and resources for schools to support self-evaluation and improvement. Building on this, I've also published supporting materials for practitioners to aid schools in their planning for next year. This includes practical guides on evaluation and improvement, curriculum design, progression and assessment—accessible on Hwb to any practitioner.

We must make sure our transformational curriculum delivers for the next generation. To achieve this, our professional learning offer must be accessible to all. We continue to work with teachers and others in the education system to finalise our national entitlement for professional learning, ready for the autumn, from which school leaders, teachers and teaching assistants will all benefit. A truly national offer, and one that will be easier to navigate. And in advance of that, I expect our regional consortia to make available the common access arrangements, so that a teaching professional in any part of Wales can have online access to the professional learning content available from the consortia in any other part of Wales.

And in order to support our national entitlement for professional learning, I'm also looking to continue the additional in-service training day in the next academic year, to give school leaders and practitioners the time and space they need to get this right, because I, along with the profession, want to see an education system that offers high standards and aspirations for all.

I just also want to place on record our thanks to all school staff for their continued resilience and hard work, and learners too. Minister, I want to thank you for your statement today, parts of which we welcome. These have been and are incredibly tough times for learners. How we evaluate the hard work being done by our schools is of paramount importance so that we can all evaluate and see how schools are progressing and reacting post pandemic to new directors, to poor PISA results and to pupils' needs. I must disagree with the Minister's action to get rid of the current school categorisation system—the traffic-light system as it's more commonly known—which has been an easy and simple way for parents, for teachers and local government officials to see how a school is performing. The only problem with that system, Minister, was that the narrative behind why a school had been given a specific colour was not always clear or communicated well enough, or, indeed, what constituted a colour was not the same across Wales. There was no consistency—things that easily could have been changed. Not only was the colour coding a very simple way for parents to see how a school was doing, it also aided local authorities to determine where resources were most needed, and for clusters to know where extra support was needed within their own clusters. And heads have said they already collaborate and don't compete, as your statement implies. 

Bringing in a self-evaluation system, aligned with your new proposed system, is fraught with risks, and also, once again, increases the workload on teachers—something that I can't support. Getting rid of the old system begs the question of why the Welsh Government are intent on moving to a new system, which allows worse results to be buried and means fewer parents will be able to clearly see how Government are failing their children and the young people from Wales from basic skills, to results, to supporting our young people with their mental health and well-being. Why can't there be some sort of marriage between the two ideas? Setting plans and priorities, as we've outlined, are good, but why can't we see how schools are doing too? Why can't there be that simple gauge any more? Why get rid of that? Rather than a system change once again, making the system that was there more effective perhaps would've been a better idea, in my opinion.

It concerns me that the outcome of how schools are doing now won't be clear under the new proposed system, and parents won't be able to see very clearly how a school is performing. Not all parents will want to read pages and pages of documents to see how their schools are doing. How are you, Minister, going to ensure that how schools are doing will be simply and clearly communicated to parents? We seem to be focused on the negatives here, obviously, as well, but what about those schools doing well that have seriously improved? What about those schools and them getting the recognition for their hard work? You know, when they got an 'excellent' from an Estyn report, it was celebrated within the school; how's that going to be replaced?

Minister, we've talked about evaluating now, but also, on improving education in Wales, to truly ensure that we improve education and learning in Wales, we must ensure that our learners feel support with regard to their education and their mental health and well-being. With regard to mental health and well-being, the Welsh Government thus far has overpromised and underdelivered. School leaders have been told that they will be given the necessary support and help for their learners, but schools just aren't feeling supported at all, particularly primary schools, from conversations that I've had with school leaders. Our children are feeling overwhelmed with the amount of learning time they've lost and they're not feeling on a par with their peers. And we've already heard today about the negative impact of school transport, or lack of, or other money worries that are all causing a huge rise in pupil absences. Surely, that's what we need to be concentrating on at the moment: getting our children back into schools and making sure that they're feeling supported.

Minister, we need to stop changing systems to try and hide your Government's shortcomings and get back to basics where we're getting our learners back into school and getting the mental health and well-being support to where it's needed. Minister, what immediate action is this Government going to take to get our young people back into school and to ensure that learners feel more supported, not from the September half term, but right now so that our learners feel in the best place to start the new school year in September, with all the mental health and educational support that they need? Thank you.

I thank the Member for a wide-ranging set of questions. I hope that she will forgive me if I limit my responses to those that are relevant to the statement. But I think that the question from the Member very neatly exemplified the confusion at the heart of the system that this set of changes is intended to eliminate. At various points in her questions, she spoke about performance, she spoke about Estyn reports and she spoke about the categorisation system as though they were one and the same, and that's precisely the challenge that schools have faced. Because although the policy was introduced in a way that was intended to support schools to improve, in practice what it has meant is a focus on the categorisation at the expense of the underlying support that schools need to seek, because there's a disincentive in the system that is created by the simple designation. I actually agree with her that simplicity is desirable in the interests of transparency, but I think a system that is both simple and effective is what is needed, and I think we need to move away from the current arrangements in order to achieve that.

I think it is important to make sure that parents have a means of easily understanding how their child's school is progressing, and I think, very clearly, having a top-line descriptor is an insufficient indicator for parents of the progress of a school and, most importantly, the support available to their learners. A parent wanting to know how their child's school is performing will be able to look at an accessible summary of the school's development plan, will also be able to look, for example, at qualifications data and the range of information that is on the My School website, which describes, in helpful detail, I think, the kinds of things that the Member was asking about in her question, and I think will provide a richer and accessible source of information for parents to understand how their schools are doing. And that's from a school improvement perspective. They will equally have, for those who wish to seek them out and read them, an Estyn report, which, in very simple terms, describes, from an accountability point of view, how that school is doing much more broadly. So, there'll be a wider range of accessible information available to parents, the community and, indeed, to all of us.

She asked about teacher workload: she will, I know, be aware that these are reforms on which we've been consulting for some time, and therefore teachers are very aware of this set of potential changes. Nothing in the guidance requires schools to take any immediate action. And, indeed, she will also know, I'm sure, that categorisation has in fact been paused in Wales for the last two years, and what this guidance does is confirm the continuation of a situation where categorisation doesn't apply. So, I'm very hopeful that that will be, as it has been, well received by the teaching profession as meeting both the needs of learners without imposing an excessive workload on them.

Thank you, Minister, for the statement. I think there are two things that parents like to hear about children in school: one is that they are developing to their utmost and are supported in doing that; and, secondly, that they are happy at school. And I very warmly welcome the one emphasis in this change, that we are not just looking at academic progress, but also at well-being and the pupil voice, and that is to be warmly welcomed. And also, if you look at the document—44 pages long, even longer in Welsh—in terms of the well-being of teachers and learners, and I think that's the change that's coming as a result of this, and that's what was missing in what was described as the traffic-light system. Yes, it was simple, but it was easy to misinterpret what that meant in terms of your child, in terms of how they were supported and how happy they were in school. And I know, having spoken to a number of teachers who have taught in some schools that have been categorised as either amber or red, that that wasn't the reality; they weren't failing schools. I think simplicity, yes, is to be welcomed, but there is a real risk too, if it's that blunt, that we miss out on the nuances in terms of the individual schools, and that's where I disagree with Laura Anne Jones on this point.

I also welcome your mention of the role of local authorities in this—that there needs to be agreement in terms of what support should be provided to schools in reaching the milestones. Does this mean that schools will then be empowered? Will there be more requirements for local authorities to be supporting those schools in order to deliver against the expectations? I'm thinking particularly in terms of additional learning needs, for example. We've discussed on a number of occasions the lack of access to ALN support through the medium of Welsh, for example, and this is something that primary schools have raised with me, where there isn't provision at the moment. So, will this empower those schools if they do see that they are failing those children in their care, and they feel that they aren't providing that well-being support and development? So, will there be implications if local authorities don't provide what schools believe is necessary in order for them to reach the milestones set out?

The other question I have is in terms of Estyn. I see that they warmly welcome these changes and look forward to seeing their introduction, but are they willing to implement the national framework at a national level in terms of resources and so on? Because there will be a different format if you're carrying out ad hoc visits. Now, if a school is assessed every seven years, then it's quite consistent. But if there is a need for more support for schools, does that mean that there will be more of a resource demand on Estyn, and how will Estyn be supported in that regard?

I warmly welcome the fact that there's to be an additional INSET day for this. One of the things we hear time and time again is about teacher workload, and I welcome, in your response to Laura Anne Jones, that you emphasise too that this will be a process. And I am aware that some teachers do self-evaluate already; it's something that can work well with governors too. But in terms of looking at some of the language, one of the things that has been a cause of concern is this idea of failure. You mentioned 'failures addressed' and so on. Aren't we trying to move away from this idea of failure or success, and trying to ensure—? Unless they are in special measures, of course, isn't the main thing that we support every school to deliver to the best of their ability? I return to that fundamental point: where will the obligations fall if it's not the school's fault that they can't deliver, because the resources aren't available? I think there is a potential for a far more open dialogue in terms of some of the challenges in certain areas as to why pupils don't get the support that they need.

But, mainly, I would emphasise that this is to be welcomed, but we must ensure that this doesn't place additional pressures on teachers, but should be seen as being positive, as you've presented it to us, which, hopefully, will put place an emphasis on the happiness and well-being of children in schools, and that they are supported to deliver to the best of their ability, not just supported to deliver those high grades; perhaps that grade isn't best for the child, in terms of, if they can't get to the A*, and the D is their best possible achievement, they are happy and have been supported to achieve that. Thank you.

Thank you to Heledd Fychan for those questions and the way that she has welcomed those reforms. I appreciate that. Just on her concluding point, qualifications are still going to be important and a core part of the system, to ensure that learners leave school with the very best possible grades and qualifications for them, but that's not the only measurement. There will be wider measurements than that, including in terms of those regarding well-being and health, as the Member herself mentioned.

What is at the heart of this new vision is, if you will, that the pupils themselves will own the assessment and evaluation process; it's for the benefit of the pupil, not for the accountability of the school. So, with regard to the provision of daily teaching and learning, or over a period, or an impact in terms of a cohort, that's the purpose of the assessment and evaluation. Accountability is a separate question.

But the Member asked how this is going to work in terms of the relationship between the school and the other agencies and bodies. So, of course, the governing body is accountable for the performance of the school, and what we'll see under these new guidelines is that the consortia and the standards improvement services will provide a report to the governors in terms of what they agree to do on a school's behalf, and that document will be available, and a summary of that relationship will also be described, in a way that is accessible, in the summary of the school development plan. So, it will be clear what the relationship is between the school and the school improvement service, and the important word there is that it is a service, so it provides a service to the school; that's the function of these bodies. This allows, I think, school leaders—it empowers them, to use the word that the Member herself used—to make decisions that aren't clouded by thinking that this means that they will be in an amber or a green category. So, it gives them the freedom to make the right decisions without that pressure. That's why these changes are so important.

In terms of Estyn's role in all of this, Estyn will have an accountability role. That will be dependent on their inspections of schools and the thematic reviews. The work that they do in that regard is very important too. The new pattern will begin in two years' time, so we have two years of the current system before the pattern of more frequent visits to schools begins. Estyn is still piloting this new way of undertaking its school visits, so there'll be a period over the next year of reviewing that to ensure that it isn't disproportionate, but the support has now been given to Estyn so they have resources to ensure that this is possible.

With regard to the language used, what we're talking about today does not for one second take the emphasis away from the fact that schools are doing their very best on behalf of every pupil. On occasion, schools themselves acknowledge that they don't hit the target in some ways, and we need to have an open discussion about that. So, I don't want to use language that blames or is accusatory, but it's also important that we do use language that is open and encourages and supports schools to seek the support that they need in whatever particular field it might be. Every school will have a different area of emphasis according to their own performance. I think that that's still a very important element of what we're talking about today.

Thank you for your statement, Minister. I think there is certainly a lot to welcome in this new approach. I appreciate the need for transparency and openness, but when our schools, our learners and our communities are so varied, with widely different challenges, there were elements of the old system of categorization that could be somewhat reductive, and that was something that I saw and felt myself in my many years in the teaching profession. So, I was particularly interested to read the section of the guidance around learner progression for individuals, groups and schools, going back to the notion of value added, which was a very good way, I felt, of measuring pupil progress and school attainment several years ago. So, the exploration of value added is a useful way of measuring the extent to which attainment gaps have been closed for our eligible for free school meals pupils and our additional learning needs pupils, for example, capturing the individual journeys of learners, focusing on their needs and also levelling the playing field. Minister, would you agree with me that this is perhaps the most accurate way of measuring and locating good teaching, and how will this new approach that we see evident here then aid in the sharing of this type of learner-focused best practice?

Well, I'm always very diffident when I approach questions of teaching and learning with someone who is a teaching professional, so I'll just give that caveat, if I may, and an element of deference, I suppose, about what I'm about to say. But I think that point about the individual learner's journey is fundamental, and, in some ways, is perhaps the most radical part of the whole suite of reforms that we're introducing in different areas because it takes away, doesn't it, that externally accessed time point where a particular level of progress is deemed to have been reached or not, and recognises that each learner is on their own journey and will need different kinds of support and challenge, actually, at different points in their journey. I think that's very exciting. It's also, obviously, quite a challenging step change, isn't it, so I absolutely recognise that, and I know the Member will have been aware of the resources that in the last year in particular have been made available to schools so that there's that shared understanding of how to assess and how to define progression. And, as I was saying in my opening statement, that new obligation on schools to engage outside their clusters, if you like, to make sure there's that moderated system-wide understanding of what progression is, is, I think, a really important part of this.

But whether it's through—. Well, there's a range of data available to measure on a system-wide basis and in the life of an individual student how they're progressing, and I think one of the—. She talked about the attainment gap; I think one of the most transformative aspects, I think, of the new curriculum, will be that it really allows us to engage learners who perhaps in other circumstances might be a bit less engaged than we would wish them to be just because of the creativity at the heart of the curriculum, that you take a subject matter that may be familiar to the individual student and you take them on a journey of engagement and discovery, and I think that really holds the key to helping us to do much more in terms of closing the attainment gap to which she referred.

Well, I certainly defer to the expertise of Vikki Howells and agree with her that the value added by schools is the most important measure, because you could have a brilliant child starting school aged four or five, brilliant at maths—you want to ensure that that progression continues, otherwise they'll be sitting at the back causing trouble, because they'll be bored. And, equally, you want to ensure that we're rewarding the effort that's involved in teaching less able children; it's far harder than teaching more able children. And the old system of the league tables and the coloured system, I think, really rewarded those sorts of schools that were able to coast.

So, I really support this and I just want to make sure that the new approach really does track the value added by each school with each pupil. They're not necessarily going to be published, but that system of self-evaluation is going to really reward schools for the effort they put into every young person, so that it's every child attaining to the best of their ability.

I thank you for that and I think that's very much at the heart of the reforms. And Estyn will play a really important role, from an accountability inspection perspective, in evaluating the school's own capacity for self-improvement, if you like, in the way it designs the curriculum, and I think that's a supportive part of the landscape.

I just want to go back, in response to what Jenny Rathbone is saying, to that idea of both support and challenge for each individual learner. It is not about getting learners who may be less able academically up to a baseline; it's consistently supporting and challenging each learner—whatever your potential is, that you're fulfilling that; whatever your interests are, that you have an opportunity to pursue those. And it's a very bespoke way of approaching it, which is, I think, exciting—quite challenging, I think, as well, in a sense, across the system. But I think, in my discussion with teachers, in a way, that's why the curriculum still excites so many teaching professionals, because they can see that that holds the key, in a way, to making sure that that value-added journey for each individual learner is made a reality.

And finally, Buffy Williams.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you to the Minister for today's statement. As you know, before I was elected to the Senedd, I worked in education for a number of years. It's one of the most challenging jobs I've had, and I take my hat off to all my friends and their colleagues in education working to support our children and young people, day in, day out.

Visiting schools in Rhondda, I've heard some really positive feedback to the changes the Minister has introduced over the sixth Senedd. More specifically, the greater autonomy the Curriculum for Wales provides, and the changes still to come, will ensure we continue to see an improvement to education and learning in Wales. Teaching assistants play a crucial role in supporting the delivery of these changes. Will the Minister provide an update on the work that has been undertaken, following the written statement published in February earlier this year, in relation to the task and finish group on activities to support those assisting teaching?

Yes, I agree very much with Buffy Williams's point about the role, the essential role, that teaching assistants play in our schools today and, certainly, will play in fulfilling the potential of the new curriculum, as well the range of other reforms, by the way, in relation to our additional learning needs reforms and a range of others as well.

I think I mentioned in the statement that I gave in March in relation to the ambition of high aspirations and standards for all, that we will be looking at some of the guidance available about how to make full use of the support that teaching assistants can give in order to help us make sure that each learner, including those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, gets the best possible opportunities in school. So, that work is currently under way.

And in relation to the other set of announcements that I made earlier in the year, as the Member will be aware, there are a range of work streams, if you like, being taken forward in that space. So, one is around making sure that we understand how teaching assistants are employed in different authorities across Wales. There is high level of variability in relation to job specification and deployment, if I can use that term, of teaching assistants, and that will enable us to have a more coherent, more consistent picture across Wales, which will then support our shared ambitions across the system of improving terms and conditions for teaching assistants.

I'm also in a position to say that the national entitlement for professional learning, to which teaching assistants will themselves be entitled, will be launched in advance of the next school year, which I think will be a significant step forward in terms of access to professional learning. In addition to that, the work that we are doing to make sure that the voice of teaching assistants is heard on the governing bodies of schools, the guidance in relation to that is also currently being developed. So, I think we're making steady and good progress in that area. There's obviously much more to do, but as she knows, I've set out a very ambitious agenda in this area, and we're working towards that. 

I thank the Minister.