We'll move on now to item 5, a statement by the Minister for Education and Welsh Language on school improvement and the information landscape. I call on the Minister to make the statement—Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. The Curriculum for Wales offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to radically reform what and how we teach, in order to support the educational progress of our learners, their well-being, and their life chances as well.

But, to make this a reality, this reform can’t happen in isolation. Each and every part of our reform programme must be aligned so that we can deliver high standards and aspirations for all. The way that we approach school evaluation, improvement and accountability must change too, and, above all, we must put our schools in the best possible position to make that vision of education a reality for learners. This means moving to a system of accountability that helps schools improve their offer to learners, instead of proving themselves to others.

Last summer, we published new school improvement guidance, which puts the learner at the centre of all our thinking and our support for schools. We will be consulting on this guidance in the coming year, with a view to making this statutory in 2024. Teachers and leaders across Wales continue in their commitment to our learners and supporting our pupils to be the best they can be, despite these difficult times. Our approach to school improvement must put the learner and the teacher at the centre, and it must recognise that the interaction of both in the classroom is what makes the difference to school improvement and attainment of our learners.

Today, I want to talk through our next steps in supporting schools in an ongoing cycle of self-evaluation and improvement. My priority is an approach to school improvement that puts learners first. To realise this, we have to understand what information about schools and learners is needed to ensure that the system works. Last week, we published a report on the development of this new 'information ecosystem', and this terminology gives recognition to the balance needed in the system, and the fact that activity in one area has an impact in another. This research involved detailed discussions with schools, local authorities, delivery partners, parents, and learners, because we recognise that different partners have different requirements, and that information is used in a range of different ways, and also that data has a clear role in fostering public confidence.

It's absolutely clear to me, Dirprwy Lywydd, that using a wide range of information is crucial to supporting evaluation and improvement. Isolated pieces of data, or out of context, should not be used to judge performance or compare schools. I welcome Estyn’s response to my written statement last week, confirming that they too will not be looking to use isolated pieces of information to assess school improvement or for accountability.

Equally, any requirements on schools to provide information should have a clear purpose. That purpose is, at its centre, to help teachers support learning. Information about how learners are progressing, and the progression of different cohorts in different contexts, should help schools and local authorities evaluate themselves and improve their own offer, with the support of school improvement services. We must, though, not forget the crucial importance of parents and the need for transparency of information to enable them to take decisions on their child’s education and engage with their child’s school.

The report will help us in developing our reformed approach to information to support school improvement. To ensure that we clearly put learners and teachers at the centre, my officials will be convening a practitioners group to begin to develop the new information landscape in the context of the report’s recommendations. While different parts of Wales might have different needs, there are fundamental issues that should be all of our focus. The eight factors that support curriculum realisation, set out in the school improvement guidance, embed these core national priorities.

It will not come as a surprise to the Chamber that I am absolutely clear that there must be a particular focus on improving the progress of our most disadvantaged learners. As well as learners and teachers, I will be listening to the voices of parents, to ensure that the information they receive best helps them to understand their children's educational experience. We'll be looking to streamline and promote consistency in information approaches across schools and across Wales. A more coherent and simpler approach will require us all to work together in partnership. It will require compromise and, sometimes, hard decisions to stop asking for some information where it does not support learners and teachers. But we must grasp this opportunity. 

On understanding how learners are achieving nationally, whether we are achieving our objective of raising standards across Wales is a key part of this information landscape, crucial to informing our support to schools and for transparency and confidence in the system. To support this, I've taken the decision that we will introduce an ambitious programme of national monitoring to assess knowledge and skills across the breadth of the Curriculum for Wales. This is not about testing every learner. Instead, we will take a sampling approach to understand and monitor learners' attainment and progress over time at a system level. This approach will minimise burdens on schools and the education system as a whole, help provide the information we need to understand our progress as a nation and help us better understand the impact of poverty on learners' achievement and support our approaches to tackling this. We plan to begin rolling out these sample assessments on a pilot basis in the 2025-26 academic year.

Dirprwy Lywydd, finally, achieving qualifications remains vitally important for learners and will remain a priority for this Government. In 2019, we introduced new transitional interim measures for secondary schools that ensured more focus on raising our aspirations for all learners with indicators that better captured the achievement of all our learners at key stage 4. These measures, as Members will be aware, were paused during the pandemic. For an interim period, we will restart the reporting of key stage 4 outcomes at school level, including the policy of counting only first award of qualifications. This is temporary, as we move towards a more holistic system that promotes learning and puts learners, teachers and parents at the centre. It will not apply to learners now learning under the Curriculum for Wales.

I'm committed to working in partnership with schools to develop a new information landscape, including on qualifications information, ready for the new GCSEs from 2025, and I plan to provide further updates to the Siambr as this work progresses. 

Thank you for your statement, Minister. Although you've aimed to provide some clarity on the issue, which is appreciated, I do still have some concerns that are echoed by parents and practitioners alike. Your statement outlines that data should not be used in isolation to judge performance or compare schools. Traditionally, of course, information on school performance in both Wales and the rest of the UK is used to judge performance and compare schools. Furthermore, comparative data only serves to raise standards of practice and allow schools to work collaboratively on respective areas of strengths and weaknesses. How are you going to ensure that losing that transparent data won't lead to a dropping in standards within the profession? And how is this new national monitoring system going to really help the hugely diverse needs of schools across Wales?

And, Minister, in your statement last week, you said that,

'We will develop further thinking to align with the introduction of new qualifications from 2025 as we develop our new information landscape'.

There is already uncertainty over exams and qualifications, shown through the recurring theme throughout the Estyn report 2021-22. Most settings face serious concerns over the uncertainty surrounding the new qualifications, which will assess the Curriculum for Wales. As such, many year 11s did not progress as expected. To compound this, in all-age schools, those between years 6 and 7 were finding educational transition damaged by this lack of certainty. Hence, the framework is incomplete, alongside the incomplete set of qualifications subsumed within a non-fully-implemented curriculum. So, Minister, just how are schools meant to prepare and adjust, with such question marks still outstanding, and when will they get some certainty?

And finally, Minister, our final concern is the self-evaluation focus of this new framework. When reviewing the Estyn reports of this year, there seems to be a complete disjuncture between the new terminology placed in the approaches of the past. When looking closely at the reports, there are distinct hallmarks of individual differences between inspectors, based on interests, ideologies and ways of expressing their recommendations, which will undoubtedly be reflected in any school or LA self-evaluation. Inspectors required schools to share with them some assessment data as part of the inspection process. However, if each school is assessing its own curriculum, as per the Welsh Government guidance, and each school has its own unique local curriculum, that also means that their assessment data will also be unique. Given that there is no scale or method of comparison, no loose framework to measure improvement, how are schools and LAs able to show inspectors that pupils are making progress in their literacy, numeracy, digital and Welsh skills, for example, without the benefit of that national standard for oracy, writing, digital or Welsh skills? Diolch.

I thank the Member for those questions. I'll try and answer as many of them as I can. I think the key point is that there is a distinction to be drawn between data for accountability on the one hand and data for assessment and self-improvement on the other. It's really important that we ensure that those two things are kept separate, because they serve very, very different purposes. The reason for moving away from school categorisation was because that actually blurred the boundary between the two in a way that created perverse incentives, effectively, at a school level, in relation to the management of data and the choices made as well in relation to examinations, potentially, in some cases as well. I can assure the Member that it's fundamentally important for our system that there is a clear line of accountability in relation to schools.

Principally, the responsibility for accountability at a school level is obviously the governing body, but obviously, externally, to Estyn as the school inspectorate. And as the Member will be aware, from 2024, there will be more frequent inspections as a consequence of Estyn's new programme, which will provide, obviously, more regular information to the system about the performance of schools. As she's also aware from the last point in her question, there is a new approach to inspection, with the removal of summative judgments and the providing of parent-friendly reports, all of which, I think, give better qualitative information in a much more nuanced way for parents. And also, obviously, communicating that in a way that parents might more readily understand is very important, which is why I welcome the work that's been going on in relation to the parent-friendly reports.

The experience to date, as I understand it from Estyn, of the removal of the summative judgments is that the discussions at a school level have focused much more on the kinds of things the Member was asking about in her question, which are: how can those schools know where they are on the journey to self-improvement, the implementation of the curriculum, and really focusing on the practical steps in terms of strengths and weaknesses, rather than focusing on the question of the boundary between different summative judgments. So, that is the experience to date. I obviously will be keeping a close eye on that with Estyn. It's obviously very important for the success of our system that that is embedded properly in the approach to accountability. In relation to the national monitoring programme, we will now be in a process of specifying that, testing some of the approaches to that—how frequently? What size cohort? There are all sorts of design questions, if you like, that need to go into that.

The Member makes a very important point, I think, and it's one that I've been testing myself with officials, about the range of schools that we have in Wales, and the communities they serve. How do we make sure that the information we get provides a useful set of messages to us? That's a good question. It's an important point of judgment. So, the choice to be made in this context is as follows: either you choose a very granular mechanism that tells you, with much greater specificity, what's happening at a school or local authority level—that comes with choices about the burden on the system, and on individual learners across the system—or you decide that what you're looking for is a way of monitoring the performance of the system overall. And at the moment, we will need that data to know, so that you can hold me to account about the performance of the curriculum in due course. So, that will be the source of information, or a source of information, on which you can draw, and you can test whether the approaches that we are following are delivering on the literacy and numeracy requirements, are delivering on the areas of learning and experience. So, that would provide a base of data on which to found those challenges, which, obviously, we need to do. 

I don't recognise the point that the Member is making about how uncertainty about qualifications is affecting the transition between years 6 and 7. I don't know how that can be at this stage, if I'm completely honest. As she will know, Qualifications Wales is undertaking a consultation at the moment about the reform of qualifications. Those qualifications will first be taught in 2005, and so the programme that I'm describing today will be ready in time for that cohort. So, it's obviously important that these things happen in a way that is systematic, and that's the intention of what I'm describing today. I hope that captures at least most of the questions that the Member asked. 

Thank you, Minister, for your statement today, expanding on the written statement published last week. I clearly welcome the emphasis on how we are focusing on those learners who are in poverty, and we do know that poverty affects attainment. We don't need to rehearse that—we're already aware of it. But, given the cost-of-living crisis specifically, we are seeing more and more learners being impacted in that way.

You will be aware from your own visits to schools that schools are extremely concerned about pupils not being able to get to school because of travel costs—that's something that's been shared with us—the fact that some families can't afford electricity and food, and so on. There are also the interventions that schools have to make in terms of the problems that we have in terms of the CAMHS system and that perhaps they are using some of their funds to provide that practical support in schools at the moment. And I do think that assessing the well-being of our learners and the environment is just as important as all of the other things that we need to measure and assess. But, one of the things I would like to ask is: what will be the link between this system and the interventions that you as a Government will make in terms of tackling poverty and so on, as we do know that that does have an impact on attainment? And do you think that this will provide greater flexibility, because if you take a sampling approach rather than going through a more bureaucratic system, does that then mean that you will be able to be more agile as a Government as you respond to the cost-of-living crisis, as it affects more and more students? I'd be interested to know about that. 

And also, one of the things that we do hear very often from teachers, of course, is the workload issue. How do you see these changes affecting things for the better, perhaps, in terms of that issue, because clearly, with self-assessment and so on, that can be positive for schools because it's always a system where, if many people want to come in and there is that kind of scrutiny, then the workload is huge? So, do you see this as reducing teachers' workload or adding to it, and what additional training will be provided for those teachers and what support will be in place?

And finally, if I may, I would be interested as you further develop this system, to have more information. But in terms of the interventions and support that I mentioned earlier, in terms of the outcomes for every learner, how will we learn, if this is a sampling approach, about the good practice developing in schools, because often, those schools may not be selected and they may be doing excellent work in this area? So, how will we continue to ensure that we learn from the best? There are all sorts of good examples. I was on a visit to Ysgol Nantgwyn in my region recently, and if you haven't had an opportunity I would really encourage you to go, because they know every single child in that school and their families and can provide the support and interventions necessary. But, they're greatly concerned because of their financial position, as they've spent every penny they had in supporting their learners during the pandemic and continue to do that. So, they're not one of these lucky schools that have large reserves, but certainly, there is good practice in terms of the support provided. So, how can we ensure that we continue to learn from the excellent work happening if we are taking a sampling approach?

Very important questions. The sampling question is an important one. The sampling is only one part of the process. So, the national monitoring plan is one part of the new ecosystem, just to give some comfort to the Member. At present, in terms of planning that, what we don't foresee is that that will give the kind of specificity on a school level in terms of the interventions that the Member mentioned. But what it does mean is that it will show national performance, and that will demonstrate if there is a need to emphasise approaches in different elements of the curriculum, for example. So, if we're not making the progress that we expect to see as a system, for example, in terms of literacy, then what we will do as a Government, and local authorities and the consortia will do, is we will look at where good practice is happening in terms of literacy and use that as a basis to strengthen the system generally. There are options in terms of design, but that’s the most practical way to do it, I think.

In terms of the other question asked by the Member, in terms of how we know the approaches will work on the ground, well that’s part of the broader ecosystem work. If the Member has had an opportunity to look at the report—it’s quite broad-ranging, so I understand if you haven’t had an opportunity—it does explain how we will tackle the impact the policy changes and so on will have on a school level. And so that will be part of our response as a Government to what is in the report.

On the question of workload, the self-assessment is happening as part of the new system. That’s been announced since last summer. The leadership team will be leading on that, but the balance has changed in terms of the relationship with Estyn, and the approaches are much more integrated in terms of the school life.

In terms of what we’re talking about today, one of the opportunities that we have, I think, in looking at the data that we gather, is the question, as I mentioned in the statement, of making this consistent across Wales. There are degrees of very great variances happening between local councils, and different parts of the system are perhaps requiring the same, or asking for the same, information. So, I’d like to see us delivering, as part of this, consistency, and a streamlining of this, and that it’s clear what the purpose of the data that we’re asking for is; if we can be in a situation where the data can be requested once, that the system communicates better with itself in terms of how that data is used. So, of course, it’s very ambitious to do that, but I do think it is fair, as a quid pro quo for schools, if we say, ‘Well, we’re asking for these kinds of data, but, on the other hand, there will be consistency in terms of how we ask for that.’ So, that’s the aim of what we’re talking about today.

And the final point, regarding what we intend to do in terms of publishing results, some have said, ‘Well, doesn’t this just create a greater workload?’, but the option we had was either to design a new system for the period between now and 2025—. Well, it doesn’t much sense to do that, to find a completely new process within the system just in order to change that again in three years’ time. It felt to me that the responsible thing to do was to use the data system that we have just for the one year before COVID, because people are familiar with that, and that would create less work. The Government will be publishing that information, not the schools that gather it, so that’s important to bear in mind.

And our final speaker on this item—Vikki Howells.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you, Minister, for your statement. I agree with your comments about the purpose of evaluation, improvement and accountability within the education process. They're all important procedures so that schools can improve their offer to and their outcomes for learners. I want to focus on your comments around national monitoring and sampling. As a former secondary school teacher, I'm familiar with how this has operated in classrooms in the past, and your statement with reference to sampling assessments and using these to monitor progress suggests, perhaps, a different model to what schools may be familiar with. Can you say a little more about how you expect this sampling to work in practice and what discussions you might have had with the sector ahead of your plans for a pilot scheme in 2025-26?

For my second and final question, I was interested to read the social funding research study. One of the lines there that struck a chord with my former career is the comment that Welsh Government doesn't collect any data on learner well-being in a standardised way. So, can I ask what work is being done to put this right?

I thank the Member for that question. On the second point, I'm very clear that we need to move to a more standardised way of doing that, and that's absolutely one of the priorities that I'll want to see taken forward in our response to both the social finance report and the Arad Research work as well. I think that's a really important part of that.

In relation to the national monitoring proposal, there is a—. Both the Arad Research and the social finance work have highlighted the need to understand, better than we do, across the system, the questions in relation to attainment and progress. As we phase out the end-of-key-stage assessments, that becomes, obviously, even more important. Obviously, only some schools and learners will be involved in the assessments. The point of that is that they don't unduly determine schools' individual approaches to curriculum design, and keep the burdens on schools to a minimum. So, it's a system-wide picture that we are looking for. It'll be designed in a way that aligns very closely with that broader information ecosystem that I was talking about. That will be developed by the practitioner group that I was talking about in my earlier statement. So, the role of school leaders and practitioners in designing this ecosystem and the monitoring system that sits within it will be absolutely essential. I want to make sure that we will be able to understand how different groups of learners are achieving, what further national support we need to provide to the system where individual groups of learners, cohorts of learners, learners defined by particular characteristics, for example, might be needing additional support. And I think the point the Member ended with there, in relation to well-being and how we respond to questions of disadvantage, will be an important—. That'll be very important data for us to capture as part of that national monitoring programme.

I thank the Minister.