Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru | National Assembly for Wales

Y Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg | Children, Young People and Education Committee

Blaenoriaethau ar gyfer y Pwyllgor Plant, Pobl Ifanc ac Addysg | Priorities for the Children, Young People and Education Committee

 

CYPE 25

Ymateb gan : Cyngor y Gweithlu Addysg (CGA)

Response from : Education Workforce Council (EWC)

 

Question 1 – Within the remit set out above: what do you consider to be the priorities or issues that the Children, Young People and Education Committee should consider during the Fifth Assembly?

The Council invites the Committee to consider the following priorities:

·         How education policy is developed in Wales

·         Workforce development and in particular, professional learning / professional development (CPD)

·         Recruitment and retention

·         Implementation of curriculum and assessment reform (recommendations from Professor Donaldson’s report ‘Successful futures’)

·         Implementation of ITET reforms (recommendations from  Professor Furlong’s ‘Teaching tomorrow’s teachers’)

·         Class sizes

·         Devolved pay for teachers

·         PISA

·         Supply staff, including teachers and learning support workers

·         Welsh language provision

·         Role of regional consortia

·         The increasing number of learning support staff in schools and colleges, how they are deployed and professional learning available to them

·         The importance of apprenticeships in Wales

·         The development of the youth work service in Wales

 

Question 2 – From the list of priorities or issues you have identified, what do you consider to be the key areas that should be considered during the next 12 months (please identify up to three areas or issues)?  Please outline why these should be considered as key priorities.

In deciding upon its priorities for the next 12 months, the Council encourages the Committee to select areas that have the main objective of “providing the best education to learners in Wales” at its centre.

 

Furthermore, following the EWC’s establishment under the Education (Wales) Act, 2014, it is a professional body that spans the school, further education, work based learning and the youth work sectors. Historically, education policy development and implementation in Wales has:

 

·         Demonstrated insufficient recognition of the continuum of education across sectors

·         Not always taken advantage of experiences and good practice in other professions

 

The Council would urge the Committee to ensure that in selecting priorities it takes a “cross sector” approach and in developing solutions, it utilises best practice from both within and outside education.

 

Workforce development – professional learning

A strong international evidence base has emerged on what is effective professional learning or CPD in education.  We suggest that the Committee might want to consider how these principles have informed and should inform policy development and implementation in Wales, including:

·         How effective is CPD in Wales? 

·         Is CPD available to all in the workforce in Wales?

·         Should pathways be developed to enable learning support staff to progress to become teachers or to enable FE teachers to be able to teach in schools?

·         How do we ensure we have effective leaders in all education settings in Wales?

 

Since registering learning support staff for the first time in April 2016, new EWC data confirms that in Wales we are close to having a school workforce which is approaching 50% teachers and 50% support staff.  While policy aspirations, for example, for a ‘Masters teaching profession’ are laudable, the EWC feels that high quality professional development is crucial for all groups in order to improve outcomes for learners.

 

Recruitment and retention

Historically, Wales has not suffered the same issues as England in recruiting and retaining school teachers.

 

However, there is evidence to suggest that we could be seeing early signs of recruitment issues in schools in Wales, for example:

 

·         Despite the Welsh Government cutting school teacher training numbers in Wales by half in the last decade, teacher training providers in Wales are starting to struggle to fulfil their intake targets

·         Applicant numbers for certain secondary posts (for example Mathematics, English, Welsh, Sciences, RE) have traditionally been small as have those for Welsh medium

·         A number of schools are reporting increased difficulty in recruiting headteachers

·         Policy initiatives and well publicised recruitment campaigns in England could potentially attract teachers from Wales to work in England

·         Wales has only limited employment based routes available in for FE teachers, support staff or others to train as school teachers or transfer between sectors

·         Published data shows that pupil numbers will rise in coming years, while the age profile of school teachers will deteriorate

 

The Council invites the Committee to begin to investigate and seek to solve these matters at an early stage.

 

Implementation of the Donaldson review of Curriculum and Assessment and the Furlong review of Initial Teacher Education and Training

 

The reviews by Professors’ Donaldson and Furlong were landmark reports in Wales.  The Council considers it essential that the Committee retains an oversight of the implementation and evaluation of the recommendations in each report.

 

It would also invite the Committee to ensure that the recommendations, where relevant are implemented in all education sectors in Wales and not just in schools, for example could the certain recommendations in relation to initial school teacher training also be extended to FE?