Agenda item

To receive a report updating the committee on the progress made by schools since the Curriculum for Wales became statutory in September 2022. The report offers information on lessons learnt from evaluations across schools during this initial implementation phase and any impact on staff and learners (copy attached).

11:55am – 12:25pm

The Lead Member for Education, Children and Young People, alongside the Head of Education, presented the Curriculum for Wales report (previously circulated). GwE advisors were also in attendance to support Education Service staff.  The report aimed to provide an update on the progress made by schools since the Curriculum for Wales became statutory in September 2022. The report provided information on lessons learnt from evaluations across schools during the initial implementation phase and of the impact on staff and learners.

The report detailed the progress made in implementing and embedding the new Curriculum for Wales in primary schools and years 7 and 8 in secondary schools – what worked well, areas for improvement and lessons learnt by all stakeholders during the initial implementation phase.  In addition, it provided an evaluation of the implementation process across all key stages, the Curriculum’s impact on staff recruitment and retention, an overview of the feedback received from headteachers, teachers and school-based staff on their experiences of the implementation process and the advantages and/or disadvantages of the new Curriculum for learners.

The Committee was informed that In September 2022, the new Curriculum for Wales became statutory for all learners from Nursery to Year 6. All secondary schools and settings had started their first teaching of the Curriculum for Wales in Years 7 and 8 by September 2023.

All primary schools had designed their curriculum in line with the Four Purposes to meet the mandatory requirements of Curriculum for Wales, with a balanced curriculum offered to meet all learners’ needs. The staggered rollout in secondary schools had a different effect to that of the shorter implementation of rollout in primary schools, with leaders and practitioners involved in ongoing and significant change every year between 2022 and 2026. Year 9 would begin the new curriculum in September 2024. Two further stages of implementation would follow as these learners started the new 14-16 qualifications in 2025 and the current Year 8 learners in 2026. Curriculum summary documents had been developed by each school and made available to parents and local community as required by Welsh Government.

Officers added that the rollout of the new curriculum was a major piece of reform. In addition to the ALN changes, the work carried out with the Welsh Education Strategic Plan (WESP) and post-Covid recovery work it had entailed a tremendous amount of work for the Education Service and school staff. However, all the schools had embraced the changes and the work entailed with the reform.

In response to the Committee’s questions the Lead Member, Officers and GwE representatives: –

• advised that the lessons learnt from the primary sector had assisted the rollout in the secondary sector, emphasising that the cluster way of working had assisted greatly with the workload involved with the rollout in the secondary sector, particularly the planning for progression. However, there were differences in how primary and secondary sectors worked, such as primary having a holistic approach to education, whereas secondary was more discipline-based.  The introduction of the new Curriculum had challenged the service and the schools to think what they were teaching, why, and how it was taught.  The new Curriculum involved a lot more outdoor and motivational learning, therefore more attention was given to utilising skills and content into the learning.
• confirmed that funding to support professional learning was always a challenge. However, schools were creative in ensuring that they achieved the maximum benefits from any grant funding received.  They would continue to engage in professional learning as much as possible, share best practice and resources, utilising approaches such as school to school learning in addition to accessing an element of bespoke professional training.  Each school was required to draw up an improvement plan, GwE as part of its work would challenge the school’s capacity to achieve and deliver its improvement plan, part of this challenge process was focussed on the school’s confidence in securing the required training to enable it to deliver its Improvement Plan.

Members commented on how encouraging it was to see pupils being taught coding and other IT skills to assist them with future employment. The Welsh Government was encouraging IT education and skills. However, this created challenges as hiring staff with the appropriate digital knowledge and skills was at times difficult. Staff confidence in their own digital skills was at times an issue, however the ‘School Cluster’ approach proved useful in most instances as there more often than not was an ’expert’ or ‘digital confident’ member of staff in one or more of the schools who could provide support to colleagues in other schools.  At times it was just a matter of providing support to nurture colleagues’ confidence in their own skills.  There tended to be a shortage of teachers who were confidents in teaching IT skills through the medium of Welsh.  Modern foreign languages and British Sign Language (BSL) were other specialist area where there seemed to be a shortage of individuals who were competent to teach the subjects, particularly in the primary sector.  When this occurred, support was sought from local secondary school to enable the teaching of these subjects.  This also has its benefits as those schools were able to get to know their future pupils well in advance of them transitioning.   Following a comprehensive discussion, the Committee:

Resolved:  subject to the above observations to –

(i)   acknowledge the work undertaken to date in implementing and embedding the Curriculum for Wales in the county’s primary schools, and in years 7 and 8 in secondary schools, including identified best practices, lessons learnt and areas for improvement for the continuing staggered roll-out of the Curriculum in the secondary education sector; and

request that a further progress and evaluation report on the Curriculum’s implementation be submitted to the Committee in September 2026 following the introduction of Wave 1 of the new GCSE qualifications.