OECD to Welsh Government : "Must try harder"

Miss me?

It's been a rough few months, but the time's right to give blogging another go. Before anyone wonders, I was going to cover the European elections and had posts ready, but I'm sure you'll all understand why I didn't bother in the end.

The response from friends, neighbours and family - including some I hadn't spoken to in years - has been absolutely brilliant. It's a shame it was under such sad circumstances, but it's clear Mam/Jayne was well-liked and loved, and was certainly given a good send-off. That's all that even the best of us get. The messages I've received have been a comfort, so my thanks to those of you who kept in touch.

There are "changes to the schedule" as a result.

I was going to look at foreign policy over August, but I've postponed it. In its place, there's a four-part examination of the Assembly's first 15 years - originally due for May – and I'm bringing forward the final three posts of the "Life, Ethics & Independence" series covering : robotics/cybernetics (including drones/UAVs), hunting and....breastfeeding (not as silly as it sounds).

Anyway, back to "work"....

A lack of "long-term vision", concerns over school banding and "reform fatigue".
These are well-worn criticisms of the Welsh education system, now
backed by an OECD review - alongside some good news.
(Pic : BBC Wales)

This might be two months late, but it's become topical again due to the recent intervention via the Western Mail by English Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

Following last year's lacklustre PISA exam results, the Welsh Government asked the OECD (which runs PISA) to undertake a thorough evaluation of the Welsh education system.

It's took me a while to get through the Improving Schools in Wales report itself (pdf), as it's quite long and falls quite firmly under "grey literature". There was no way I was going to let that work go to waste, so I'm going to post the summary anyway.

Despite the headlines at the time it wasn't all bad news. Though having said that, there are things in the report which should make worrying reading for the Welsh Government, teachers and headteachers.

The Bad News

Let's get this out of the way first.

• Estyn said that specialist funding schemes (i.e Pupil Deprivation Grant) have been spent to improve performances of all pupils, lessening its impact on the disadvantaged. In the last week or two the Welsh Government have been accused by the Welsh Lib Dems of using the grant to sustain their commitment to keep education spending 1% above any changes to the Welsh budget (more from National Left).
• Wales has low proportions of high-performers and high proportions of low-performers compared to the OECD average. The decline has been particularly noticeable in science.
• There are wild variations in the quality of teaching staff. There are few problems at Foundation Phase level, but in primary and secondary schools the number of unsatisfactory teaching assessments increased from 18% to 26% in just two/three years. There are also inconsistent approaches to internal assessments, while marking of pupil's work is often of a low standard.
• Professional development for teachers in both primary and secondary schools is under-developed.
• When schools change bands year-to-year, teachers felt they were "victims of processes they didn't understand", and were critical of banding in general. OECD say banding could, therefore, be "counterproductive" when it comes to "developing a world-class education system".
• Schools are facing challenges in implementing many of the new policies and strategies handed down by the Welsh Government in the fallout from declining PISA scores, simply because there are so many of them - described as "reform fatigue". There a lack of a "long-term vision" as a result.

The Good News

• The Welsh education system is considered "inclusive", meaning personal backgrounds don't affect a pupil's educational opportunities. Welsh schools are often diverse in terms of socio-economic background, and socio-economic background plays much lesser role in performance compared to other OECD countries. Gender differences are also much less pronounced (but still there).
• School environments are described as "positive". Pupils say teachers are often eager to help them, get along with pupils and keep pupils motivated and interested in subjects. Only 8% of pupils believe school is a "waste of time".
• Welsh Government measures to integrate professional standards and professional development for teachers are broadly praised, with teachers saying it increases their job satisfaction and feelings of job security.
• The commitment to protect school budgets at 1% above the rate of change in the Welsh block grant has been kept (but controversial as noted earlier), and spending has remained relatively stable. Education spending per-head is very similar to Finland.

The OECD's Recommendations

A consistent message was : "Value the staff".
(Pic : Sussex University Students Union)

OECD drafted potential policy options the Welsh Government could use to address both the weaknesses in the education system and build upon inherent strengths.

Raising standards and reducing inequalities

1. Set higher expectations for pupils and teachers through the use of personalised teaching. This would "set clear expectations" and "demand hard work", meaning teachers would be "more sensitive to the individual differences between students". Coleg Cymunedol y Dderwen and Pencoed Comprehensive in Bridgend have something similar to this called "vertical tutoring" where forms are mixed-age and the school is organised around houses/colleges rather than year groups, which is supposed to encourage peer-to-peer mentoring. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out over the next few years.
2. Simplify current targeted funding schemes. There are currently too many grant schemes, and OECD highlight a scheme in Chile where schools receive funding based on the strength of plans they have to boost performances. They also suggest school grant cycles be extended to cover more than one year (similar to provisions in the NHS Finance Act 2014).
3. Invest in support staff. Currently, around 44% of the school workforce is made up of support staff (teaching assistants etc). OECD recommend introducing minimum qualification requirements for support staff working in certain roles, and suitably-qualified teaching assistants should be given the opportunity to train to become a fully-qualified teacher.

Valuing the teaching profession

1. Raise the status of the teaching profession. Countries where teachers are highly-qualified and highly-respected (like Finland and Singapore) perform significantly better than other nations. The Welsh Government should encourage the "best and the brightest" into teaching by continuing their Masters in Education programme. They could also reform initial teacher training by encouraging high-performing schools to take more teacher trainees (so they learn the ropes in the best possible environment and take it to other schools).
2. Continuous professional development. CPD should be higher-quality and linked to national education goals, like those to improve literacy and numeracy. This should include learning new teaching strategies and sharing examples of good teaching between networks of schools.
3. Streamlined school collaboration. This is said to be still in its infancy in Wales, but is "too top-down". There needs to be a national strategy for collaboration, which gives schools the freedom to sort out problems themselves instead of waiting for/expecting the Welsh Government to intervene.
4. Schools should develop leaders themselves. Career development needs to be improved, and could be led by another national strategy which should lay out how schools can promote promising leaders from within instead of – again – expecting a top-down solution.

Tests and assessments

• Tests should be about knowledge, not the tests themselves. There should be an investigation into whether schools are "teaching to the test" and narrowing the curriculum as a result. Teachers and the education system in general focus too much on stronger and weaker performers in standardised tests, with a large neglected "middle". It's even recommended that the recently-introduced national reading and numeracy tests should be scaled back to cover fewer years – as happens with similar tests in other countries. Tests should also include more critical thinking, creativity, problem solving and digital technologies – not just the "Three Rs".
• Professional teaching standards should be simplified. There are currently too many teaching and leadership standards by which teachers are assessed upon. This should be made clearer and simplified, taking into account the stage at which individual teachers are in their career.
• Reform school inspections and consider scrapping school banding. There are currently two main ways to monitor school performances – inspections (Estyn) and secondary school banding (Welsh Government). Sometimes they produce very different findings for the same school. The focus should be on improvement and collaboration (teachers helping other teachers), and OECD recommend that school banding be discontinued in the long-term.

The vision

1. Develop a "long-term vision" for Welsh education. There are few goals set beyond 2015, and no one has an idea where school reforms are going. The Welsh Government should pick out a handful of high priorities and pursue them over the long-term, with a commitment to quality.
2. Develop a focused "long-term strategy". This could be over 10+ years, laying out precisely what the Welsh Government want to achieve, how it would be resourced and what priorities they have. It would also allow the smooth phasing in of complex reforms instead of them being dumped on teachers desks year-by-year.
3. Rethink regional education consortia. OECD say they haven't been able "to deliver a consistent quality of service across Wales", and that if the Welsh Government can't build up the leadership credentials necessary, consideration should be given to transferring functions back to local authorities (post-merger).

Critical, but not damning

Have there been too many knee-jerk responses to problems in the
education system from successive Welsh governments?
(Pic : recruitmentbuzz.co.uk)

Judging by some of the strengths the OECD say are present in the Welsh education system, the foundations appear to be solid. Our education system is more equal (a factor linked to better PISA scores), both teachers and education in general are valued by pupils, and funding levels are relatively good too.

So what's going wrong?

Firstly, we have a highly-strung government in Cardiff that takes knee-jerk decisions when they shouldn't and doesn't react quickly enough when they should. As a result they never learn from their mistakes.

Everyone's on edge when it comes to education, not helped by some of the media and Bay Bubble reaction to the PISA results, which resembled Chicken Little. The Welsh Government have perhaps got too used to the idea of controlling everything since devolution, and when things start to slip out of their control you end up with henpecking from panicking ministers and civil servants.

It looks like attitudes have changed, and an example of that was the GCSE marking row in January. I believe Education Minister, Huw Lewis (Lab, Merthyr Tydfil & Rhymney), handled it much better than his predecessor would've.

Secondly, there's a silo mentality developing in the teaching profession. In my opinion it's come about due to the attitude the Welsh Government have taken to education (as outlined above), which is a lot like the Welsh Government looking over teachers' shoulders as they're taking an exam and tutting when it looks like they've got something wrong.

They're giving the impression of indirectly forcing teachers to "teach to the test" by being very prescriptive in telling them what they should or shouldn't do. There's nothing wrong with that if it's done in short bursts, but it might've resulted in the Welsh teaching profession pushing back against new initiatives, or becoming reluctant, or aren't trusted, to find solutions to problems themselves – perhaps under the expectation that the Welsh Government are going to butt in.

There are too many exams and assessments – picked up by the OECD - though there's nothing fundamentally wrong with exams and assessments themselves. It's the easiest way to monitor school standards objectively.

Lastly – and I've said it several times before - there's issues with the curriculum. The Welsh Government have appointed Glasgow University's Prof. Graham Donaldson to under a review and they've recently extended the consultation deadline to 16th July. I don't think anyone should get their hopes up for significant long-term change as Welsh governments generally "don't do reform".

The OECD report is a thorough assessment that didn't tell us anything that we didn't already know, but offered some decent policy pointers which could enable Wales to – in the correct Assemblese – "adopt best practice".