Estyn welcomes Welsh Government focus on literacy and mathematics and adds mathematics to its enhanced focus

Estyn welcomes the Welsh Government’s announcement with a clear focus on mathematics and reading. Estyn’s annual reports have highlighted systematic weaknesses in these areas and Estyn has a role to play, as do all education practitioners, in raising standards. In 2025, Estyn announced its enhanced focus on reading. Inspection evidence and our annual reports demonstrate that effective reading provision builds learners’ foundational pre reading skills, phonological awareness, fluency, vocabulary, language comprehension and critical thinking, enabling learners to engage confidently with increasingly complex texts.

This enhanced focus is now live with all inspection activities gaining a more in-depth view of a setting’s reading planning, delivery and most importantly outcomes. As part of this enhanced focus Estyn continues to recognise that systematic synthetic phonics approaches are an important component of reading instruction for learners in all main stream schools. Schools will, of course, adopt their approaches depending on the learner’s individual needs.

Today, Estyn is announcing that in support of the Welsh Government’s ambition, it will develop an enhanced focus on mathematics within all of its inspection and thematic activities, to be developed over the coming year. This enhanced focus is in addition to reading and will be rolled out in September 2027.

Further information and resources related to Estyn’s enhanced focus on reading can be found here:

Building on last year’s successful maths roadshow event,Estyn and Dysgu will hold a national reading conference at Cardiff City Stadium on 17 February 2027, bringing together education professionals from across Wales to explore effective approaches to improving reading standards and developing whole-school reading strategies. Registration opens on 30 September, with further information available on the conference website: