Estyn Annual Report: Clear direction, improving self-evaluation and support and tackling recruitment are key to future success in Wales’ education system

Estyn today publishes the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report 2023-24 outlining a mixed picture for Wales’s education and training provision as the inspectorate highlights strong practice as well as key areas in need of improvement.

According to Chief Inspector Owen Evans, there is much to celebrate in the sector but continuing issues such as self-improvement planning remain a crucial area for educators to focus their efforts. The report emphasizes that only a minority of providers demonstrate strong practice that drives improvement, while others do not evaluate the impact of teaching on learning closely enough.

In addition to this, the Chief Inspector highlights the need for a clear focus on basic skills across the curriculum. There are notable gaps in how providers plan for the development of learners’ literacy, numeracy, and digital skills currently.   

The report highlights commendable efforts by schools to integrate anti-racism into their ethos and practices, as well as strong practice in the promotion of Welsh language and culture. Longstanding issues such as learner absenteeism and the recruitment of teachers and support staff across a number of specialisms continue to pose additional challenges for education leaders.

Owen Evans, Chief Inspector, says,

“We are acutely aware of the pressures and challenges facing education providers currently but self-evaluation in schools and other providers needs to improve to strengthen the system. We need strong leaders to drive this improvement as the failure to do so is holding back progress for too many learners.”

The HMCI’s annual report looks back at findings from inspection and thematic reports over the last academic year. Following on from the publication of Estyn’s sector summaries in October, January’s full report offers detailed context and provides a much deeper insight into what’s working well and what needs to improve across sixteen education and training sectors in Wales. Schools, non-maintained nursery settings, colleges, work-based learning apprenticeships, adult learning in the community, and youth work are among the sectors featured.

With the aim of providing useful feedback for the education and training workforce, the annual report also provides a summary of each of the national thematic reports produced by Estyn this year, and to further support improvement, signposts to inspection reports and case studies from providers that were inspected and were found to be doing particularly well.

The report also evaluates how well providers are tackling some of the specific challenges facing learners in Wales through a series of topical key theme summaries.

This year’s key themes include:

• anti-racism  
• the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales  
• self-evaluation and improvement 
• recruitment challenges  
• good practice in promoting the Welsh language  

Owen Evans, Chief Inspector continued:

“This year’s report demonstrates that the Welsh education and training sectors have significant strengths but also a number of areas that continue to require improvement. We are committed to supporting improvement through our activities and hope that the report itself and the supporting resources will help providers to reflect constructively and drive improvements for our learners across Wales.”  

As well as a range of best practice case studies, Estyn’s report is accompanied by a series of podcasts this year which bring together providers across sectors to discuss some of the challenges and best practice in line with the key themes of anti-racism and the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales.

You can access the full report here.