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By Dyfrig Ellis, Assistant Director
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An awards evening celebrating excellence
Being recognised for doing a good job is both rewarding and motivational. On a Friday night in October, over 100 staff working in schools, non-maintained nurseries and pupil referral units gathered at a ceremony to be congratulated and awarded by Meilyr Rowlands, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, and Kirsty Williams, Education Minister, for their excellent inspection judgements. It was a night to remember – here’s how it went.
Welcoming delegates – from headteachers to teaching assistants, chairs of governors to setting leaders – our team greeted the guests, who enjoyed music from a local harpist before the ceremony.
Our host for the evening was Mike Hayes, HMI, who highlighted how every single person in the room understands the importance of:
- investing in excellent pedagogy
- children not always learning in the same way
- the high expectations that need to be set in order to promote effective and challenging teaching that meets the needs of all learners
He said:
There is one single golden thread that joins you all together. And every single member of staff, parent and governor at your setting should be extremely proud of the fact that you all place your children, your pupils, your learners at the heart of your work.
After enjoying the first two courses, it was time for Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector to address the room. He highlighted that:
successful schools are collaborative, creative, organised and happy places – for the pupils, staff, governors and parents, where all stakeholders work together to provide an interesting, engaging, relevant and challenging curriculum for their learners.”
Meilyr recognised that our challenge is how to share that passion and excellence nationally with all schools and providers across Wales. That’s why we’ve gathered the success strategies from all these ‘excellent’ providers.
It was then time to open the awards ceremony. We began by presenting framed certificates to non-maintained nurseries, secondary schools, independent schools, special schools and pupil referral units. Delyth Gray, HMI, and Claire Ait-Hammi, Deployment Officer, welcomed the representatives to the stage.
After everyone’s favourite part of the evening (dessert), we were honoured to hear from Kirsty Williams, Education Minister. Her words will have stayed with many:
A huge well done to everyone who is here this evening. You inspire me, you can inspire your fellow educators. But more important than any of that, you are an inspiration to the children and young people to be the very best that they can be.”
The final awards of the evening went to the 29 primary schools from across Wales that had achieved ‘excellent’ in three or more of their inspection judgements in 2018-2019.
Achieving excellence takes hard work and commitment. Be inspired by these providers and read their case studies on how they’ve achieved success. You don’t have to do exactly what they’re doing, but we think you’ll find it interesting. Could you be recognised for excellence too?
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