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Four different children participating in online learning or using computers.

Planning for increasing pupil numbers

One headteacher stated that, when the time comes to increase the number of pupils attending school, leaders will try to increase capacity safely by:

  • using classrooms that aren’t currently used as base rooms for year groups

  • continuing to stagger school starting times, end times, lunchtimes and break times to ensure that pupils do not gather in groups unnecessarily

This headteacher recognises that returning to full capacity will probably mean reducing social distancing guidelines.

Another school is planning to repurpose the school hall when all pupils return in September, as well as making use of unused teaching spaces. It is setting up room dividers in the hall. This means that, even as social distancing measures are eased, pupils will have more space and it will be possible to create smaller teaching groups.

A third school is planning a staggered approach for increasing pupil numbers during the first two weeks of September. For example, it plans to build up gradually the number of days that nursery and reception pupils attend. In addition, it intends to invite all Year 2 and Year 6 pupils in as full cohorts in the first instance. By the end of the second week, the headteacher expects the school to be operating at full capacity, and to look as it did before the period of school repurposing. Despite this, it will continue to limit mixing between groups, and staff will continue to adhere to social distancing measures.

Dealing with an outbreak of COVID-19

One headteacher described how the school successfully shut down one bubble following an outbreak of COVID-19 in the school. It followed Welsh Government guidance and its own pre-planned procedures to ensure that pupils from families where COVID-19 had been diagnosed were isolated and returned home. This enabled other pupils to continue with their learning.

Small groups, deeper relationships

Using small ‘bubbles’ for teaching, staff have more of a chance to listen to each pupil. Teachers feel that they know their pupils better and pupils can share their stories with staff as there is more time to talk. This has changed the school’s thinking about its approach to teaching. During the first four weeks back in September, each class will have a dedicated half hour of talk time, with each teacher focusing on a small group of six or seven pupils. During this time, teaching assistants will deliver what the teacher has planned, to the rest of the class. 

Moving forward with the Curriculum for Wales

Many schools are keen to continue with their preparations for the Curriculum for Wales, despite recent setbacks. Leaders in one school have planned two in-service training days for the beginning of term where staff will complete joint planning based on the principles of Curriculum for Wales. One focus will be the curriculum lead working with key stage 2 teachers to bring foundation phase methodologies into use more widely in Years 3 to 6. The school has decided to stop ‘setting’ pupils by ability for literacy and numeracy from September. Instead, it will place all pupils in mixed ability, whole class groups that focus better on providing them with more holistic and integrated experiences. 

Limiting the impact of future lockdowns

One school in a socially disadvantaged area acknowledges that parental engagement is key to the success of blended learning. Staff have invited parents into school to learn alongside their child. This encourages them to support their child at home. Staff spend time with pupils to ensure that they are confident at accessing digital learning platforms as independently as possible, as the vision is for pupils to be able to move through stages of blended learning seamlessly, should the need arise.

In another school, pupils have used digital platforms and other apps successfully through Hwb. Blended learning between classroom and home has become seamless. During face-to-face teaching time, staff present and explain homework, which had previously been distributed on a photocopied sheet, and will now transfer to online platforms.

To strengthen this approach and to reduce the impact on those less confident in their digital skills, the headteacher has planned training events for parents. During these events, parents log on to social platforms and have tours of the apps and facilities, including important safeguards that their children will be using. This will help the school in the event of further lockdowns. 

Parental feedback

Parents have respected the school’s formal, but staggered drop-off and collection procedures and everything has run smoothly. Parents like the routines, the well-organised handover arrangements and visible staff presence, albeit from a suitable distance. The school is confident to continue these systems for September as all parents seem to understand them, and they work successfully.

Managing expectations

Leaders and staff at one primary school are working together to devise a model of blended learning for September. Planning for learning for each week will be based on setting ‘expectations for the teacher’, ‘expectations for the child’ and ‘expectations for the parent’. The headteacher feels that it is crucial to be up front with parents about what the school will expect from them and to gain ‘buy in’ for this during this preparatory phase. It is not their intention to lower their expectations of what children can achieve in their learning. They will ‘expect what we normally do, but with a lot of wellbeing wrapped around these expectations’. Leaders think they can manage to provide the whole curriculum, but will review this over time. They feel that, with fewer pupils in a class at any one time, teachers will be able to cover a lot of ground with small groups and individualised learning approaches. The week pupils are at home will be an opportunity for them to consolidate and extend this learning.

Encouraging engagement with distance learning

Knowing your pupils, families and communities well has proved key to effective engagement with distance learning. For example, one primary school provides video conferencing support for a few pupils who require additional support. The headteacher has delivered books to homes where she suspects that there are very few books. The school has invested in online tools and approaches that enable them to track and monitor the time pupils spend using them. The same school runs fun competitions and provides lots of practical activities to support parents. Following requests from parents, it has timetabled activities for the day. Although pupils don’t have to do them at a specific time, parents like this kind of support because it helps to provide a focus and some parameters within which to work. Pupils keep a chart of the activities they have completed on HWB. For example, if they have done 30 minutes of exercise on some platform, they note it to share with their teachers.

Supporting Welsh-medium education

In many Welsh medium schools, most pupils come from homes where Welsh is not spoken. The staff in one such primary school have tried to overcome this by providing pupils with learning activities that encourage them to use their Welsh as naturally as possible. The focus is on reading, understanding and, most importantly, speaking Welsh. Opportunities for pupils to develop presentations and create their own versions of Welsh songs and rhymes have been particularly successful. Pupils share their work with their teachers, who then provide feedback that focuses on the positive, and this has encouraged a relatively high number of pupils to take part.

Using reading apps

Pupils in one primary school can access an app to which the school subscribes that allows pupils to read books and complete quizzes on books they have read. This means that teachers can monitor to some degree what pupils read and gain some idea of their understanding and progress with their reading.

Encouraging remote learning

One primary school has managed to encourage most of its pupils to engage in learning to some extent, either online or through receiving paper work packs. Soon after schools closed, the school lent 60 laptops out to families without suitable equipment to engage with online learning. Staff also set up and manned a technical helpdesk to support parents to help their children access online learning on various platforms. The headteacher analyses levels of pupil engagement and staff are working to reach families where engagement levels are low, especially by supporting parents who are struggling or feeling anxious.

Planning blended learning

The headteacher of one primary school has produced a very comprehensive draft recovery plan that sets out clearly all aspects of how the school will evolve towards a new approach of blended learning. It includes logistical aspects and curriculum arrangements, and sets out the responsibilities of each member of staff, including how they will support home learning, for example “when I’m on site, what will I be doing?”.It includes what staff can expect from leaders to support them in their work and wellbeing. The next step will be to develop a communication strategy for parents. The school’s current plans for September include classes being split into groups of eight with home learning resources designed based on the skills and focus of their days in school. Teaching assistants and teachers who are shielding have been allocated to support this home learning. The school is designing its recovery curriculum using the areas of learning and experiences. Teachers will focus on wellbeing, languages, literacy and communication, mathematics and numeracy and ICT, with pockets of contextual learning and experience based on the other areas of learning. The approach is intended to ensure that teachers prioritise the development of knowledge and skills that children need to become resilient and high performing in the future rather than coverage.

A whole-school focus

One primary school recognised that parents with children of different ages find it challenging to deal with various topics at the same time. To try and overcome this, the whole school is focusing on one theme this term, with activities that can be differentiated for the age and ability of the pupils. This has the added bonus of encouraging collaboration between teachers, which may lead to enhanced appreciation of progression for pupils.

Online learning pods

One primary school has developed its online learning significantly. The school is organised into four learning pods. Pupils in each pod can access a series of planned learning shared on the school’s website. Teachers launch the week’s suggested activities on a Monday, usually with a video. The headteacher surveyed parents’ thoughts and responded to their view that the children wanted to see more of their teachers by developing video launches for each week’s activities and by changing from a set of tasks that had to be completed to suggested activities. Access to the school website and learning activities is simple, so most pupils engage in learning at home. The children are taught in their pods. The school has provided laptops for the very few pupils from disadvantaged families to ensure that they can take part in online learning.

Celebrating achievement virtually

The parents and children of one primary school appreciate the headteacher holding a virtual weekly celebration assembly for pupils. It is a familiar part of the pupils’ week in school before lockdown and helps to maintain some sort of connection with life before lockdown. The headteacher then delivers the certificate and pencil prize to pupils personally.

Providing feedback in real time

Ysgol Llannefydd is a small rural school in Conwy county. During the second national lockdown key workers’ children, who were attending school, and pupils who were learning at home followed the same structured timetable. The school used a video conferencing platform for informal catch-up sessions with children twice a week. During other lessons, staff responded to the tasks released in documents shared online at set times during the day in line with the timetabled lessons. For example, having learnt about Neil Armstrong, pupils created a job advertisement for the post of astronaut. The teacher followed pupils’ progress in real time on his screen, flicking between each pupil’s work and suggested improvements to their work as they went along.  

Live-streaming pedagogy

At Ysgol Waunfawr, Gwynedd, nearly all pupils in key stage 2 engaged well with distance learning tasks. This included three live sessions per week for each class. In responding to a questionnaire, parents were particularly grateful to be able to see the teacher model how to approach tasks. For example, a teacher used a virtual whiteboard shared on her screen to explain the concepts of area and perimeter. She drew shapes on a squared background in real time and showed pupils how to find the sum of the perimeter, highlighting each side as she went along. Pupils could then watch her colouring the boxes to find the shape’s area. She then asked pupils to find the area and perimeter of other shapes provided in a shared document.

Meeting the needs of all pupils when learning from home

At Ysgol Plascrug, Aberystwyth, nearly all pupils responded well to tasks set online. Teachers felt that the introduction of live-streaming sessions contributed well to the engagement of pupils who like to learn visually. 

In the foundation phase, pupils were invited to attend small group sessions online every day. From Year 2 up to Year 6, there was also a daily whole-class session before pupils broke out into smaller groups. These groups were based around pupils’ needs so that they could discuss work set at a level suitable to their needs. The headteacher felt that this helped to maintain pupil engagement. Teachers also posted online videos of themselves presenting tasks. Across the school, pupils received two tasks a day in addition to ongoing provision and support materials.  

The headteacher led an online assembly on a weekly basis to maintain the ethos of the school.  The school also held a web-based technological ‘drop-in’ session for parents to help with the use of Teams. The school offered a similar session specifically for refugee families held in Arabic. 
 

Increasing engagement with distance learning

Leaders at Hywel Dda Primary School in Cardiff developed a comprehensive but simple way to analyse how well their pupils engage in the online learning that the school provides. In the first lockdown, they identified who did and did not take part in online learning, but this did not provide teachers with useful enough information to target support for those who could do with a little extra intervention.  During the second school closure, leaders refined the system to take account of the percentage of tasks completed, highlighting five levels of engagement from those who did not engage at all to those who completed over 80% of tasks.  The system also tracked those pupils who only completed learning tasks when they attended the school’s hub provision.  This more detailed information enabled the school to identify and prioritise the pupils and families that needed the most support to engage with learning at home. 

Mathematics and numeracy in the outdoors

During the pandemic, staff at Johnston CP School in Pembrokeshire continued to prepare for the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales in September 2022. The school used the time to evaluate how the four purposes aligned with their approach to teaching mathematics and developing numeracy skills. They identified ways to enhance their use of outdoor spaces to offer authentic learning experiences, make learning exciting and challenge themselves with regard how to introduce certain concepts. The aim was to plan more opportunities for pupils to construct, explore and discuss ideas in contexts that involved real-life problems. They worked with a National Park to develop a site adjacent to the school. They created areas for growing vegetables, a fire pit circle, built a bridge over a stream and created an orchard. This provided many rich numeracy activities. For example, pupils worked in groups to cut fabric membrane to stop grass from suffocating the newly planted apple trees, taking into account the required radius and working out the circumference. 

Families help to influence teachers’ planning

At Ysgol Foel Gron in Gwynedd foundation phase staff wanted to make their online provision as effective and successful for as many pupils as possible. The staff sent a survey out to parents asking them about the resources they had at home to help their children. Teachers used the findings of the survey as an audit of what practical resources families had at home, for example paint, colouring pencils, paper, building blocks, glue and other resources. Teachers used this information to adapt the tasks accordingly. The school is very happy with the level of engagement. For example, nearly all pupils made ‘hearts’ out of toy building blocks during a science and technology activity. Staff also asked parents about their electronic devices to see how best to set work for the class. The school provided computers for those who were struggling to access the internet and sent out paper packs for those without printers. 

‘Art Friday Focus’ encourages creative output during lockdown

Bigyn County Primary, Carmarthenshire, developed ‘Art Friday Focus’ as part of its distance learning offer. This allowed pupils to continue to contribute to an international project they had started working on in class that involved pupils in several other countries. The headteacher ran these sessions, which focused on discussing the work of a famous artist in a relaxed environment. The headteacher provided pupils with examples of work by the artists and, during the Friday sessions, pupils shared and discussed what they had produced. Many parents uploaded examples of the work to the school’s social media page, which encouraged engagement and contributed to creating a sense of community. This session also enabled teachers to take valuable planning, preparation and assessment time during lockdown. 

Mapping out whole-school distance learning provision

From the first lockdown, leaders and staff at Ynyshir Primary in Rhondda Cynon Taf recognised that providing pupils and parents with tutorial videos, recording lessons and providing live lessons would help with progressing learners’ skills and understanding, particularly for those concepts that are difficult for parents to explain. From January, leaders mapped distance learning provision on a weekly whole school ‘live lessons and video planner’. This detailed when live lessons were taking place for individual classes and when live wellbeing ‘check in’ sessions with pupils were scheduled. They were mapped so that no two teachers or classes were online at the same time. This helped to reduce the challenges for families. There were agreed protocols in place for pupils and their parents when engaging in online learning. 

Developing reading skills during lockdown

Pembroke Dock Community School in Pembrokeshire set up a programme to support pupils with reading, as it wanted to avoid pupils regressing while the school was only open to key worker and vulnerable children. It reassigned a group of support staff as ‘Reading Ambassadors’ to run the programme with around 200 pupils. These pupils were selected as they were not engaging fully with home learning or reading regularly at home. Each child received a one-hour weekly slot to come into school to work with a teaching assistant in a safe environment. Through this programme, all pupils were able to borrow school reading books and parents and pupils were given support in accessing online reading material. Many of the pupils were also provided with lunch and breakfast when they came to school. Where appropriate, the school also provided a breakfast pack to take home to have the following day. 

Supporting Welsh-medium pupils learning at home

Ysgol Gymraeg Melin Gruffydd, Cardiff, made extensive use of live streaming and video clips to share guidance and instructions with pupils. Teachers were free to adapt how and when to run these sessions, varying the method depending on the context of the class and the task. Some teachers started live sessions with a whole class group, before continuing to work with small groups, supporting their learning. Others, often in the foundation phase, tended to start with small groups, and then bring the pupils together for a class session. This was a useful opportunity to review the learning, and to give pupils the opportunity to speak to their friends. Staff also recorded instructions bilingually and shared these with the pupils in video clips. This enabled non-Welsh speaking parents to support their child’s learning at home. To ensure that pupils were not completely isolated from their friends, staff organised regular virtual sessions for them to chat together informally or to work together on specific tasks such as creating presentations on a particular theme. 

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Advice and guidance for government

Our aim in Estyn is to support Welsh education and training as a whole – schools, non-maintained settings, teachers, senior leaders, learners, parents, post-16 providers and others – by providing the government with our independent and objective evidence and advice.

As you know, we suspended all core inspection and other visits as soon as we could. Currently, we’re keeping in touch with education and training providers through phone and video calls and will continue to do this for the time being. It’s been really helpful to hear from schools and others about how they are supporting the wellbeing of learners and staff and how they are dealing with the current challenges.

We’ve also redeployed staff to Welsh Government and have supported the government’s continuity of learning for children and young people project.

Learning from what works well

We will not inspect maintained schools next academic year (September 2020 – July 2021). Once schools have readjusted to the new situation, our inspectors will visit to listen to concerns and to identify what is working well.

The conversations we’re currently having with schools and our future engagement visits are to gain a national picture. It’s not to judge the approaches of individual schools, but to gather intelligence on the education system as a whole, and to gauge the immediate and longer-term impact of the coronavirus crisis on learning and on the wellbeing of pupils and staff.

They’ll also be an opportunity to capture and share innovative and effective practice.

Follow-up activity

We will not be continuing with formal monitoring visits for schools and other providers in follow-up. Although a few would like us to do so, we do not think this is appropriate under the current circumstances.

We have already been in touch with providers currently identified as causing concern to explain what will happen next and to offer the support of an individual HMI.

Listening and adapting

These are uncertain times, and we’re committed to being supportive and flexible in how we carry out our role at the moment.

We will work with stakeholders from sectors other than maintained schools on how we will adapt our arrangements for them for the coming year.

We will adapt as the situation develops and keep you fully informed of our intentions.

Stay safe and stay learning.

Read the full statement

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Improving teaching and learning

Schools that successfully improve the quality of teaching and learning and continually invest in their staff. They:

  •  encourage honest evaluation.
  • talk openly about their strengths and areas for improvement.
  • encourage teachers to take reasonable risks and experiment with different approaches, while always keeping the benefits for pupils at the heart of any change.
  • focus on monitoring the quality of teaching in relation to how well pupils do over time rather than making simplistic judgements about the quality of teaching by grading individual lessons.
  • use research-based evidence to solve teaching problems.

Teaching and learning, and the new curriculum

The 12 pedagogical principles of good teaching and learning1 is vital for schools to consider as they shape the new curriculum for Wales.

Good teaching and learning

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Getting together as a team of inspectors is an important part of our professional learning, but it’s not always easy or practical to do. With so many inspectors living and working right across Wales, we have to be quite creative with opportunities to meet and not a second is wasted.

For the past few years, many of you will know that we have been working closely with the Welsh Government, local authorities, regional consortia and schools as everyone prepares for wide changes in education. It’s important that all our inspectors understand the journey that providers are making as they prepare for these reforms. We’ve been using these professional development weeks for just this purpose.

For example, inspectors who have worked closely with pioneer schools to develop the areas of learning and experience of the new curriculum update us regularly. They encourage us to talk about the new and exciting things we are beginning to see happen in schools so that we know the sort of things we might expect to see when we are out-and-about inspecting schools around Wales.

Other colleagues have been involved in new or different ways of working, including carrying out some pilot engagement visits. They share their experiences with wider groups of inspectors, and together we consider the pros and cons of any changes. As you might imagine, people who spend their working lives being evaluative bring a wide range of ideas and opinions to the table. This encourages energetic discussion, which helps to shape decisions about how we inspect and about how we might work in the future. Senior leaders here expect and welcome contributions to decision-making from all inspectors and this keeps us all interested and engaged in our work.

Professional learning goes beyond the times we meet as a whole group. Throughout the year we shadow inspections in sectors we are less familiar with and go on paired visits with a specific focus. For example, a group of primary and secondary colleagues visited a secondary school in England that has a particularly imaginative and innovative approach to the curriculum. It was a real eye-opener, and made us think carefully about how we can encourage schools to think differently and be braver with the curriculum. On our return, we shared our experiences, which inspired others to do further reading and research on its philosophy and success, but nothing can quite replicate the understanding we gained by being there, meeting the teachers and engaging with the pupils.

Earlier in the blog, I talked about learning from others outside the organisation. Regular updates from a wide range of partners and stakeholders on a broad range of topics are a regular and crucial part of our professional learning. A recent session learning more about Adverse Childhood Experiences and the training currently being carried out with schools around Wales served as a timely reminder that education reform needs to improve the experiences and outcomes of all learners. If it doesn’t, why are we doing it?

All inspectors are carrying out a focused professional enquiry linked to our changing approach and their own interests. It’s early days, but colleagues have welcomed and valued the opportunity to participate in this type of professional learning activity. Personally, I’ve chosen to look more closely at how we evaluate provision to develop pupils’ digital competence in secondary schools. I’ve used our inspection reports and other publications to gather a baseline of the evidence we currently capture, and I’ll try out some new approaches over the next few months. After my research I’ll share my findings with my colleagues and will begin making amendments to our inspection toolkits.

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Healthy and happy

In June 2019, our ‘Healthy and happy’ report explored the impact that schools in Wales have on pupils’ health and wellbeing. We found that twice as many primary schools as secondary schools were supporting pupils very well.

The report covers many of the issues already mentioned at the start of this post that affect health and wellbeing. However, there is a very important headline message to the report that mustn’t be lost amongst discussions about the individual issues schools need to have a ‘whole-school’ approach to supporting pupils’ health and wellbeing.

A whole-school approach

What do we mean by this? It’s that schools need to make sure that everything about the school gives a consistently positive message to pupils.

Let’s think about what happens when there isn’t a whole-school approach. Here’s a few examples:

  • lessons about bullying lose their value if pupils aren’t happy with how the school deals with allegations of bullying
  • learning activities around healthy eating have little impact if the food served to pupils, and the dining experience don’t promote healthy eating
  • posters promoting exercise won’t make much difference if the school doesn’t provide enough time for pupils to be active.

In short, the everyday experiences of pupils in school have the greatest impact – positively or negatively – on their health and wellbeing.

 

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It’s not an inspection

We’ll be in touch around 10 days before we visit. But there won’t be a formal notification period because it’s not an inspection.

During our visits, we’ll encourage, reassure, probe and provide a fresh perspective to staff on their journey to fulfilling the aims of the new curriculum.

There won’t be a written report for each school – the key outcome for us is that we gather important information about how the Curriculum for Wales is being progressed in schools across Wales.

Planning the visit

Before we arrive, the inspector will call the headteacher to agree a broad outline for the day. Activities will include discussions with senior leaders, governors, staff and pupils and we’ll also visit lessons and talk to pupils about their work.

Making the most of the visit

It’s a valuable chance for schools and HMI to have an open, trusting and professional conversation. Our experienced inspectors will be a sounding board for schools to share their early plans and initial developments.

The school can explain any obstacles to progress and explore with us possible approaches to overcoming these challenges. Inspectors will have observed other schools in similar circumstances facing similar challenges and will be able to signpost the school to interesting practice elsewhere.

Professional conversations between inspectors, leaders and other school staff are a key feature of the visit. 

On the visit it’s important that schools direct us to particular developments that are progressing well and highlight emerging practice across the school.  Our conversations with the school around what the visit looks like are important and will help to make sure that we all gain maximum benefit.

But we don’t expect schools to prepare specifically for the visit.  For example, we won’t be asking to see any documents unless the school wants to share these. Schools can get the best out of engagement visits by thinking generally about their challenges and successes in relation to curriculum reform.

In addition, we’ll share with schools our plans for inspections from 2021 as well as other activities happening in the transition year whilst inspections are partially suspended. These will include conferences and training opportunities where we’ll share effective practice to support schools with curriculum reform. 

After the visit

We’ll share regularly the national picture with the Welsh Government about how much progress schools are making in their curriculum for Wales work. This will help the government to be flexible if there needs to be additional support or resources to help schools with the developments. We will publish update reports and explore ways to share interesting practice so everyone has a common understanding of progress. 

Until then…

Between now and 2020, we’ll continue to pilot our engagement visits, increasing our sample and trying them out in different types of schools, for example all-age and federated schools. We will also publish our ‘Engagement visit guidance’ on our website towards the end of the spring term.   

Schools have given us very positive feedback following the pilot visits. Rhian James-Collins, Head teacher of Ysgol Gymraeg Bryn y Mor told us that:

…the visit prompted us as a school to evaluate where we are on the journey in relation to the introduction of the New Curriculum for Wales and to reflect on the impact of the strategic priorities in preparation for change. It was also an opportunity to share what we have done so far

John Kendall, head teacher of Risca Comprehensive School felt that:

… the engagement visit was very useful and we were pleased to be chosen to be part of the pilot.  There was no excessive preparation required, but we had plenty of notice to think about what we wanted to discuss. Even though it was just one day, the activities we worked on with the HMI during that time were very productive. The learning walks, book looks, and meetings with both staff and pupils were followed by really constructive and helpful feedback. The day was conducted in a supportive and collaborative way, leaving us feeling both confident in what we are already doing and with some useful ideas about other ways in which we can help move the school forward.”

We’ll be working closely with local authorities and regional consortia on how we can share the broad findings from the engagement visits with them so that they can also see and understand the progress being made by schools.  

Still got questions? Read our FAQs

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What’s a link visit?

Once a year, our inspectors make an informal visit to each college or training provider. Each college has their own dedicated link inspector. This is a chance for us to build relationships with the colleges, gather up-to-date evidence about their work and support quality improvement. We also carry out similar visits to training providers and providers of adult learning in the community.

Each visit takes two to three days. We meet with senior leaders and a selection of other key staff, depending on the specific focus. We also look at key documents and may do some learning walks or talk to students.

At the end of the visit, we have a discussion with leaders about what we’ve found to help with the college’s ongoing improvement.

What is the focus?

The topics that we focus on change from year to year. At the moment, we’re exploring:

  • Self-evaluation and future priorities for improvement
  • Post-16 consistent performance measures
  • Professional learning and the new standards
  • 14-16 provision
  • Site access, security and emergency procedures
  • Learner engagement – learner voice and learner complaints

There’s also an opportunity for colleges to share any current issues. Likewise, we discuss inspection developments with college leaders.

If a college has been recently inspected, we discuss their progress against any recommendations in the inspection report.

How do the visits support improvement?

College leaders value the opportunity to talk to an inspector outside of a formal inspection. The link inspector can help colleges reflect on and refine their strengths and areas for improvement, and are able to highlight national effective practice that might be helpful.

The evidence we collect during these visits is used to inform the advice we provide to the Welsh Government through HMCI’s annual report, thematic reports and our contributions to national working groups.

The visits also help us to recognise how we can strengthen our own inspection guidance. For example, link visits have highlighted how colleges carry out their new duty to help prevent people being drawn into terrorism. This supported us to develop our supplementary guidance on inspecting safeguarding in post-16 provision. It also helps colleges to improve and share their practice in this area.

The discussions we have during link visits can help to identify topics that might benefit from a more in-depth thematic inspection across Wales.

How can colleges make the most of the link visit?

It’s an opportunity to reflect on practice within the college and consider how it could be further improved. There’s no expectation for college staff to do anything to prepare beforehand. The link inspector shares broad areas for discussion with college leaders and asks for any relevant documents and the names of staff to talk to.

The discussions are most beneficial when leaders are open and honest about the quality of their work. If a college only tries to showcase the very best of their work, they miss out on an opportunity to have a reflective discussion with their link inspector about their current challenges. We provide an independent perspective that can help leaders reflect on their students’ experiences.

The visit is also a chance to build the relationship between the link inspector and college leaders so that they know there’s someone in Estyn they can call if they have any questions.

College leaders should embrace the opportunities that link visits provide, and make the most of discussions with inspectors to find out about best practice and challenge your college to keep going from strength to strength.

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Why we need to tackle bullying head-on

Bullying can drastically affect a child psychologically and socially. It can impact significantly on their attendance and progress in school and have a lasting effect into adulthood on their relationships and wellbeing.

The School’s Health Research Network survey in 2019 (SHRN) found that over a third of pupils of all ages reported that they ‘have been bullied at school in the past couple of months’ and a sixth said that they had ‘bullied another person in the last couple of months’.

Similarly, in May, Ofcom found that nearly a third of pupils had experienced bullying online.

Our 2014 report Action on Bullying said that pupils’ experience of bullying and how well it was dealt with varied widely, particularly in secondary schools. This sentiment was echoed in our 2019 report, Happy and Healthy.  The SHRN survey showed that pupils’ wellbeing seems to get worse as they get older. It found that the proportion of pupils who agree that there is a member of staff they can confide in declined from 80% in Year 7 to 65% in Year 11. 

Responses to questions on pupils’ wellbeing gathered in pre-inspection questionnaires during primary and secondary school inspections in 2018-2019 seem to support these findings. They also show that the proportion of secondary school pupils who are happy with how well their school deals with bullying is also notably lower than that of primary school pupils.

It’s true that research shows that adolescence affects wellbeing. However, this should not be an excuse preventing schools from tackling bullying effectively.

Defining bullying

There is no legal definition of bullying, but essentially it’s behaviour that is:

  • repeated, whilst recognising that even a one-off incident can leave a learner traumatised and fearful that it will happen again in the future
  • difficult for victims to defend themselves against
  • intended to hurt someone either physically or emotionally
  • often aimed at certain groups, for example because of race, disability, religion, gender or sexual orientation

It can be both direct and indirect, for example by spreading nasty rumours about someone or excluding them from social groups.

When deciding whether behaviour is bullying, it’s important to take the child’s perspective into account.

The law on preventing bullying in schools

Schools are under legal duties to uphold the fundamental human right of children to be free from abuse and must therefore tackle bullying in all its forms. Some key duties include that staff must act to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, promote equality and foster good relations between pupils.

Amongst other things, schools must have a behaviour policy that sets out how it will:

  • prevent all forms of bullying among pupils
  • record bullying incidents
  • investigate and deal with incidents
  • support victims
  • deal with bullies

All teachers, pupils and parents must be told what the policy is. Schools should also train staff to prevent, identify and deal with bullying.

Anyone can make a complaint to the police about bullying, but it’s usually a good idea to speak to the school first.

What if your child is the victim of bullying – what can you do to help?

  • Reassure them that telling you about the bullying was the right thing to do.
  • Keep calm and note all the facts (who, when, where …).
  • Ask your child to report further incidents to a teacher straight away.
  • Make an appointment to see your child’s class teacher or form tutor and explain what your child is experiencing. Be specific!
  • Keep accurate records of the bullying and the action the school agrees to take and speak to the school if you feel that this isn’t being followed through.
  • Ask your child’s teacher what you can do to help at home.
  • Stay in touch with the school – let them know if things improve or not.

If you feel that the school is not dealing with your concerns:

  • Check to see if the school has followed its policy.
  • Make an appointment to see the headteacher – keep a record of the meeting and follow it up in writing if necessary.
  • If this does not help, write to the chair of governors with your concerns and what action you would like them to take.
  • If you do not feel that the governing body has dealt with your complaint appropriately, you can write directly to the local authority.  The authority cannot change the school’s decision, but it can check if it has followed the correct procedures.   

There are a wide range of support groups to help if your child is being bullied (see below).

Good practice in schools

The most important lesson we learned in our reports Action on Bullying and Happy and Healthy was that, in schools that deal effectively with bullying and support pupils’ wellbeing, prevention and response go hand-in-hand. Schools should record incidents accurately and systematically, and use this information with research and good practice to improve their approaches continually. It is critical that schools take action to deal with both the behaviour and the underlying attitudes that drive bullying, also through their curriculum and ethos.  

If pupils feel that the messages they are told by their schools about respect and tolerance are different to what they experience, this undermines the work of the school. For example, lessons about bullying are of limited value unless pupils are satisfied with how the school deals with allegations of bullying.

There is a wide range of support available to schools. I’ve provided some links to Welsh Government resources and national charities, as well as to our supplementary guidance and reports to help support schools with their approaches.

Anti-bullying week 2019 starts on 11 November. Schools should use this as an opportunity to check that their approach is truly whole-school and that pupils do not see their efforts as a one-off event.  Most importantly, schools should review whether their work is having the desired impact on levels of bullying and pupils’ wellbeing. If it isn’t, then they should act to make the changes needed. 

Support for children and parents

Support for schools

Estyn reports and supplementary guidance:

Welsh Government

Research and news

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Why is teaching Welsh history important?

When I was a deputy headteacher in a Cardiff school, I accompanied a group of pupils to the Rhondda Heritage Park as part of a ‘reward’ trip organised by a local charity. After an interesting tour of the mine, one of the children turned to me and asked if we used to eat coal! This was a wakeup call – how well do we teach children in our schools about the history of Wales, in particular the history of the local area? In a nutshell, without coal most of Cardiff would not have developed, and yet these 21st century children knew nothing about it.

Are they right?

Our inspection findings show that in many cases she has a good point. Children can recognise pictures of the wives of Henry VIII and know about the Great Fire of London, but on the whole know very little about the Rebecca Riots or the last invasion of Britain at Fishguard. Older pupils often know more about the history of other countries, for example Nazi Germany or the USA, than their own country.

Other countries such as Canada and New Zealand place a strong emphasis on schools teaching about the history of their own country.

But will things change?

There are some experts who are still sceptical about the impact that this will have. Professor Martin Johnes of Swansea University feels that the national Welsh angle may get lost in favour of local or well-known British or global examples and, as a result, there is no guarantee that curriculum reform will lead to any more Welsh history than is currently the case.

So it will be down to individual scho

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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.