Developing our new inspection process
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Inspection from 2024 –2030
We have revised how we inspect education and training from 2024 and beyond.
Our ambition is to improve the quality of education and training for children, young people and lifelong learners.
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About the changes
We consulted with individuals and organisations in the youth services, schools and PRU, post-16 (further education, adult learning in the community and independent specialist colleges), Welsh for adults and local government education services sectors.
The findings can be found towards the bottom of this page.
Our approach
Involve
- We engaged widely with all our stakeholders and partners to make sure their views were built into how we approach inspection from 2024.
- We wanted to incorporate everyone’s ideas into our arrangements, which look different in different sectors.
Listen
- We value and listen carefully to the views of everyone involved in education – from senior leaders and principals, to teachers, lecturers, classrooms assistants, parents, learners and the wider community.
Trial & review
- We tested different approaches to inspection with a few providers across each sector. Feedback from these trials then informed the next stage of development.
- We reviewed what and how we inspect to make sure our work keeps pace with changes in Wales and meets the needs of the next generation of learners.
What guided the new approach?
- In Wales we have a national mission to improve education and training for all learners, where all partners involved in education improvement have a key role to play.
- Learners continue to be our priority. Everything we do has their best interests at heart.
- The new arrangements are leaner and more focused on the most important areas that drive improvement.
- Our arrangements are manageable for all providers and complement their own processes of evaluation and improvement.
- We include a wider variety of inspection activities to better support improvement across individual providers and sectors. This includes how we tailor activity in individual provider inspections, thematic inspections and a range of other visits.
- We have more regular contact with schools and other providers, offering more up-to-date feedback for parents and carers.
- Part of our aim is to bring external inspection and providers’ internal evaluation processes closer together. Better alignment of these processes better supports improvement.
- We use our resources where they are needed most, such as with settings that need support and monitoring for improvement.
Consultation responses
Thank you for your engagement to develop our new inspection arrangements.
We’re pleased that so many of you took the time to respond to our consultations and indicate support for the approaches, as well as sharing lots of great ideas to feed into the next stage of development.
Below you will find the results of the consultations undertaken.
Post 16 education and training sectors
We are grateful to those who contributed to our consultation on our proposals in the further education, adult Learning in the community and independent specialist colleges sectors.
We are pleased to share the findings from our consultation which informed the development of our arrangements.
Welsh for Adults (WfA) – Consultation Results
We proposed a suite of inspection activities with the aim of driving improvement in the Welsh for Adults sector. We are grateful to those who contributed to our consultation, the findings of which can be found here.
Consultation Results – Welsh for Adults (WfA) (23085)
Consultation Results – Local Government Education Services (LGES)
We have evolved our Local government education services (LGES) inspection model. We are grateful to those who contributed to our consultation.
We are pleased to share the findings from our consultation.
Consultation Results – Local Government Education Services (LGES) (23090)
Schools and PRUs consultation responses
We took a gradual approach to the development of inspection in Schools and PRUs introducing and trialing changes with providers through a series of pilots. Responses to our consultation can be found here.
Youth work inspections – consultation response
Our inspection approach is bespoke to the youth work sector. We have developed a model that can be applied both to youth work being delivered by local authorities but also separately to voluntary sector organisations delivering youth work, where appropriate.