Thematic Report Archives - Page 2 of 16 - Estyn

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Recommendations

Schools should: 

  • Provide comprehensive and timely impartial advice and guidance to all pupils and their parents or carers about all 14-16 curriculum options, including junior apprenticeships where these are available. 
  • Work collaboratively with colleges and local authorities to evaluate opportunities for developing or extending junior apprenticeship programmes in order to broaden their curriculum offer in the best interests of learners.

Further education colleges should: 

  • Work closely with schools to make sure that responsibilities for safeguarding arrangements are clear and that individual risk assessments are undertaken for all junior apprenticeship learners.
  • Share and agree timetable arrangements with partner schools and local authorities for all junior apprenticeship learners and keep them updated of any changes affecting individual learners, such as pastoral plan arrangements.

Local authorities should:

  • Clarify and communicate future funding arrangements for junior apprenticeships with schools and colleges.
  • Work collaboratively with all their local schools and colleges to evaluate the potential for introducing or extending junior apprenticeship provision to enhance suitable learning opportunities for Year 10 and 11 pupils struggling to engage with existing mainstream provision in schools.

The Welsh Government should:

  • In light of the establishment of the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (CTER), clarify and publish details of ongoing responsibility and continuing arrangements for junior apprenticeships and their funding.
  • Review specific curriculum requirements for junior apprenticeship programmes as set out in the Welsh Government programmes directory, particularly in relation to English, mathematics and numeracy qualifications to ensure qualification aims match needs and abilities of individual learners and reflect the new national 14-16 qualifications in place from September 2027.

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Recommendations

Schools should:

  • Strengthen planning to strategically improve attendance, including making effective use of data to identify trends and in planning long term approaches to improving pupils’ attendance
  • Strengthen their approach to monitoring, evaluating and improving attendance
  • Strengthen their work with parents/carers to explain why good attendance is important
  • Develop more effective methods to gather the views of pupils who do not attend school regularly
  • Ensure that teaching and the curriculum offer engages pupils in learning

Local authorities should:

  • Provide schools with regular and effective challenge and support to improve pupils’ attendance and help evaluate the impact of their work
  • Ensure that local authority interventions build on work already carried out by schools
  • Work with schools to support them to work with parents/carers to understand the importance of good attendance

The Welsh Government should:

  • Develop a national campaign to promote the importance of good attendance with parents/carers and pupils
  • Consider how pupils living within the three-mile radius who are not eligible for free transport could be better supported to attend school more regularly
  • Publish core data sets for attendance twice a year, including regression analysis, residuals for persistent absenteeism and year group attendance to better support schools’ own evaluation processes
  • Continue to provide weekly analysis of school level attendance to provide more frequent information and improve the quality of this data
  • Consider how funding can be allocated more effectively to support schools to improve attendance
  • Consider how reform of the school year might better support pupils to attend school more regularly
  • Carry out research to identify the factors impacting on poor attendance and to discover the most effective methods of improving attendance

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Recommendations

The Welsh Government should:

  • R1    Work with Qualifications Wales and the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research to review the use of Essential Skills Wales qualifications in apprenticeships
  • R2    Refresh the Wales Essential Skills Toolkit (WEST) and resources
  • R3    Working with partners, develop opportunities for professional learning to enhance practitioners’ understanding of the pedagogy and capacity to deliver essential skills

Work-based learning apprenticeship providers should:

  • R4    Develop partnership working approaches to ensure that:
    • learners have meaningful opportunities to study and take assessments bilingually or through the medium Welsh 
    • learners’ additional learning needs are promptly identified, evaluated and appropriately supported
  • R5    Ensure that learners who have already attained the required ESW qualifications or are exempted by proxy continue to develop their literacy, numeracy and digital skills
  • R6    Offer professional learning that develops tutors’ and assessors’ pedagogy to deliver essential skills

Lead providers should:

  • R7    Ensure that self-evaluation reflects on the effectiveness of the delivery models in use across the provider’s partners and sub-contractors and takes action to reduce the potential disadvantages identified in this report

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Recommendations

Schools should:

R1      Improve the quality of information provided to, for example, parents, and clearly state what the school regards as additional learning provision

R2      Ensure that ALNCos have sufficient time and resource to carry out their duties

R3      Ensure that the professional learning of school staff has a sufficient focus on high quality teaching for pupils with ALN

Local authorities should:

R4      Ensure that all schools are aware of their duties under the ALNET Act

R5      Provide clear, accurate and up-to-date information to stakeholders, in particular in relation to:

  • what constitutes additional learning provision in its schools
  • those IDPs that are to be maintained by the local authority and those to be maintained by schools

R6      Continue to quality assure and review practice and additional learning provision to ensure funding and professional learning supports roll out effectively for:

  • person centred practices
  • individual development plans
  • Welsh-medium services, resources and provision

R7      Develop and publish their strategy for post-16 learners with ALN

The Welsh Government should:

R8      Ensure that all settings have a clear understanding of the legal definitions contained in the ALNET Act and the ALN Code and provide practical examples to aid understanding

R9      Fully evaluate the impact of additional funding allocated to local authorities

R10    Ensure that future guidance and funding is provided in a timely fashion to allow both local authorities and schools to plan sufficiently
 

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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Initial Teacher Education partnerships should:

R1 Plan purposeful opportunities to develop students’ Welsh language skills and pedagogy in all aspects of ITE programmes to ensure consistent support throughout the programme, including when on school experience
R2 Ensure that provision to support the Welsh language focuses on the development of students’ personal skills and teaching to develop pupils’ Welsh skills; this should include language acquisition pedagogy in Welsh-medium, English -medium and bilingual schools
R3 Monitor and evaluate the impact of provision for Welsh language development taking into account how students use their Welsh language skills and language acquisition pedagogy to support pupils’ progress in schools
R4 Create opportunities for collaboration between ITE partnerships to develop and expand support for teaching through the medium of Welsh

Leaders in partnership schools should:

R5 Prioritise and develop a strategy for the development of the Welsh language in response to the expectations set out by partnerships and Welsh Government policies

The Welsh Government should:

R6 Ensure clarity of expectation in the professional standards for teaching and leadership to focus on how teachers and leaders develop practice that impacts positively on pupils’ Welsh skills
R7 Ensure that ITE partnerships collaborate with school improvement partners to develop a more consistent, coherent and specialised provision for the development of the education workforce’s Welsh language skills and pedagogy as part of the professional learning continuum

Improvement Resource Type: Thematic Report

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PRUs and mainstream schools should:

  1. Share practice with each other and work with local authorities, pupils, and parents to strengthen opportunities for pupils to return to mainstream education
  2. Monitor pupils’ attendance closely to ensure they access their full provision and, in particular, to safeguard pupils where they access education part-time in a different provider

Local authorities and their school improvement services should:

  1. Support more pupils to return to mainstream school where appropriate through:
  • strengthening short term intensive support in EOTAS provision
  • ensuring placement decisions are taken promptly and identify an agreed duration, clear roles and responsibilities and a review date
  1. Secure curriculum provision in PRUs which meets the needs of all pupils working with the management committee and teacher in charge
  2. Secure curriculum provision in EOTAS providers other than PRUs
  3. Strengthen the quality assurance and monitoring processes to ensure effective delivery of the curriculum offer in all EOTAS providers
  4. Robustly challenge and monitor the attendance of pupils across EOTAS providers including the appropriate use of part-time timetables and pastoral support programmes

The Welsh Government should:

  1. Update and ensure delivery of the EOTAS Framework for Action including all relevant accompanying EOTAS guidance to reflect the recommendations of this report