The Curriculum for Wales – How are regional consortia and local authorities supporting schools?
Estyn agreed with the Welsh Government to undertake a thematic survey to review and evaluate the impact of the support and professional learning provided by regional consortia and local authorities to schools and PRUs to support the national delivery of the Curriculum for Wales. There is a particular focus on the impact support has had on practitioners understanding of curriculum development and design, and on improving teaching and learning to enable strong curricula in all schools in Wales.
This report follows on from our reports about the curriculum published recently. These include Preparing for the Curriculum for Wales – case studies and cameos from secondary, all-age and special schools (Estyn, 2020c) that reports on the strengths and barriers that these schools have experienced as part of their curriculum work. In addition, our report Curriculum innovation in primary schools (Estyn, 2018a) looked at how primary schools were preparing for the new curriculum. This is part of a series of reports providing guidance during this period of change in education. Previous reports include: Improving Teaching (Estyn, 2018b), Preparing for the Digital Competence Framework (Estyn, 2018c), Leadership development – case studies of professional learning for school leadership (Estyn, 2020a) and Partnerships with employers in secondary and special schools (Estyn, 2020b). This report also draws on the findings shared in HMCI’s recent annual reports (Estyn, 2018d; 2019; 2020d).
The intended audience for this report is the Welsh Government, regional consortia, local authorities, schools and pupil referral units.
The activity planned for the thematic review was reviewed and adapted in line with the COVID-19 restrictions. The report draws on findings from inspections undertaken before March 2020, visits to all four consortia, the three local authorities not in a consortium and on-site and virtual visits to a selection of primary, secondary, all-age and special schools across Wales. All of the visits for this thematic report took place during the first half of the autumn term 2021. Our link inspectors, as part of their ongoing work, engaged with the 19 local authorities who work as part of a regional consortium to learn about the support being provided to schools. As part of the evidence gathering,