High quality teaching, Literacy and Leadership must be at the Heart of Education Improvement – Estyn’s Early Insights Reveal What’s Working in Wales.
Estyn has today published its early insights from the Chief Inspector’s Annual Report 2024–25, setting out what’s working well across Welsh education and where improvement is needed. The findings provide an early look at challenges and successes at a national level across eighteen education and training sectors ahead of the full report publication in February 2026.
Estyn’s latest findings gathered from over 400 inspection visits in 2024-25, show that learners’ wellbeing and safeguarding remain strong foundations in Welsh education. Most providers are maintaining positive, inclusive environments where learners feel safe, supported and ready to learn. However, attendance continues to be a persistent issue in many sectors.
The headlines across all sectors underline the importance of high-quality teaching and strong literacy skills in helping learners achieve their potential across the curriculum and in training. A range of strong examples are highlighted however; the report highlights there is still variation in the quality of teaching and the consistency of curriculum delivery across providers.
Effective leadership and robust self-evaluation continue to be the hallmarks of the most successful providers. Leaders who know their schools and settings well, who engage staff in honest reflection and continuous improvement, are making the biggest difference to learners’ experiences and outcomes.
To support providers with improvement in their own settings, the summaries for each sector point towards inspection reports and case studies from providers that were inspected and were found to be doing particularly well. The report covers a broad range of sectors across education and training sectors, including schools, further education, initial teacher education, local government education services, Welsh language immersion arrangements and education in the justice sector. Together, they provide a national picture of progress, challenges and opportunities across Wales.
Chief Inspector Owen Evans said:
This year’s early insights report highlights the message that high-quality teaching, strong literacy, and effective leadership are vital to sustaining improvement.
“By sharing these sector specific findings now, we want to help providers reflect, learn from strong practice and continue building on what’s working well.”
“My full annual report will be published in February and will offer further insight into our current education and training priorities here in Wales, providing further detail about the findings of our inspections together with an analysis of a number of wider themes including literacy, the impact of leadership on teaching and independent thinking.”
The early insights report is available to read online, featuring examples of effective practice from across Wales.