Statement from HMCI Owen Evans re: today’s publication of Welsh Government’s ‘Developing a new data and information ecosystem’
Estyn welcomes the plans to develop a wider range of information to support improved evaluation and improvement arrangements. We are pleased to note that this work will be taken forward in collaboration with practitioners, local authorities, regions and partnerships.
Estyn places classroom practice at the heart of our work but evaluative information is valuable for schools in defining their priorities. Since 2017, Estyn has worked to reduce the focus on performance information during secondary, LGES and all age inspections. While we welcome any information shared with us during inspection, we do not report on individual indicators, neither would we base a judgement on one source of evidence, in this case, end of key stage information.
As the data available in summer 2023 will be for one year in the first instance, we may consider how schools and local authorities use this information to support their own evaluation and improvement planning but would not make any evaluations on one year of nationally collected and externally verified information alone. For the time being, we will continue with the approach that we have adopted since resuming inspections in 2022.