Joint working within and beyond Wales

We work collaboratively with a range of government organisations, inspectorates and other bodies involved in education inside and outside of Wales in order to develop our view of education systems across the United Kingdom and the world.

Such joint work also progresses our own approaches to inspection and thematic working, supports our advice to Welsh Government, and supports the implementation of government policy. We work with Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW), Healthcare Inspectorate Wales (HIW) and Audit Wales (AW). Together we are Inspection Wales, a joint initiative between the four main inspection, audit and review bodies in Wales.

We inspect education and training provision within the justice sector working with:

• CIW, in the case of secure children’s homes
• HMI Prisons, in the case of prisons and young offender institutions
• HMI Probation, in the case of Youth Offending Services.

We also inspect provision for learners in England who are funded by the Welsh Government and who attend independent special colleges, work-based learning courses, and provision for young people in youth offending teams. 

As part of our commitment to support improvement by working collaboratively with our peers internationally, we engage regularly with the UK and Irish Inspectorates and with national and regional inspectors of education in Europe who are members of the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates (SICI). We benefit from the ability to learn from other inspectorates and their processes as well as from the opportunity to share and discuss practice with our peers and undertake joint projects in an environment that is free from domestic or political pressures.