Lynne Neagle, Cabinet Secretary for Education
I am pleased to provide an update on our national arrangements to support school improvement following the review of the future direction and roles and responsibilities of education partners in Wales.
There are strengths to the support currently offered by the National Academy for Educational Leadership, the regional consortia and partnerships and the contribution they have made to the system in Wales is significant.
However, we have considered the evidence gathered as part of the review alongside a wider evidence base on a range of matters, such as the leadership review by Alma Harris, OECD’s Teacher Professional Learning report, the Sibieta Review of School Spending in Wales, Estyn reports, and the Review of the National Professional Qualification for Headship amongst others.
The evidence concludes that there are clearly too many organisations involved in the development and delivery of professional learning and leadership support. National arrangements need to ensure value for money and deliver a coherent and consistent offer for our teaching assistants, teachers, leaders and advisors. This will provide the opportunities they need to develop, share good practice and learn from each other in order to impact positively on educational standards in Wales.
We will therefore bring together the current functions of the National Academy for Education Leadership and some of the functions of the regional consortia and local authority partnerships into a new national body. The body will be responsible for designing and delivering professional learning and leadership support on a national level in response to changing practitioner and Welsh Government priorities.
Local authorities will work with the body to support delivery on a local level and will continue to deliver the more bespoke school-based professional learning in response to local priorities and needs.
There will inevitably be organisational changes. I appreciate that this will be a difficult time for staff in these organisations as we navigate the changes, and I would like to thank all of these staff for their dedication to supporting our schools, practitioners and leaders. I want to assure them that we will be working closely with all involved to minimise the impact.
I am issuing this Written Statement to ensure the Senedd is kept fully updated on this area of work, and I will be making an Oral Statement in the coming weeks to provide further detail on how we will boost standards in our schools and the school improvement partnership programme.