Taking the stage at Plaid Cymru’s first conference in government, cabinet minister for Education Anna Brychan’s assessment was more blunt than a month earlier, when the Pisa results came out. Speaking in Welsh, she called them “brawychus” – roughly translated as “terrible” or “shocking”.
But so far she hasn’t proposed wholesale changes to education. The minister has been at pains to emphasise that she’s committed to the new curriculum. Even if it was practical to unpick it all, she’s acknowledged there’s little appetite for major upheaval. Instead, she’s promising to review aspects of it and to set clearer steps for measuring how pupils are progressing.
Brychan’s view is that a focus on literacy and numeracy has been “lost in the noise” of reforms. She’s promised more clarity.
Phonics are more central to the plan and there will be more tracking of children’s progress in primary school.
Wales’ education system needs to be better at measuring itself, says Luke Sibieta, who is a research fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. And without consistent benchmarks, it’s not surprising that so much weight has been placed on Pisa’s verdict. Sibieta makes the point that, looked at through a different lens, the downward trend in Wales’ results is in line with “places like France, Germany, Italy, Spain” while England has been bucking the trend. That’s little consolation for those involved in Welsh education.
Sarah Hopkins says her school has strived to build an effective curriculum due to professional pride and determination to make sure the “children get what they deserve”, but she admits “there’s no checks you’re doing it properly”.
Overall, she is optimistic that the new curriculum and efforts in schools to improve standards will bear fruit in better Pisa scores in future. “I think that there will be a time where Wales will lead the way,” she says.
But some fear a generation of young people have been let down.
“It’s not the be all and end all, how you do in Pisa,” says Sibieta, “but if it means that young people are less highly skilled and less able to get good quality jobs later on in life, that has implications for all of us.”
Graphic design: Jess Carr
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