, 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.
