Teaching skills are set to feature strongly in a review of the Assembly government’s key strategy on education. The Learning Country, published in 2001, set out the policy pillars of post-devolution education in Wales, including the rejection of specialist schools and the introduction of a play-based foundation stage for under-sevens.
A review of the document has been put on hold, pending the merger of the Assembly government’s training and education department with ACCAC, the Welsh qualifications, curriculum and assessment authority, and ELWa, the post-16 funding agency.
But the government’s special adviser on education, Professor David Egan, told primary practitioners earlier this month that The Learning Country 2 would “talk up” teacher pedagogy.
“It will link around work on the foundation phase and 14-19 education,” he said. “We can’t achieve our ambitions until we make teachers and lecturers confident practitioners who are fully involved in developing their own pedagogy and sharing it.”
Professor Egan was speaking at the launch in Cardiff of the National Primary Centre Cymru’s summer 2005 report. The centre’s next conference ‘Listeners to Learners’ takes place in Rhonnda Cynon Taf on November 4. See www.npccymru.org.uk