Welsh education is on the right road despite past damning assessments - but reform will fail unless teachers get more help from other staff, according to a major report from the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development).
School improvement in Wales has moved away from “piecemeal and short-term policy” towards a “long-term vision”, said OECD education skills director Andreas Schleicher.
But the report notes Wales’ poor performance in the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests of 15-year-olds - in 2009 it did significantly worse than average and the most recent results in December, showed the principality remains below average for science, reading and maths.
Despite some positive signs, the OECD still sees “a risk of the journey becoming piecemeal, not reaching its objectives”. Teachers at all levels will be crucial to success, the OECD says, but stresses that they cannot do it on their own.
Wales is advised, for example, to promote the use of “highly-skilled business managers for schools”, which would “reduce the administrative burden on school leaders” - a particular problem in primaries - and ensure staff can “absorb the new curriculum”.
The report, entitled The Welsh Education Reform Journey, notes that the current “unsatisfactory situation discourages teachers from pursuing headship positions and has contributed to recruitment challenges”, although several schools and local authorities have already recruited business managers or administrators.
The OECD also finds concerns about the qualifications, standard and “uncertain working conditions” of support staff, some of whom are directly responsible for supporting students with special educational needs.
Wales’ school funding model includes myriad grants, which subject schools to “excessive bureaucracy” and “failed to provide schools with the stable funding to respond to students’ special education needs in a sustainable way”.
The OECD visited Wales in November after being invited by education secretary Kirsty Williams to examine progress on educational reform. She welcomed the finding that there was commitment to improving teaching and learning “visible at all levels of the education system”.
Ms Williams said: “We are already taking action on many of [the OECD] recommendations, from creating a new national academy for leadership, transforming initial teacher education, launching new professional standards, and introducing a national approach to professional learning.
“Our job is to continue our national mission of education reform focused on driving up standards and helping every learner in Wales, whatever their background, fulfil their potential.”
A recent report by the Sutton Trust found that, of all the UK nations, Wales was doing particularly poorly in helping bright pupils from deprived backgrounds to get the most out of education.
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