Ellie Craven, is a Senior Researcher at Onward
Do you recall seeing an article I wrote for this very publication on this very topic just over a year ago?
[Very happy to help Ellie, readers can remind themselves here – Ed]
You probably don’t, but that’s okay – I’m here to remind you about Welsh education and what has gone wrong.
For over 25 years, the Welsh Labour government failed children and parents in Wales. Now the Plaid Cymru government needs to take action, and fast.
Education outcomes in Wales are on the decline. For decades, Wales has significantly underperformed in the three-yearly Programme for International Student Assessment – or PISA – rankings. The state of Welsh education is now so dire that the average Welsh child is performing at the same level as the poorest children in England.
And things are only getting worse.
Last week the most recent PISA scores were published. These measure the reading, science and maths knowledge and skills of 15 year olds across the OECD countries. In this system, the four nations are grouped together and ranked as one – the United Kingdom. The UK ranks in the top ten out of 91 countries for all three categories.
You might be thinking, well what’s the issue then? If we take a closer look at the four nations on an individual level, the issue becomes apparent.
At Onward, we have estimated where England and Wales would rank compared to the UK’s overall ranking if they were counted as individual countries.
For reading, the UK ranks in 10th place, and England alone would rank in 9th, but Wales would come in a staggering 27th place.
For science, the UK ranks 8th and England alone would also come in 8th place. But taking Wales by itself, it would come in at around 32nd place.
And finally, the UK comes in 10th place in Maths and so would England. Wales on the other hand, would be placed at around 33rd.
Now you see my cause for concern.
Last year, Onward published Devolved to Fail which looked at this issue in depth. We exposed that if no changes are made, education outcomes in Wales will fall so far that by 2040 it will be overtaken by Romania in the PISA rankings – a country whose economy is smaller than our annual welfare bill. And after last week’s update, it turns out we’ve been generous with that prediction.
As noted in our research, there are four core reasons for decline: school standards, the level of absence, the curriculum and the fact that Wales still uses the widely discredited cueing method to teach reading.
Let’s take these individually. The school inspectorate body in Wales, Estyn, continuously finds a concerning quality of school performance. Looking at the most recent annual report, over 80 per cent of secondary schools were given recommendations to improve teaching and learning.
Specifically, over two-thirds were given recommendations to enhance the quality of teaching and skill development. And 80% of schools were given recommendations related to leadership and the accountability of staff.
What’s more, the Welsh government abolished school league tables 25 years ago meaning that failing schools are not properly held accountable. Parents are completely in the dark and none the wiser to which schools to steer away from.
Making matters worse, attendance levels are also a big issue. The overall absence rate is just under 9 per cent, of which nearly a third of those children are missing over 10 per cent of school. And it’s the children from the lowest income families that are missing the most school: nearly 15 per cent of pupils receiving Free School Meals are absent from school. Indeed, 63 per cent of schools were recommended to improve attendance by Estyn last year.
Then there’s the Curriculum for Wales – it’s too vague. It is skills-based rather than knowledge based like in England. Rather being based on delivering specific knowledge and coherent sequencing, skills-based curriculums list concepts and buzzwords with no clear definition making it almost impossible to assess.
Amongst other areas, the Curriculum for Wales assesses whether pupils are considered to be “ethical, informed citizens ready to be citizens of Wales and the world” and “healthy, confident individuals ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society”. What that means is as good a guess as any.
And now the final piece of the puzzle – the cueing method of teaching children to read. This method encourages children to infer the meaning of words. Experts have found that the cueing method leads to children guessing words instead of sounding them out, with the technique being proven to damage the ability of children to learn to read.
This practice was abolished in England in 2005 following a parliamentary inquiry and the teaching of phonics has since been mandated instead. But Wales kept it despite the practice being widely discredited. Since England’s decision, reading test scores have risen and as we saw earlier England now sits in 10th place amongst OECD countries. Need I remind you where Wales ranks?
You would be forgiven for thinking that Onward’s report was a wake up call for the previous Labour government in Wales. But no. Instead, they said they “didn’t recognise these claims” and that education was “moving in the right direction”. In other words, Labour continued to bury its head in the sand.
With a change of Government in Wales comes a fresh opportunity to fix the education system. Onward is calling for five policies. The Welsh government must mandate that failing schools be taken over by academy trusts; re-introduce school league tables; reform the national curriculum into a knowledge-based one; abolish the use of the cueing method; and implement Etsyn’s recommendations immediately.
The legacy of the Labour party in Wales on education is a disgrace. This is a matter of national urgency which demands immediate action.