What has Estyn said about the quality of education and training in Wales?

Estyn has said there is a mixed picture for education and training in Wales, with some strong practice but key areas in need of improvement.

In his annual report, HM Chief Inspector (HMCI), Owen Evans, gives an overview of the quality of education provision based on inspections undertaken in academic year 2023/24. He also comments on some key themes.

The Senedd’s Children, Young People and Education (CYPE) Committee took evidence from HMCI about his report on 5 March and all Members of the Senedd will have a chance to debate it on Tuesday 18 March.

Overall messages

HMCI reports that the quality of teaching and assessment is often not good enough, with over half of secondary schools and a third of primary schools inspected receiving a recommendation to improve teaching.

The report also highlights shortcomings in schools’ self-evaluation and improvement practices, which are “holding back progress for too many learners”. There are also “notable gaps” in how well schools develop pupils’ literacy, numeracy and digital skills. However, HMCI says safeguarding and well-being support are consistently strong across most schools, and there are positive pupil attitudes towards learning.

Literacy and numeracy

While pupils generally develop basic reading skills, HMCI reports they don’t always make enough progress in the latter years of primary school and beginning of secondary schools to develop more advanced reading skills.

Estyn is “really concerned” about numeracy and says there is too much variation in the teaching of maths. Maths is one of the main areas where there are teacher recruitment challenges, which are discussed in HMCI’s report.

The Welsh Government has a Mathematics and Numeracy Plan and the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle MS, has set out steps which aim to improve pupils’ literacy. Data on personalised assessments taken by pupils in Years 2 to 9 indicate a decline in reading and numeracy, coinciding with the pandemic and its fallout.

Pupil attendance

As outlined in HMCI's annual report and our article from November, pupils’ attendance is well below pre-pandemic levels.  

The latest fortnightly data published by the Welsh Government shows that for the 2024/2025 academic year to 28 February, primary school attendance is 92.8% and secondary school attendance is 89.0%. Levels have risen from their lowest point in 2022/23, although HMCI says at the current rate of improvement, it would take over ten years for secondary school attendance to recover to what it was pre-pandemic (94.7% in primary schools and 93.8% in secondary schools, in 2018/19).

Areas of concern highlighted by HMCI include the levels of persistent absence (defined as a pupil missing more than 10% of school) and the attendance of disadvantaged pupils, as measured by those eligible for free school meals (eFSM). Key points include:

• Persistent absence more than doubled between 2018/19 and 2022/23 before a slight decrease in 2023/24. It remains around twice the pre-pandemic rate at 24.7% in primary schools and 37.1% in secondary schools.
• The attendance gap between eFSM pupils and other pupils has widened to 5.5 percentage points in primary schools and 10.3 percentage points in secondary schools, in 2023/24 (see Table 1 below).
• 47% of eFSM pupils in primary schools and 61% of eFSM pupils in secondary schools were persistently absent in 2023/24 (see Table 2 below).

Table 1: Attendance by FSM eligibility

% of sessions attended
Primary schools
	eFSM	Not eFSM	% point gap
2018/19	92.1	95.3	3.2
2022/23	87.1	92.9	5.8
2023/24	87.9	93.4	5.5

Secondary schools
	eFSM	Not eFSM	% point gap
2018/19	89.5	94.7	5.2
2022/23	79.4	89.8	10.4
2023/24	79.9	90.2	10.3

 

Source: Welsh Government, Attendance of pupils in maintained schools: 2 September 2024 to 28 February 2025, Table 4

Table 2: Persistent absence by FSM eligibility

% of pupils missing 10% or more sessions
Primary schools
	eFSM	Not eFSM	% point gap
2018/19	26.9	9.7	17.2
2022/23	51.8	22.4	29.4
2023/24	46.9	18.8	28.1

Secondary schools
	eFSM	Not eFSM	% point gap
2018/19	35.5	13.4	22.1
2022/23	64.3	33.9	30.4
2023/24	61.4	30.9	30.5

 

Source: Welsh Government, Absenteeism from primary schools: September 2023 to August 2024, Table 11 and Absenteeism from secondary schools: September 2023 to August 2024, Table 11

HMCI cites two main reasons school leaders say attendance remains so low. Firstly, more pupils are frequently absent or refuse to attend school, including those with poor mental health, and secondly there has been a cultural shift among parents who now place less importance on their children attending school regularly. The Cabinet Secretary for Education has said improving attendance is one of her leading priorities.

Schools causing concern

In the case of ‘schools causing concern’, Estyn continues to place schools in three levels of follow-up: ‘Estyn review’ and two statutory categories of intervention: ‘requiring significant improvement’ and ‘requiring special measures’ (these are in ascending level of concern). In 2023/24:

• Of the 31 secondary schools inspected, 10 required follow-up. Two were placed in special measures and two were judged as requiring significant improvement, while six were placed in Estyn review.
• Of the 259 primary schools inspected, 32 required follow-up. 10 were placed in special measures and eight were judged as requiring significant improvement, while 14 were placed in Estyn review.

Estyn says the number of secondary schools in a statutory category is “really concerning” and it is working with the Welsh Government and local authorities to see how these schools can be offered more support. HMCI undertook to provide the CYPE Committee with the latest total numbers of schools in a statutory category, and whether there are any regional or demographic trends.

Changes to school improvement arrangements

The Welsh Government has recently established a ‘School improvement partnership programme’. New local authority partnerships are being developed to replace the regional consortia under a model advocated by a review the Welsh Government commissioned from Professor Dylan Jones. The regional consortia were set up around a decade ago following concerns about local authorities’ capacity to improve educational standards. They pooled local authorities’ school improvement functions operationally, although the statutory responsibility remained with local authorities.

HMCI stressed the importance of maintaining collaboration within the new school improvement arrangements and that going back to a model where 22 local authorities take different approaches would be a “disaster”. His report said the new arrangements will only succeed if the purposes for collaboration are clear.

Drop in apprenticeship completion rates

As well as schools, Estyn inspects the post-16 education and training sector, including apprenticeships in work based learning. There are six further education colleges and four independent training providers that are contracted by the Welsh Government (now Medr, the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research) to deliver apprenticeships. The total apprenticeship contract value for the 2024-25 year is £135 million.

Estyn inspected four providers in 2023/24 and recommended that each one improve the rates at which learners achieve their apprenticeships. HMCI’s annual report states “across the network, a few learners remained on-programme beyond their expected apprenticeship end dates, with a number of learners well beyond their expected dates”. This is “generally in the health, public services and care and hospitality and catering sectors”. The issue of completion of apprenticeships was also identified in last year’s report.

The Welsh Government refers to a ‘success rate’, measured as the percentage of apprentices who completed the full apprenticeship framework. The graph below shows the apprenticeship success rate by apprenticeship level and academic year. Data wasn’t produced for 2019-20 or 2020-21 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Percentage of apprenticeship success rate by apprenticeship level 

Source: Success in apprenticeships by academic year and level, StatsWales

Foundation apprenticeships (equivalent to GCSEs) saw the biggest fall in success rates but have also had the biggest recovery. However, higher level apprenticeships have not recovered in the same way and are much lower than they were pre-pandemic and other apprenticeship levels.

Overall, the success rates for apprenticeships are below pre-pandemic levels and are all at or lower than 76%.

How to follow the Senedd debate

You can follow Tuesday’s debate live on Senedd.tv and read the transcript approximately 24 hours later. There is likely to be plenty of discussion on the key challenges facing education in Wales and how standards and outcomes can be improved.

Article by Michael Dauncey and Lucy Morgan, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament