School improvement services have been in a state of flux for a year or so now, with uncertainty over how they will be delivered in future.
A Welsh Government-commissioned review showed dissatisfaction among many schools and local authorities with the current regional, consortia-based arrangements. The Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle MS, is making changes under the ‘School Improvement Partnership Programme’.
The Senedd’s Children, Young People and Education (CYPE) Committee is now looking at this issue as part of its scrutiny of school improvement and learner attainment.
The origins and history of regional working
The Welsh Government has had a ‘national mission’ to improve standards of education, in various forms, ever since the 2009 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. These were described by the then Minister as a “wake up call to a complacent system” and “evidence of systemic failure”.
Local authorities have a legal duty to promote high standards in schools and the fulfilment of all pupils’ learning potential. Amidst concerns highlighted in inspections regarding local authorities’ capacity to do this, in 2013 the Welsh Government induced the establishing of four regional consortia, through which local authorities pooled their school improvement functions. Local authorities did this rather than having money ‘top sliced’ from their budgets for this purpose and in order to retain the statutory responsibility for education.
The Hill Review had reported in 2013 that arrangements for how local authority school improvement functions were organised in Wales were “profoundly unsatisfactory” and called for change.
For over a decade, therefore, there has been a regional approach to teachers’ professional learning and development, and to meeting national objectives such as improving standards in literacy and numeracy and narrowing attainment gaps.
The importance which the Welsh Government placed on the role of the regional consortia was also evident in its response to the CYPE Committee’s 2018 inquiry into Targeted funding to improve educational outcomes. The then Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams MS, oversaw the end of the Schools Challenge Cymru programme, which consisted of targeted support to underperforming schools, pointing to the central role of the consortia in taking forward school improvement.
However, the original model of regional working broke down in South West and Mid Wales, firstly with Neath Port Talbot leaving the former ERW consortium in 2020 to operate their own school improvement arrangements. Subsequently, other local authorities also left ERW, which was formally dissolved in March 2022. Ceredigion and Powys collaborate through the ‘Mid Wales Education Partnership’ and Carmarthenshire, Pembrokeshire and Swansea have formed ‘Partneriaeth’.
The GwE, CSC and EAS consortia in North Wales, Central South Wales and South East Wales respectively continued to function alongside the review and the Welsh Government’s response. However, GwE disbanded on 31 May 2025.
The ’middle tier’ review
A ‘Strategic Education Delivery Group’, with Professor Dylan Jones as its chair, was established in 2018 by the then Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams MS. Its purpose was to provide “clarity and consistency about the roles and responsibilities of the individual partners and players in the middle tier” (the tier between schools and the Welsh Government). In July 2023, the next Education Minister, Jeremy Miles MS, set new Terms of Reference for the group’s work, tasking Professor Jones to review the roles and responsibilities of ‘education partners’ in Wales and the delivery of school improvement arrangements.
In January 2024, Jeremy Miles MS announced that the review was moving to a next phase, which he described in February 2024 as “the detailed design and co-construction of revised school improvement arrangements”. It was generally perceived as signalling the end of the regional consortia.
Alongside his statement in January 2024, the then Minister published a letter from Professor Dylan Jones setting out what the review had found. This included that school leaders had serious concerns about the value-added by the regional consortia and a clear majority of local authorities favoured a move away from regional working to partnerships which allowed a more localised approach. Reasons given included local authorities’ accountability for school improvement and their concerns about the quality of support and value for money of the consortia at a time of significant financial pressures.
The ‘School Improvement Partnership Programme’
With the appointment of the new Cabinet Secretary for Education, Lynne Neagle MS, in March 2024, and wider political changes in the Welsh Government, there was little public information over the following months on new developments. Then in autumn 2024, two statements from the Cabinet Secretary – on 17 October and 5 November – indicated that:
- the professional learning functions of the consortia were being transferred into a new ‘National Professional Learning and Leadership’ body, also taking up functions from the National Academy for Educational Leadership; and
- new local authority partnership models to take forward school improvement were being developed with the input of a ‘National Coherence Group’ chaired by former Minister for Education, Kirsty Wiliams (subsequently termed the ‘School Improvement Partnership Programme).
A statement from the Cabinet Secretary on 29 January 2025 revealed that local authorities had submitted plans to the Welsh Government in November 2024, outlining their approach to delivering local school improvement arrangements. As a result, new local authority partnerships are being developed. A letter from Kirsty Williams on behalf of the National Coherence Group to the Cabinet Secretary in December 2024 said the group “supports the principles of the proposed approach and agrees with its intention to clarify and simplify the school improvement system in Wales”.
The school inspectorate, Estyn, has emphasised 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”.
When will changes take place?
The Welsh Government said in April 2025 that local authorities’ proposals “will be implemented and transition completed” between January and summer 2025. The new national professional learning and leadership body will take up its functions in September and all schools will be “engaged in collaborative improvement partnerships” by April 2026.
The Cabinet Secretary then said on 3 June:
The move from existing school improvement arrangements is underway and there is a great deal of complex and interdependent work going on in all parts of the system to transition to the new arrangements by this autumn.
The WLGA’s submission to the CYPE Committee in May 2025 said many details regarding the new arrangements are “under development within different regions” and “councils should be able to provide further updates in the autumn term” (the timing of the CYPE Committee’s scrutiny).
The Welsh Government is also expected to consult on new school improvement guidance this year, replacing what was issued in 2022.
Getting school improvement structures and processes right is all the more pertinent with Estyn reporting that the quality of teaching and assessment is often not good enough and that shortcomings in schools’ self-evaluation and improvement practices are “holding back progress for too many learners”. It is also key to the Welsh Government delivering on its Programme for Government commitment to “continue our long-term programme of education reform, and ensure educational inequalities narrow and standards rise”.
Article by Michael Dauncey, Senedd Research, Welsh Parliament.
