Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru The National Assembly for Wales Y Pwyllgor Plant a Phobl Ifanc The Children and Young People Committee
Dydd Iau, 14 Tachwedd 2013 Thursday, 14 November 2013
Cynnwys Contents Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introduction, Apologies and Substitutions Ymchwiliad i Ganlyniadau Addysgol Plant o Gartrefi Incwm Isel—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 1 Inquiry into Educational Outcomes for Children from Low-income Households—Evidence Session 1 Ymchwiliad i Ganlyniadau Addysgol Plant o Gartrefi Incwm Isel—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 2 Inquiry into Educational Outcomes for Children from Low-income Households—Evidence Session 2 Papurau i’w Nodi Papers to Note Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o’r Cyfarfod Motion under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the Meeting
Cofnodir y trafodion hyn yn yr iaith y llefarwyd hwy ynddi yn y pwyllgor. Yn ogystal, cynhwysir trawsgrifiad o’r cyfieithu ar y pryd. These proceedings are reported in the language in which they were spoken in the committee. In addition, a transcription of the simultaneous interpretation is included.
Aelodau’r pwyllgor yn bresennol Committee members in attendance
Angela Burns	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig Welsh Conservatives
Keith Davies	Llafur Labour
Suzy Davies	Ceidwadwyr Cymreig Welsh Conservatives
Ann Jones	Llafur (Cadeirydd y Pwyllgor) Labour (Chair of the Committee)
Bethan Jenkins	Plaid Cymru The Party of Wales
Lynne Neagle	Llafur Labour
David Rees	Llafur Labour
Aled Roberts	Democratiaid Rhyddfrydol Cymru Welsh Liberal Democrats
Eraill yn bresennol Others in attendance
Simon Brown	Cyfarwyddwr Strategol, Estyn Strategic Director, Estyn
Professor David Egan	Arbenigwr Annibynnol Independent Expert
Ann Keane	Prif Arolygydd Ei Mawrhydi dros Addysg a Hyfforddiant yng Nghymru Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education and Training in Wales
Meilyr Rowlands	Cyfarwyddwr Strategol, Estyn Strategic Director, Estyn
Swyddogion Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru yn bresennol National Assembly for Wales officials in attendance
Sarah Bartlett	Dirprwy Glerc Deputy Clerk
Sian Thomas	Gwasanaeth Ymchwil Research Service
Marc Wyn Jones	Clerc Clerk
Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:29. The meeting began at 09:29.
Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau a Dirprwyon Introduction, Apologies and Substitutions
[1] Ann Jones: Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the Children and Young People Committee. I ask Members around the table to switch their mobile phones off, as they affect the translation and the broadcasting. We operate bilingually, so, should you need to use the headsets, it is channel 1 for translation from Welsh to English and channel 0 is the floor language should you need it for amplification. We do not expect the fire alarm to operate, so if it does, we shall take our instructions from the ushers, and because we are this side of the building, if we are able to get there, the assembly point is by the Pierhead building. So, we will make our way there. We have had apologies from Rebecca Evans and Simon Thomas. There are no substitutes and I believe that other Members will join us later.
09:30
Ymchwiliad i Ganlyniadau Addysgol Plant o Gartrefi Incwm Isel—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 1 Inquiry into Educational Outcomes for Children from Low-income Households—Evidence Session 1
[2] Ann Jones: We will now start our inquiry into educational outcomes for children from low-income households. As this is a new inquiry, may I ask, do Members need to declare any interests that they have not already declared on the register of Members’ interests? I see not. That is fine; thanks.
[3] We are delighted to have Estyn with us; it was not that long ago that you were here in relation to another issue, but there we go. We are delighted to have you back with us and thank you very much for your paper. Ann, do you want to introduce yourself and your team and if that is okay, we will go into some questions?
[4] Ms Keane: Yes, that is fine. I am Ann Keane, chief inspector of Estyn, the Wales inspectorate for education and training. This is Meilyr Rowlands, strategic director with particular responsibility for school inspections, and this is Simon Brown who has responsibility for local authority inspections and post-16 inspections, as well as the numerous other responsibilities that they have.
[5] Ann Jones: Thanks very much. Thank you for your paper, which Members have had, and based on the evidence that you have given us, we have some questions. The first set of questions will be on Welsh Government policy and strategy. David, this is your area to start with and then we will move on and see how we go.
[6] David Rees: Thank you, Chair. Good morning. The final paragraph in your answer to the first question in your evidence says,
[7] ‘it is difficult to evaluate WG initiatives on children’s outcomes as there are often no clear targets/aims and it is even more difficult to attribute progress to one initiative if a school has many.’
[8] I can recognise that. Is it therefore your belief that Welsh Government policies are appropriate and relevant and are lacking targets, or are Welsh Government policies actually going in the wrong direction, full stop?
[9] Ms Keane: That was a quote from the annual report and, at that time, that was the case. We know now that the tackling poverty action plan has very specific targets in relation to education. So, there are targets now. That is one thing that I would say.
[10] I would also say that there are various reviews, investigations and evaluations that have been undertaken of schemes such as Flying Start and Families First, and we have done reviews of family learning. We have commented and done inspection reports on the raising attainment and individual standards in education grant, and now we are going to look at the pupil deprivation grant. So, there is a variety of sources of evidence that evaluate policy. What we do not do directly is evaluate particular pieces of policy; we evaluate the impact of policy in schools, local authorities, or in the system, generally.
[11] Having read through your previous reports on issues to do with poverty and achievement, there is one strand, I would say, that has yet to be fully realised. That strand pertains to recommendations that this committee first made in its report in November 2008, in which there were recommendations on community-focused schools. Subsequently, in the follow-up report in February 2011, there were two recommendations, both pertaining to prioritising the development of community-focused schools. The Government subsequently accepted both of these recommendations.
[12] We know what the characteristics of community-focused schools are: out-of-school-hours learning, family learning, nurture groups, on-site access to multi-agency support, the involvement of parents, not just in the life of the school, but in the learning of pupils, and early intervention and support. Broadly speaking, those are the characteristics of community-focused schools. We have written two reports on community-focused schools, one in around 2006 and one later on in 2008. We have yet to see a coherent roll-out of a policy that covers all those characteristics that I have mentioned that pertain to community-focused schools. So, I would say, if I were to be critical of any single policy, and if I were to express an aspiration for policy, it would be that there would be a coherent approach to implementing that policy across the piece.
[13] In our current report that is about to be published, which is quoted heavily in the paper that we gave to you, we have looked at multi-agency support and the work of local authorities. You will see throughout that report that we say things like ‘a few schools do this’ and ‘a few authorities do this’. There are good practice examples. We name them: Pillgwenlly Primary School, Alexandra County Primary School, Treorchy Primary School, Swansea local authority, Neath Port Talbot local authority and Carmarthenshire local authority. However, I would say that we have not yet seen a coherent presentation and roll-out of policy to do with the characteristics of community-focused schools.
[14] David Rees: Thank you for that. Personally, it is interesting to hear you talk about community schools, because I am sure that we have an issue with that in our own Neath Port Talbot authority. In relation to that element of community engagement, do you see the Communities First learning directions as a means of doing that and taking that forward, without explicitly identifying community schools?
[15] Ms Keane: I would say that a lot of the initiatives that I mentioned—Flying Start, Families First, the literacy and numeracy framework, the national support programme, RAISE, the school effectiveness framework grant—represent a number of funding streams and policies across the piece that address some of these issues.
[16] David Rees: Is it—going on a bit—an issue that there is not enough direction and detail from the Government to local authorities to ensure that that is consistent throughout Wales? You have mentioned only a few local authorities. Does that have to be stronger? Does the emphasis and push from the Government have to be stronger to ensure that that is applied on a wider basis?
[17] Ms Keane: I would suggest that the evidence so far, going back to how policies have been expressed, and the evidence from the Estyn reports that we have undertaken on RAISE, poverty and disadvantage, and community-focused schools, suggests that this strategic vision for Wales has not been wholly successful.
[18] David Rees: Is that possibly partly attributable as a reason why some of our figures are so poor, and why there is a difference and an attainment gap in relation to poverty?
[19] Ms Keane: The gap in attainment between free-school-meals pupils and non-free-school-meals pupils has been there for a long time. It is there in many nations, and there are issues there about the nature of society itself, the culture of segments within that society and the way in which education systems remedy some of the deficiencies in the early experiences of children. I would say that, in Wales, we have done well with things like Flying Start, and with the focus on early-years development and on parenting courses. However, I would say that the impact of them has been patchy.
[20] Ann Jones: Are you happy with that, David? I see that you are. Thank you very much. We will go on to the next set of questions, which is around monitoring targets and benchmarking. We have Aled first, and I think that David has a couple of questions as well.
[21] Aled Roberts: Rydych wedi sôn am y targedau sy’n gynwysedig yn y cynllun gweithredu dros drechu tlodi, sydd newydd gael ei gyhoeddi. A ydych yn fodlon efo’r targedau hynny neu a oes unrhyw ddiffygion, yn eich barn chi?		Aled Roberts: You have mentioned the targets that are in the tackling poverty action plan, which has just been published. Are you satisfied with those targets or are there any deficiencies, in your opinion?
[22] Ms Keane: Nid wyf yn credu bod unrhyw beth yn bod ar osod targedau, ac mae angen targedau sy’n uchelgeisiol. Y cwestiwn mawr, i fi, yw sut mae’r weledigaeth i gyrraedd y targedau hynny yn mynd i gael ei gwireddu yn y realiti sydd ar lawr gwlad yn ein hysgolion. Dyna’r her fawr; felly, mae angen ffyrdd o sicrhau bod pawb sydd yn y busnes o ddarparu addysg yn perchenogi’r targedau hyn mewn ffordd sy’n golygu eu bod yn mynd i weithredu strategaethau sy’n mynd i’n helpu i gyrraedd y targedau.		Ms Keane: I do not think that there is anything wrong with setting targets, and targets are needed that are ambitious. The major question, for me, is how that vision to achieve those targets is going to be carried out in reality in our schools. That is the major challenge; so, we need means of ensuring that everyone who is in the business of providing education has ownership over those targets in a way that means that they are going to implement strategies that will actually help us to achieve those targets.
[23] Aled Roberts: Mae gen i brofiad o wahanol gyrff llywodraethol a’r rôl maen nhw’n ei chymryd efo monitro. Mae’r sefyllfa yn ddibynnol iawn ar y pennaeth. Pa fath o weithredu sydd, ar ran y cyngor, i ddelio â sefyllfaoedd lle nad yw’r pennaeth, hwyrach, yn monitro’r targedau hyn i’r graddau y byddech yn gobeithio y byddai’n ei wneud?		Aled Roberts: I have experience of different governing bodies and the role that they play in terms of monitoring. The situation is very dependent on the head. What kind of action is taking place from the councils to deal with situations where, perhaps, the headteacher is not monitoring targets to the extent that you would like to see?
[24] Ms Keane: Mae lle, wrth gwrs, i Lywodraeth Cymru daro gorolwg ar draws Cymru ac ar draws ysgolion, yn nhermau’r setiau o ddata y maen nhw’n eu casglu, ac yn y trafodaethau sy’n mynd ymlaen rhwng yr Adran Addysg a Sgiliau a’r awdurdodau a’r consortia mae lle iddynt hwy o ran blaenoriaethu trafodaethau am y targedau hynny sy’n mynd i yrru’r system i sicrhau y bydd gyrru ymlaen ar y peth.		Ms Keane: There is a place, of course, for the Welsh Government to look across Wales and across schools, in terms of the data sets that they collect, and in the discussions between the Department for Education and Skills and authorities and the consortia there is room for them to prioritise discussions on those targets that are going to drive the system to ensure that this is driven forward.
[25] Aled Roberts: Felly, a oes diffygion ar hyn o bryd o ran y data sy’n cael ei gasglu gan y consortia a’r Llywodraeth? Os ydych yn dweud bod trafodaethau pellach i’w cael, mae hynny braidd yn siomedig o ystyried bod y grant amddifadedd wedi bod mewn lle ers rhyw flwyddyn.		Aled Roberts: Therefore, are there deficiencies at the moment in terms of the data that is collated by the consortia and the Government? If you are saying that there are further discussions to be had, that is a bit disappointing given that the deprivation grant has been in place for about a year now.
[26] Ms Keane: Rwy’n credu mai un o’r heriau sy’n gysylltiedig â thargedau yw nad yw’n ddigon i ddim ond pwyso a mesur sut yr ydym yn cyrraedd targedau. Ar yr un pryd ag yr ydym yn gosod targedau, mae angen ystyried beth yw’r mecanwaith sy’n mynd i sicrhau’r gwelliannau sy’n angenrheidiol er mwyn cyrraedd y targedau hynny. Pwy, ar lawr gwlad, sy’n gyrru’r gwaith o gefnogi athrawon a phawb sy’n gweithio mewn ysgol i yrru tuag at y targedau hynny a’r hyn sy’n angenrheidiol? Mae’n haws gosod targedau nag ydyw i sicrhau bod y fecanwaith—yr isadeiledd, os hoffech chi—o fewn y system i helpu’r system i gyrraedd y targed.		Ms Keane: I think that one of the challenges in terms of targets is that it is not sufficient just to evaluate how we achieve targets. At the same time as we set targets, we need to consider what mechanism will ensure the necessary improvements to achieve those targets. Who, on the ground, is driving forward the work of supporting teachers and all those who work in schools to achieve those targets and what is necessary? It is easier to set targets than it is to ensure that those mechanisms—the infrastructure, if you will—exist within the system to help the system to achieve those targets.
[27] Aled Roberts: Fodd bynnag, a oes trafodaethau yn parhau rhwng y Llywodraeth a’r consortia ynglŷn â’r hyn sy’n cael ei fesur? Neu, a yw’r penderfyniad hwnnw wedi cael ei wneud a mater o weithredu ar lawr gwlad ydyw? Nid yw’n glir o’r hyn a ddywedasoch beth yw’r sefyllfa.		Aled Roberts: However, are discussions still taking place between the Government and the consortia about what is being measured? Or, has that decision been made and it is a matter of acting on the ground? I am not sure what the situation is from what you said.
[28] Ms Keane: Nid ydym wedi bod yn rhan o’r trafodaethau hynny rhwng yr adran, y consortia a’r awdurdodau. Fodd bynnag, o hyn ymlaen, rydym yn mynd i fod yn eistedd i mewn ar y cyfarfodydd hynny.		Ms Keane: We have not been part of those discussions between the department, the consortia and the authorities. However, from now on, we are going to sit in on those meetings.
[29] Aled Roberts: Felly, pam ar lawr gwlad nad yw ysgolion yn cymryd mwy o sylw o amddifadedd, wrth feddwl am yr holl sylw a roddwyd i hynny ers 2006? Mae hi bron i wyth mlynedd ers i sylw gael ei roi i hynny yn y lle cyntaf ac mae nifer o grantiau wedi cael eu cyflwyno. Ai’r broblem yw bod y grant am hyn o hyn o flynyddoedd a bod sylw’n cael ei roi tra bod arian yn dod drwyddo ond unwaith y mae’r arian yn mynd i rywle arall mae’r sylw yn symud i ffwrdd?		Aled Roberts: Therefore, why are schools on the ground not paying more attention to deprivation, given everything that has been done since 2006? It is nearly eight years since a focus was placed on that and a number of grants have been introduced. Is the problem that the grant is there for a certain amount of time and that focus is given to it while the money is coming through but once the money goes elsewhere the focus is shifted away?
[30] Ms Keane: Rydym wedi dweud un peth am hynny, lle rydym wedi bod yn feirniadol o’r defnydd o’r grant. Mae’r grant yn cael ei ddefnyddio ar gyfer pawb sy’n tangyflawni, yn hytrach nag ar gyfer y plant sy’n dioddef o amddifadedd nad ydynt efallai’n tangyflawni ar y lefel isaf ond yn tangyflawni o safbwynt y ffaith y gallent fod yn gwneud tipyn yn well ac y gallent symud ymlaen ymhellach. Yr ateb yw’r cwestiwn ‘Pam?’ yw ei bod hi’n anodd iawn a dim ond un actor ar y llwyfan yw’r ysgolion. Hynny yw, mae angen i nifer o bethau fod yn eu lle er mwyn i blant ddatblygu—er enghraifft, cyn cychwyn ysgol—galluoedd a sgiliau iaith cyn cychwyn ysgol i’r lefel y mae rhai plant eraill yn eu datblygu. Felly, o’r cychwyn, mae’r ysgol yn gorfod gwneud gwaith gyda rhai plant er mwyn eu helpu i ddal i fyny. Mae’n anodd ac mae’n ddrud.		Ms Keane: We have said one thing about that, where we have been critical of the use of the grant. The grant is used for everyone who underachieves, rather than for those pupils who suffer from deprivation who are perhaps not underachieving at the lowest level but are underachieving in that they could be doing better and making more progress. The answer to the question ‘Why?’ is that it is very difficult and schools are only one of the actors on the stage. That is, many things need to be in place for children to develop—for example, before they start school—their language abilities and skills to the level that some other children have developed them. Therefore, from the outset, schools have to undertake work with some pupils to help them to catch up. It is difficult and it is expensive.
[31] Buaswn i’n dweud hefyd o ran yr effaith yr ydych yn ei chael o roi unrhyw ddatblygiad i mewn i ysgolion—fel y fframwaith llythrennedd a rhifedd, y bandio a’r profion—fod unrhyw beth sy’n mynd i wella safonau yn mynd i helpu safonau pawb. Felly, o ran y bwlch rhwng y rhai sy’n dod o gefndiroedd lle mae amddifadedd, mae’n mynd i wella ond efallai na fydd yn gwella cymaint fel bod y bwlch yn cau.		I would also say that in terms of the effect of implementing any new development in schools—such as the literacy and numeracy framework, banding and tests—anything that helps to improve standards is going to improve standards across the board. Therefore, in terms of the gap between those who come from a background where there is deprivation, things will improve but they may not improve to a degree where the gap will close.
[32] Gyda llaw, rydym yn gweld bod canlyniadau a deilliannau yn gwella’n raddol yng Nghymru. Un o’r cwestiynau yng Nghymru yw pam nad ydym yn gwella’n ddigon cyflym. Mae gwelliannau yn digwydd, felly nid ydym yn dweud nad yw’r grantiau yn gweithio o gwbl ond rydym yn dweud bod rhai polisïau nad ydynt wedi cael eu cyflwyno’n llawn ac a fyddai efallai’n help er mwyn cyrraedd y targedau.		By the way, we do see that results and outcomes are improving gradually in Wales. One of the questions in Wales is why we are not improving quickly enough. Improvements are taking place, so we are not saying that the grants are not working at all but we are saying that there are some policies that have not been fully implemented and perhaps would be of assistance in achieving those targets.
[33] Aled Roberts: A ydych yn cytuno bod diffygion elfennol o fewn y proffesiwn? Roeddwn i’n synnu oherwydd, dros yr haf, ysgrifennais at bob pennaeth ac, yn amlwg, roedd rhai prifathrawon yn rhannu arfer da ac yn bendant eu barn ac yn ymwybodol o’r gwaith yr oedd sefydliadau fel y Sutton Trust wedi ei wneud, ond roedd rhai eraill nad oedd hyd yn oed wedi trafod y mater gyda’r tîm staff cyflawn felly. Dyna beth sy’n siomedig a dyna beth sy’n rhwystredig i ni fel Aelodau’r Cynulliad, a dweud y gwir.		Aled Roberts: Do you agree that there are fundamental deficiencies within the profession? I was surprised as I wrote to all headteachers over the summer and evidently some headteachers had shared best practice with their staff and had definite opinions and were aware of the work that organisations such as the Sutton Trust had been doing, but others had not even discussed the issue with the full staff. That is what is disappointing and that is what is frustrating for us as Assembly Members, to be honest.
09:45
[34] Ms Keane: Mae’n rhwystredig i finnau hefyd, ac i ninnau, i weld bod rhai ysgolion yn llwyddo ac yn gwneud gwahaniaeth, ac nad yw rhai ysgolion eraill yn gwneud yr un ymdrech.		Ms Keane: It is also frustrating for me, and for us, to see that some schools are succeeding and are making a difference, and that other schools are not making the same effort.
[35] Mr Rowlands: Byddwn yn cytuno nad yw hyn yn ddigon o flaenoriaeth i ysgolion. Yn gynharach eleni, cyhoeddom adroddiad ar hyfforddiant mewn swydd, a chasgliad yr adroddiad oedd bod pob ysgol fwy neu lai wedi rhoi blaenoriaeth glir i hyfforddiant mewn swydd ar lythrennedd. Roedd llai o ysgolion wedi rhoi blaenoriaeth i rifedd o ran hyfforddiant mewn swydd, ac ychydig iawn o ran mynd i’r afael â thlodi. Felly, mae e’n llai o flaenoriaeth. Mae’r cwestiwn pam mae hyn yn llai o flaenoriaeth yn gwestiwn da iawn. Rwy’n meddwl ei fod e’n rhannol oherwydd, fel y dywedodd Ann, pa mor gymhleth yw mynd i’r afael ag ef. Yn yr adroddiad diwethaf y cyhoeddom ar yr hyn y dylai ysgolion ei wneud, roedd 10 cam a 10 peth—gwnaethom drio gwneud yr adroddiad mor glir â phosibl—y dylai ysgol eu gwneud. Y peth cyntaf yw cael agwedd ysgol gyfan tuag at y broblem: hynny yw, tynnu at ei gilydd yr holl wahanol bethau sydd angen eu gwneud. Mae gweithio ar lythrennedd a rhifedd disgyblion difreintiedig ddim ond yn un strand o hynny. Felly, mae hyn yn rhywbeth llawer mwy cymhleth efallai na mynd i’r afael â llythrennedd neu rhifedd.		Mr Rowlands: I would agree that this is not enough of a priority for schools. Earlier this year, we published a report on INSET training, and the conclusion of that report was that more or less every school had given clear priority to INSET training on literacy. Fewer schools had given priority to numeracy in terms of INSET training, and very few in terms of tackling poverty. Therefore, it is less of a priority. The reason why it is less of a priority is a very good question. I think that it is partly because, as Ann said, of how complex it is to tackle this issue. In the last report that we published on what schools should do, there were 10 steps and 10 things—we tried to make the report as clear as possible—that schools should do. The first thing is to have a whole-school attitude to the problem: that is, to pull together all of the different things that need to be done. Working on the numeracy and literacy skills of underprivileged pupils is only one strand of that. So, it is something that is perhaps a lot more complex than tackling numeracy or literacy.
[36] Mae’r adroddiad y mae Ann yn cyfeirio ato, yr ydym yn mynd i’w gyhoeddi mewn tua tair wythnos, yn mynd i lefel fwy cymhleth eto, sef gweithio gydag asiantaethau y tu allan i’r ysgol. Mae hynny yn golygu hyd yn oed fwy o gymhlethdod, ac mae’n golygu bod angen ar arweinwyr ysgolion sgiliau nad ydynt efallai wedi cael digon o hyfforddiant arnynt yn y gorffennol, sef nid dim ond rheoli o fewn yr ysgol, ond cydweithio gydag asiantaethau a chreu rhwydweithiau. Mae hynny’n golygu set mwy cymhleth o sgiliau arwain.		The report that Ann refers to, which we are going to publish in about three weeks’ time, takes things to a more complex level again, namely working with agencies outside the school. That means even more complexity, and it means that leaders in schools need skills that they have not perhaps had enough training in in the past, namely not just managing within the school, but collaborating with agencies and creating networks. That means a more complex set of leadership skills.
[37] Aled Roberts: Felly, a oes gwendid sylfaenol hyfforddiant mewn swydd o ran arweinwyr ysgolion, lle nad yw’r materion hyn yn cael eu delio â nhw?		Aled Roberts: Therefore, is there a fundamental weakness in terms of INSET training from the point of view of schools leaders, whereby these matters are not being dealt with?
[38] Ms Keane: Rydym yn dweud yn glir yn yr adroddiad ar hyfforddiant mewn swydd nad yw ysgolion, ar y cyfan, wedi blaenoriaethu hyn yn ddigonol yn eu rhaglenni hyfforddi i athrawon.		Ms Keane: We say clearly in the report on INSET training that schools, on the whole, have not prioritised this sufficiently in their training programmes for teachers.
[39] Angela Burns: I wonder whether you could possibly identify, when we talk about schools in the round, whether there is a difference between the primary and secondary school approach to this, both in terms of INSET days and trying to put in place strategies to monitor and target support to children from deprived backgrounds.
[40] Ms Keane: What we have said in our report is that the gap in the foundation phase and key stage 2 is not as great as the gap becomes in secondary schools. There are many reasons why that is the case. One of them—I would think the obvious one—being the fact that teachers in primary schools get to know their children much better by definition simply because of the way the school timetable is structured, in that class teachers spend a long time with their classes—a whole year at least, and, in smaller schools, even longer. That means that a teacher has a longer time to get to know that child. They also tend to be smaller schools, so there are fewer pupils to get to know. There is usually an open-door policy and parents come and go into the classroom and they help out with reading. The opportunity is there for parental involvement. There is family learning, and, as children learn to read, it is easier to draw parents in at those stages. Parental involvement is probably stronger than pupil learning at primary schools and parental involvement is such a key feature—parents and peers play such an important role, especially in the early years. So, I would say that there are a variety of structural reasons to do with the characteristics of primary schools, which are much more difficult to replicate in secondary schools. Since secondary schools are bigger and pupils move around subject lessons, teachers cannot get to know pupils as well, and so they must devise schemes that give intervention and early support to those pupils, as they do in nurture groups, which is a feature of community-focused schools, where that support is there for pupils with English as an additional language and for pupils whose literacy and numeracy falls way behind what could be expected at their age.
[41] Angela Burns: Do you have any views on how radical we ought to be with secondary schools? I know that you have spoken in the past about the gap in the transition from primary to secondary and how many pupils are below the age-appropriate levels. Talking to further education colleges, they make very strongly the point that some 65% to 70% of students presenting at their education colleges at 16 are significantly below their literacy and numeracy age-appropriate levels, with a high proportion actually being functionally illiterate. It kind of seems to me that the issue very much focuses on the secondary school, because that is the bit where, instead of getting better, it seems to get worse, and I just wondered how radical you feel we could really be in that space, especially with the curriculum review opportunities.
[42] Ms Keane: I think that the curriculum review offers an excellent vehicle for all of us involved in the education system in Wales to take a look at what should be prioritised for the future. I know that things such as the literacy and numeracy framework are very useful, as are the banding and the tests, but they tend to be involved with measuring and setting targets, rather than with building capacity, and I would say that what the curriculum review offers us is an opportunity to look again at what we expect teachers and co-ordinators and leaders of language and mathematics to be doing in the curriculum, and to then ask the question as to how we are supporting them to strengthen those. If you look at the key stage 4 outcomes for pupils on free school meals, although they have made up the gap a little on the level 2, on the level 2 inclusive, they have not, and so I think that that reflects a concern that we have had for some time, which is about literacy and numeracy. Literacy and numeracy are not just about everybody being concerned with improving literacy and numeracy. It actually has to be led by teachers of mathematics and language. It also has to be based on a very sound curriculum in language and mathematics, right through the school system. I think that there is scope for us to strengthen that focus.
[43] Ann Jones: David, you had a point.
[44] David Rees: Yes, I have a couple of points on this. We focus very much on the individual schools in your report, and you identified effective schools and 10 strategies that effective schools deliver. Is enough monitoring being done at a local authority level to ensure that there is consistency, and how do we get that good practice shared across? A school may be doing good practice within itself, but how do we share that good practice across an authority, for example, so that we get that effectiveness across?
[45] Ms Keane: I think that there is a lot of discussion going on at the moment over a national model for consortia. Obviously, Simon is involved with that, so will ask him to respond on that front.
[46] Mr Brown: One of the things to be aware of—I am sure that you are aware of it—is that an expert working group is currently looking at the national model for school improvement. Some of the discussion—in fact, I was at the meeting yesterday—was to address the point that Mr Roberts made about having a national system of categorisation for schools, in terms of intervention and support for schools from the consortia. That sub-group has also been tasked—it was tasked yesterday—with looking at the data provided across schools, local authorities, regional consortia and Welsh Government. So, that sub-group, which I think is meeting next week, will be looking at that entire data issue, which is the matter that Ann Keane has just talked about.
[47] Ms Keane: And the monitoring.
[48] Mr Brown: That is right. Currently, the monitoring for this lies with the regional consortia, which are delivering the school improvement responsibilities for the local authorities, and the system leaders. We have not yet done remit or inspection work on the regional consortia, but the evidence that we are getting back from our link inspector visits to schools and consortia is that there is an inconsistency in the way in which system leaders are challenging schools and monitoring schools: first, in terms of their use of data; secondly, in the way that they are setting targets for all groups of pupils, including those who are disadvantaged; and thirdly, about the way in which they are disseminating the good practice that they see in schools to other schools, either across the authority or across the consortium, which was the concern that you raised. I think that, more specifically, there is an issue, which we have picked up, regarding the pupil deprivation grant, in that there are examples of authorities holding conferences and events about the pupil deprivation grant, but, first, it is not consistent across all the regions and all the authorities and, secondly, it tends to be targeted very much at picking up the schools that are good examples. However, the next step down, which is getting schools to talk to each other and getting groups of school leadership teams to meet, talk together and discuss how to implement that into the classroom—which, again, is the point that was touched on of how you get that down to classroom teachers, to engage them in awareness and techniques that they can use—is, I would say at the moment, underdeveloped.
[49] Ms Keane: I should say that Simon is an observer on this group, just to note the status of Estyn in relation to that group.
[50] Ann Jones: Fine. It is still Aled’s point, and I will bring Keith in, but I want to move on, because we have several issues around the pupil deprivation grant and then parental engagement, inspections and so on. There is loads that we want to do, so can you be brief?
[51] Aled Roberts: May I pick up a couple of issues there? When we had school improvement plans in the authority that I was involved with, one of the issues that we picked up was that, when it was the local authority official, rather than the consortium lead, who was tackling underperformance in certain schools, that discussion was only taking place with the school leader, so governing bodies, for example, were totally unaware of the numbers of attempts that were being made to challenge. You mentioned that it is patchy at the moment on consortia taking up issues with school leaders. Are they taking up those issues with governing bodies? I am not aware, in my region—I am still chair of governors—of seeing any direct contact between the consortium and governing bodies, for example.
[52] Mr Brown: I think that it is fair to say that practice varies. In several of the consortia, there are, if you would like to term it like this, case conferences that involve the headteacher, the chair of governors and, if they are issues about attendance, for example, the welfare officer from the local authority, which give a more holistic view of what is going on in the school. However, I think that, generally, the involvement of governors to date has not yet factored in some of the discussions that we have had around the national model.
[53] Aled Roberts: As far as the issue of conferences are concerned, are those taking place in authorities that have held back centrally the pupil deprivation grant? Some authorities have passported the whole grant through, which has led to a situation where school leaders are responsible for how the grant is spent, but there have been complaints that some authorities are holding it back centrally and schools are critical about whether all the funding that is being held back is being applied for PDG initiatives.
[54] Mr Brown: Again, I think that the picture is mixed.
[55] Ms Keane: From September next year, Estyn will be inspecting the use of the pupil deprivation grant in each school inspection, and commenting on the deployment of the money. Issues like that will become apparent in those contexts.
[56] Keith Davies: Ar yr hyn y mae’r consortia yn ei wneud yn rhanbarthol, roeddwn yn gwrando ar bennaeth ysgol gyfun fawr yn y gogledd rai wythnosau yn ôl, ac, wrth gwrs, rydym yn edrych ar beth maen nhw’n ei wneud gyda TGAU ar lythrennedd a rhifedd. Yr hyn a ddywedodd oedd ei fod yn anodd iddo gael rhywun o’r consortiwm a allai ddod i mewn—dywedwch fod ei adran fathemateg yn wan, nid oedd neb roedd yn gallu galw arno o’r consortiwm i ddod i edrych ar beth oedd y broblem, er mwyn gwella pethau. Rwy’n gobeithio, wrth inni edrych ar y consortia, y bydd mwy o gyngor i adrannau o fewn ysgolion, achos nid wyf yn ei weld yn digwydd ar hyn o bryd.		Keith Davies: On what the consortia are doing regionally, I was listening to the headteacher of a large comprehensive school in north Wales some weeks ago and, of course, we are looking at what they are doing at GCSE in terms of numeracy and literacy. What he said was that it was difficult for him to find somebody from the consortium who could come in—say that his mathematics department was weak, there was no-one that he could call upon from the consortium to come to look at what the problem was and to improve things. I hope, as we look at the consortia, that more advice will be forthcoming for departments within schools, because, at present, I do not see that happening.
[57] Ms Keane: Rwy’n credu ei bod yn deg dweud bod consortia a’r arweinwyr system wedi canolbwyntio ar gyfarfodydd gyda rheolwyr uwch mewn ysgolion, wedi trafod a gosod targedau a thrafod arweinyddiaeth, rheolaeth ac ati ond nid yw wedi bod yn glir i ysgolion o lle mae’r gefnogaeth i athrawon i fod i ddod, yn enwedig lle mae adrannau’n tangyflawni. Un peth y mae penaethiaid ysgolion yn ei wneud yw edrych ar berfformiad adrannau gwahanol ysgolion.		Ms Keane: I think that it is fair to say that consortia and system leaders have focused on meetings with senior managers within schools, and have discussed and set targets and have discussed leadership, management and so on but it has not been clear to schools where the support for teachers is supposed to come from, particularly when departments are underperforming. One thing that headteachers are doing is looking at the performance of departments in different schools.
10:00
[58] Mae’n deg dweud ein bod mewn cyfnod o newid mawr ac nad yw bob amser yn glir i ysgolion ar hyn o bryd o le mae’r gefnogaeth i fod i ddod a phwy sydd i fod i dalu am y gefnogaeth. Mae hefyd yn dod yn ôl at y ffaith bod gennych ddiwylliant o osod targedau a datblygu systemau ond mae angen bwydo’r ddarpariaeth. Hynny yw, os ydym yn dweud bod angen gwella rhifedd a llythrennedd, mae angen inni fod yn sicr bod ein hathrawon mathemateg a’n hathrawon iaith yn gwybod yn union sut i osod y seiliau ym mhob ysgol. Wedyn, rhaid gofyn pwy sy’n gosod y seiliau hynny ac a ydym yn gwneud hynny’n systematig. Mae hwnnw’n gwestiwn da.		It is fair to say that we are in a period of great change and that it is not always clear to schools where the support is supposed to come from and who is supposed to pay for that support. It also comes back to the fact that you have a culture of setting targets and developing systems but that we need to feed the provision. That is, if we are saying that numeracy and literacy need to be improved, we need to be sure that our mathematics and language teachers know exactly how to set the foundations in every school. Then, we have to ask who sets those foundations and whether we are doing that in a systematic way. That is a good question.
[59] Angela Burns: I heard your response to Aled when you said that, in going forward, you are going to be evaluating the use of the PDG when you go to visit schools, but you cannot go around all schools. Could you enumerate the concerns? I think that I have picked up that the PDG could become another RAISE. In your report on the third year of the RAISE programme, you comment that
[60] ‘in the schools visited as part of the survey, many pupils who are disadvantaged did not directly benefit from RAISE-funded work’.
[61] However, in your submission to us you also make the comment that
[62] ‘only a few local authorities give good advice to schools about how to use their PDG money’.
[63] You make a particular comment that you do not think that it focuses
[64] ‘specifically enough on the needs of individual disadvantaged learners’
[65] while accepting that the PDG is raising general outcomes.
[66] Ms Keane: In the report that we published in December, which we quoted in our paper to you, we said that the introduction of the grant has widened the range of strategies to raise the standards and well-being of disadvantaged learners. However, in many schools, similarly to RAISE, the grant is used to raise the achievement of all lower-ability learners and is not specifically directed towards disadvantaged learners. We say that this is similar to what happened with RAISE and that it will benefit pupils from a deprived background who are low-achieving. We also say that local authorities have not offered enough advice, which goes back to the 10 steps that Meilyr mentioned—all teachers should know how to do this. The last time that I talked to you about this, I talked about how the best schools take a multilevel approach. They have all the features of community-focused schools that I mentioned earlier and they also deal with things like low attendance and behaviour issues, which are linked to this whole area of concern. We are saying that local authorities, in their response to the grant bids from schools, tend to comment on targets but do not offer that kind of detailed advice and guidance on the practical aspects of delivering improvements in the curriculum.
[67] Angela Burns: You mentioned that quite a few schools cluster to use the PDG. Do you think that that is helpful or do you think that it might remove the individual further away from the money?
[68] Ms Keane: No. Robert Hill’s report makes quite a few recommendations about this and, by and large, I would agree that there are lots of benefits to clustering schools or federating schools. It means that you can get consistency across a greater number of schools in terms of whole-school systems. You can also have economies of scale that enable you, paradoxically, to release funds for the individual child that needs that extra support. So, I am in favour of the benefits of clustering or federating schools, by and large. I think that there are more benefits than shortcomings.
[69] Angela Burns: Could you just identify what you think the most significant barrier is to communicating the PDG? I am a simple soul and I would have thought that you could have the PDG and that it would be very easy to get the message out to people as to what it is for and how to employ it. However, there is obviously some sort of barrier that I do not recognise. Can you identify for us very clearly what that communication barrier is?
[70] Ms Keane: The barrier is, I think, a cultural barrier, and it is to do with wider issues about improving education and provision more generally. A lot of people will jump to the conclusion that the extra money is for the low achievers, and put the money into extra support for low achievers. They will not think that there should be a strategy across the school for dealing with absenteeism and truancy, with behaviour, with expectations of children and with how the school differentiates in all its lessons so that it can address the issues of different groups of pupils in a mixed ability classroom.
[71] In other words, the pupil deprivation grant alone will not solve all those issues, and it is much easier to think of it as something that you can use to spend on those children to give them extra support. However, what we are talking about here is a large cultural shift in attitudes and commitment, and a move out of complacency into a commitment to look strategically at the different multilayered approaches that we need to have in our schools. Just using the PDG would not be enough to deal with that. You must have people with a commitment and a vision to do that.
[72] Angela Burns: Do you think that the PDG should only be used within the school setting? Do you think that it could be used external to the school setting? For example, I am thinking about children in very rural areas from poorer backgrounds who cannot get back in to join clubs and do sports activities, which are all the things that help with engagement and attendance. Do you feel that the PDG could be elastic enough to help in some of those cases, or should it be used very much within the school setting?
[73] Ms Keane: I would like people to think far beyond the PDG, and think about how they need to develop and implement strategies to improve performance, rather than think, ‘This is what we’ve got with the PDG; once we’ve spent that, we’ve done our bit’, whatever they spend it on. I would not want to take a position on what is right and wrong in the individual examples that you gave, for instance. I think that it is up to the school. It is not about, ‘Here’s a PDG to do this job’, because that is not going to do it. It is much bigger than that. It is about a whole-school approach, and it is about renewing the commitment of teachers to looking for ways in every lesson to address those issues. It means looking at schemes of work. It means looking at methods of teaching. It means looking at lesson plans and how you intend to cater for the different learning needs of the groups of pupils that you have in each class. This is hard work, and it is very demanding of teachers.
[74] Angela Burns: A final question if I may, Chair. Given that, and given your comments about the cultural shift that is required, would you be prepared to comment on your views on what part initial teacher training could play? One of the points that we raised yesterday in our Plenary debate on attendance and behaviour was whether initial teacher training was being used effectively enough to get some of these messages across. It is no longer about ‘cat sat on mat’—it is far more strategic about how you manage your children, your class and your part of the school. Do you feel that teacher training is adequate enough to do that?
[75] Ms Keane: Teacher training takes a relatively short time. For a lot of young people who go into teacher training, their immediate needs are about understanding their subject area, understanding the kinds of children that they will be teaching, understanding how to organise a classroom and understanding something about school policies and systems and how they would fit into that. To hope that they would grasp the larger strategic issues here might be a little ambitious, although that does not mean to say that they should not be made aware of these issues in their teacher training. However, they are obviously not going to be able to solve all of that. I think that it is in the induction, the Masters in Educational Practice and the early years of teaching that we must not lose the opportunity to instil that awareness in our young teachers of how they should be dealing with these challenges. When they get to a stage when they feel confident in the classroom, and feel that they are reasonably okay with their subject knowledge and how they apply it, and how they teach their subject or subjects, this is not the time to become complacent. This is the time to carry on asking questions about whether they are doing all that they can.
[76] It is very difficult for a young teacher, too, if they start to teach in a school where the culture is fairly complacent, because they are learning that culture, from being within that culture. They are among a peer group that is not taking these issues as seriously as it should. In those situations, these would be the schools that we identify in our inspection reports. Therefore, while awareness raising in teacher training is important, I do not think that we can solve all of it through teacher training.
[77] Angela Burns: Do you think that it would be more useful if we could try to use the Master’s a bit more, and perhaps push it a little further down the line, and for teachers not do it immediately, as they have just finished their training. I can imagine that maybe you have been teaching for 10 or 15 years and, like anybody in any job, you need to be re-inspired, re-engaged and refreshed so that you feel that you have efforts being poured into you as well. So, I wonder whether that could be a way.
[78] Ms Keane: I think so. It goes beyond the early years of teaching, too. We need a career structure for teachers and points at which they can be trained and developed in order to develop the leaders of the future. We do not have that national structure at the moment.
[79] Angela Burns: No. Thank you.
[80] Mr Rowlands: The only thing I would add is that Teach First is an initial teacher training programme that has a specific intention to address poverty, because the idea is to recruit the brightest and the best and to place them in schools of high deprivation. We are likely to be asked by the Government to evaluate that programme next year. So, we will be looking carefully at it.
[81] Ann Jones: Could we move on to the role of schools, local authorities and regional consortia? Keith, do you want to take the first set of questions? I think that Aled also has a couple of points.
[82] Keith Davies: Wrth edrych ar eich tystiolaeth ysgrifenedig, roeddwn i’n synnu at rai o’r pethau ynddi. Rydych chi’n dweud, cyn belled â’u bod nhw’n edrych ar dlodi, nad oes un ysgol wedi cael cefnogaeth neu wybodaeth gan y consortia—dim un; roeddwn i’n synnu o weld hynny. Fe ddywedoch chi’n gynharach, Ann, fod rhai awdurdodau yn gwneud yn dda, tra bod rhai yn wael  iawn. Mae’n dweud bod gwahaniaeth o rhwng 24% a 42% rhwng awdurdodau yng Nghymru. Rwy’n gwybod eich bod wedi bod yn edrych ar awdurdodau ac nad oedd yr un ohonynt wedi’i ddyfarnu’n rhagorol, a bod pump yn wael iawn. Felly, beth sy’n digwydd? A oes angen i ni wella yn y fan honno? Os nad oes gwelliant, ni chawn welliant yn ein hysgolion.		Keith Davies: Looking at your written evidence, I was surprised at some of the things in it. In terms of addressing the issue of poverty, you say that not one school has had support or information from the consortia—not one, and I was surprised at that. You said earlier, Ann, that some local authorities are doing well, while others are very poor. It says that there is a variation of between 24% and 42% between the authorities in Wales. I know that you have been looking at authorities and that none was adjudged to be excellent, while five were very poor. So, what is going on there? Do we need to improve there? If we do not improve there, we will not have improvement in our schools.
[83] Ms Keane: Simon, you can update us on progress in local authorities.
[84] Rydym yn monitro, wrth gwrs, yr awdurdodau hynny nad ydynt wedi llwyddo yn yr arolygiadau.		We do monitor, of course, those authorities that have not succeeded in the inspections.
[85] Mr Brown: You are quite correct in what you are saying. We currently have a strategy of follow-up with our inspections. We are monitoring those authorities that are in need of significant improvement or in special measures. We send in teams of inspectors, usually after 12 or 18 months, to look at the progress that they are making.
[86] The other thing that we are doing is discussing, in terms of the school improvement agenda, what the regional consortia are doing in terms of taking forward improvements in those authorities, and how they are working with the authority not just in terms of the school improvement, but in terms of moving forward other services that remain with the local authority, such as support for additional learning needs, support for social inclusion, school places and admissions et cetera. This is one of the concerns that we have brought to the committee before. The regional consortia model has to have an eye on the services that remain with the local authority’s statutory functions. Support for a lot of the young people we are talking about today also involves support from ALN services and from the social inclusion services regarding exclusions and attendance.
10:15
[87] What we do not want is a disconnect between the work of the consortia and the work that remains with local authorities. Part of the ongoing discussion regarding a national model is how that interlinkage can be maintained and how it can be scrutinised. There is discussion about the levels of scrutiny in local authority scrutiny groups and committees, and how they will interface with the scrutiny models that have been proposed for the regional consortia. This is all live discussion at the moment. However, you are right about those authorities under special measures. Some of the problems that those authorities have perhaps go beyond the education directorate, per se, and are more to do with corporate governance and the corporate running of the authority. It is about their wider issues and the linkages between the education and social services directorates and the children’s services directorates, et cetera. So, it is quite a complex issue.
[88] Ms Keane: Y peth pwysig yw ein bod ni’n monitro’n rheolaidd yr awdurdodau hynny sydd yn destun mesurau arbennig. Rydym yn mynd i arolygu’r consortia ymhen rhyw flwyddyn. Yn y cyfamser, rydym yn mynd i gynhyrchu adroddiad cylch gorchwyl ar y sefyllfa. Ar hyn o bryd, fel mae Simon wedi amlygu, mae’n gymhleth iawn.		Ms Keane: The important thing is that we regularly monitor those authorities that are under special measures. We will be inspecting the consortia in about a year’s time. In the meantime, we are going to produce a remit report looking at the situation. At present, as Simon has outlined, it is very complicated.
[89] Keith Davies: Ydy. Roeddwn i’n edrych echdoe ar eich adroddiad blynyddol diwethaf, a ddaeth mas ym mis Ionawr, ac roedd yn dangos yr awdurdodau mewn gwahanol liwiau. Roedd ambell awdurdod yn gwneud yn eithaf da —ac mae’n rhaid imi ddweud bod sir Gâr yn un o’r rheini—ond roedd ambell un yn wael iawn.		Keith Davies: Yes. I was looking the day before yesterday at your last annual report, which came out in January of this year, and it showed the authorities in different colours.  Some authorities were quite good— and I have to say that Carmarthenshire was one of those—but some were very poor.
[90] Ms Keane: Un peth diddorol yw bod yr awdurdodau sydd wedi gwneud yn weddol dda yn ein harolygiadau ni hefyd yn rhoi astudiaethau achos da i ni yn yr adroddiad ar amddifadedd. Felly, mae hynny’n arwyddocaol, achos roeddem wedi arolygu rhai o’r rheini cyn yr adroddiad hwn, ond, maen nhw’n dal i wneud gwaith da.		Ms Keane: An interesting point is that those authorities that have done quite well in our inspections have also put forward good case studies in the report on deprivation. So, that is significant, because we inspected some of them before this report, but they are still doing good work.
[91] Keith Davies: Ie. Diolch.		Keith Davies: Yes. Thank you.
[92] Aled Roberts: Roedd problem gyda swyddi’n cael eu llenwi yn y consortia yn ystod y flwyddyn gyntaf. Beth yw’r sefyllfa ar hyn o bryd ynglŷn â swyddi? A oes yn dal i fod swyddi gwag? Rydym yn sôn am y gwaith yr ydym yn disgwyl i gonsortia ei wneud, ond ni fydd y gwaith hwnnw’n cael ei wneud os oes nifer o swyddi gweigion.		Aled Roberts: There was a problem with jobs being filled within the consortia in the first year. What is the current situation regarding jobs? Are there still vacant posts? We are talking about the work that we expect the consortia to do, but that work will not be done if there are a number of vacant posts.
[93] Mr Brown: This is a situation that is in a state of flux. There is discussion about the characteristics of the current set of system leaders and whether they are fit for purpose. There are some very good system leaders. There are some system leaders who have experience of senior leadership in schools and who have the credibility and expertise to go in and challenge senior leadership teams in schools, particularly within secondary schools. However, there are also system leaders who, perhaps, do not have that skill set that we need. So, there is discussion, as part of this national debate, about whether there needs to be, for want of a better word, a refresh of the system leader cadre to move this agenda forward.
[94] Ms Keane: Have they recruited all of the system leaders that they planned to recruit?
[95] Mr Brown: More or less, yes.
[96] Ms Keane: I thought that they had by now.
[97] Mr Brown: I do not think that there is a capacity issue, but I would say that maybe there is a capability issue.
[98] Aled Roberts: How do we end up in a situation where people are appointed who may not be capable if the whole purpose of what we have set up is to actually deal with problems of capability within our education system? How does that happen?
[99] Mr Brown: Some of the consortia went through an appointment process, which was a formalised appointment process with assessment centres and interviews and so forth, to appoint their system leaders. Others transferred staff from the constituent local authorities into the consortia.
[100] Ms Keane: So, there was no actual—
[101] Aled Roberts: Could we have a note regarding what has happened?
[102] Ms Keane: We do not monitor the detail of appointment systems, I have to say.
[103] Aled Roberts: Okay. We will ask the same question of whoever comes to give evidence then.
[104] Ann Jones: I think that that is one for the Minister, really. It is for the Government, therefore we will have to ask the Minister about the varying differences around the consortia. If we had the answer to the question that you have just posed, we would not be sitting here, would we? We would all be doing other things.
[105] Aled Roberts: It seems to be a bit of a ridiculous waste of two years, though, if you ask me.
[106] Ann Jones: Absolutely. I do not disagree with you, but I do not think it is for Estyn. I think that it is a policy issue that we need to ask the Minister about.
[107] Ms Keane: Yes. The Robert Hill report indicates this huge variability between consortia and the way that they were set up on different bases and with different remits and so on. So, it is an issue.
[108] Ann Jones: It is an issue in every school. Why does every school not do uniformed—it is down to individual choices, sometimes, and how best to get that output, is it not? It is one for the Minister. We will move on to parental engagement, starting with Bethan.
[109] Bethan Jenkins: Yn ddiweddar, gwnaethom weld adroddiad yn y wasg ynglŷn â’r ffaith bod llai a llai o rieni yn awr yn darllen gyda’u plant. Rwy’n gwybod nad yw’n cysylltu gyda’r agenda hwn yn benodol, ond mae mewn ffordd, oherwydd rydym yn gweld pan fydd rhieni yn treulio amser gyda’u plant i’w datblygu ar ôl yr ysgol eu bod yn gallu gwneud yn well yn yr ysgol. Yn y policy remit hwn, beth ydych chi’n meddwl sydd yn gweithio pan fo ysgolion yn gweithio’n agos gyda rhieni? Rydym newydd sôn am ysgolion cymunedol. Ai dyna’r panacea y dylai pob ysgol edrych arno o ran sut maen nhw’n ymwneud â rhieni neu aelodau eraill o’r teulu, neu a oes ffyrdd eraill gwell?		Bethan Jenkins: We saw a recent report in the press regarding the fact that fewer and fewer parents are now reading with their children. I know that it does not link with this agenda specifically, but it does in a way, because we see that if parents spend time with their children to develop them after school they can then perform better in school. In this policy remit, what do you think works when school work closely with parents? We have just spoken about community schools. Is that the panacea for all schools to look at in terms of how they engage with parents or other members of the family, or are there other, better ways?
[110] Ms Keane: Nodais nifer o nodweddion ysgolion cymunedol yn gynharach. Un ohonynt yw bod y rhieni yn dod i mewn i’r ysgol ac ynghlwm wrth waith yr ysgol. Gwnaethom adroddiad beth amser yn ôl yn dangos bod rhieni yn fodlon iawn i ddod i mewn i godi arian a gwrando ar eu plant mewn cyngherddau ac ati, ond y peth pwysig yw bod y rhieni hynny ynghlwm wrth yr hyn y mae’r plant yn ei ddysgu ac yn ei ddeall. Felly, rydym yn sôn hefyd am raglenni dysgu teulu. Mae rhaglenni dysgu teulu sy’n cael eu hariannu ac rydym yn gefnogol iawn i’r rhain. Maen nhw yn gweithio. Mae yna rieni sydd ag agweddau negyddol iawn at ysgolion oherwydd eu bod nhw eu hunain wedi cael profiadau annymunol iawn pan oedden nhw yn yr ysgol, ac mae’n anodd iawn i ysgolion gyrraedd plant y rhieni hynny. Fodd bynnag, mae’n hollbwysig eu bod yn ceisio gwneud hynny ac mae rhai ysgolion yn llwyddo. Mae hwn yn waith anodd iawn.		Ms Keane: I identified earlier a number of characteristics of community schools. One of those is that the parents come into the school and are involved in the work of the school. We produced a report some time ago that showed that parents are very willing to come to raise money and to listen to their children in concerts and so forth, but the important thing is that those parents are involved in what the children are learning and understand it. So, we are talking also about learning family programmes. There are learning family programmes that are funded, and we are very supportive of them. They do work. There are parents who have very negative attitudes towards schools because they themselves had very undesirable experiences when they were at school, and it is very difficult for schools to reach the children of those parents. However, it is very important that they try to do that, and there are some schools that succeed. This is very difficult work.
[111] Mae hefyd angen un o nodweddion eraill ysgolion cymunedol, sef bod asiantaethau eraill ynghlwm wrth hyn, fel Families First a’r hyn y maen nhw’n ei alw yn team around the family,  ac yn gweithredu mewn ysgolion lle mae gan rieni ddelwedd negyddol o ysgolion, ac o awdurdod yn gyffredinol, gyda llaw. Mae’n anhepgor i’r broses o helpu’r plant ein bod yn cyrraedd y rhieni hynny.		There is also a need for another characteristic of community schools, namely that other agencies are involved, such as Families First and what they call the team around the family under, to work within schools where parents have a negative perception of schools, and of authority generally, by the way. It is essential to the process of helping the children that we reach those parents.
[112] Mae’n bwysig bod rhieni yn darllen gyda’u plant. Mae’n bwysig hefyd fod rhieni yn siarad â’u plant cyn datblygu sgiliau darllen. Mae sgiliau iaith yn ymwneud â deall iaith a bod yn gyfarwydd ag iaith a synau cyn cysylltu sŵn gyda llythyren a gair. Felly, mae’r holl agwedd tuag at yr hyn sy’n digwydd yn y blynyddoedd cynnar yn hollbwysig yn y fan hon. Wyt ti am ychwanegu rhywbeth, Meilyr?		It is important that parents read with their children. It is also important that parents talk to their children before developing reading skills. Language skills are about understanding language and being familiar with language and sounds before connecting sounds with letters or words. Therefore, the whole aspect of what is happening in the early years is very important here. Do you want to add anything, Meilyr?
[113] Mr Rowlands: Rwy’n cytuno gyda’r hyn y mae Ann yn ei ddweud. Rhai o’r pethau ymarferol mae ysgolion yn eu gwneud yw dod â gwasanaethau ac asiantaethau allanol i mewn i’r ysgol. Pan ydym yn sôn am y plant mwyaf difreintiedig, mae’r teuluoedd yn ddifreintiedig ac mae ganddynt broblemau byrdymor sydd angen help uniongyrchol, weithiau. Un o’r pethau mae’r ysgolion mwyaf llwyddiannus yn ei wneud—mae Ann wedi sôn am rai sydd yn mynd i fod yn ein hadroddiad, sef Ysgol Gynradd Pilgwenlli ac Ysgol Alexandra yn Wrecsam ac yn y blaen—wrth ddod â’r gwasanaethau hynny i mewn i’r ysgol, yw helpu’r teuluoedd gyda’u problemau uniongyrchol ac mae hynny’n abwyd, mewn ffordd, i’w cael i mewn i’r ysgol i weld bod ysgol yn wahanol i’r hyn ydoedd yn yr hen ddyddiau, lle roedden nhw wedi cael profiad annifyr, a’i fod yn gallu eu helpu. Felly, maen nhw’n denu’r teuluoedd i mewn. Mae problem arbennig gyda denu dynion i mewn. Mae lot o’r pethau hyn yn tueddu i fod yn fwy llwyddiannus gyda menywod, ond mae’r ysgolion gorau yn trio cael dynion hefyd i ddod i mewn. Unwaith y maen nhw i mewn, gallant gynnig y math o wasanaethau yr oedd Ann yn sôn amdanynt, fel eu helpu i ddarllen, gyda’u plant, ac yn y blaen, ond hefyd bethau gyda thai a gwasanaethau cymdeithasol, eu helpu gyda gwaith papur sy’n ymwneud â’r cyngor, a hyd yn oed sicrhau bod ganddynt ddoctor a deintydd, er enghraifft—mae rhai teuluoedd heb hynny, ac mae hynny’n bwysig i’w hiechyd, ac yn y blaen. Mae’r holl ystod o bethau hynny yn denu nhw i mewn.		Mr Rowlands: I agree with what Ann has said. Some of the practical things that schools are doing involve bringing external services and agencies into schools. When we are talking about the most disadvantaged children, the families are disadvantaged and they have short-term problems that sometimes need direct help. One of the things that the most successful schools are doing—Ann has mentioned some examples that will appear in our report, such as Pillgwenlly Primary School and Alexandra CP School in Wrexham and so on—where they bring those services into the school, is to help those families with their individual problems, which, in turn, brings the families into the school so that parents can see that school is not what it was in the past, when they had had negative experiences, and that it can help them. So, they bring those families in. There is a particular problem in bringing men in. A lot of these things tend to be more successful with women, but the best schools try to get men to come in as well. Once they are in, they can offer the type of services that Ann was talking about, such as helping them to read with their children, and so on, but also with housing and social services, helping them with paperwork that relates to the council, and even ensuring that they have a doctor and a dentist, for example—some families do not have that, and that is important to their health. So, that whole range of things brings them in.
[114] Mae hyn yn swnio’n waith caled, ond maent yn gwneud pethau sy’n lot o hwyl, hefyd. Er enghraifft, roeddwn yn darllen am un ysgol oedd â pheth o’r enw ‘Men Behaving Dadly’. Roeddent yn mynd i ffwrdd am wyliau byr gyda’u plant—y tadau a’r plant. Roedd hynny’n ffordd iddynt gael hwyl, ond yr agenda gudd oedd eu helpu o ran sut i ymateb i’w plant a’u helpu gyda phethau fel darllen a gwrando, ac yn y blaen.		This all sounds like hard work, but they do things that are a lot of fun, as well. For example, I was reading about one school that had a scheme called ‘Men Behaving Dadly’. They would go away for a short holiday with their children—the fathers and their children. That was a way of them having fun, but the hidden agenda was to teach them how to respond to their children and to help them with things such as reading and listening, and so on.
[115] Bethan Jenkins: Gan gydnabod bod y pethau hyn yn digwydd, nid oes un ohonom eto wedi siarad am y stigma sydd efallai’n gysylltiedig ag edrych yn benodol ar blant o deuluoedd difreintiedig yr oedd fy mam yn eu dysgu, er enghraifft. Weithiau, mae’n dweud bod plant yn dod i mewn i’r ysgol ac mae eu gwisg ysgol mewn ystâd ofnadwy. Maent yn dod o deuluoedd lle mae pump neu chwech o blant, efallai, a’r brif broblem yw eu hiechyd a’r ffordd y maent yn edrych. Sut ydym yn mynd i helpu’r plant mewn ysgolion nad yw’n gymunedol, ac nad ydynt yn cael y cynlluniau mawr hyn, heb fod y plant yn teimlo eu bod yn cael eu pigo mas i wneud rhai cynlluniau? Efallai nad ydynt am gael eu trin yn wahanol i bawb arall, ac maent yn teimlo’n sensitif am hynny.		Bethan Jenkins: I recognise that these things are happening, but none of us has talked yet about the stigma that is perhaps related to looking specifically at the children from underprivileged families who my mother teaches, for example. Sometimes, she says that children come to school and their uniforms are in a bad state. They come from families where there may be five or six children, and the main problem is their health and the way that they look. How are we going to help children in schools that are not community schools and that do not have these major schemes, without the children feeling that they are being picked out to be involved in some schemes? Perhaps they do not want to be treated differently to everyone else, and they feel sensitive about that.
[116] Mae hynny’n wir am y rhieni, hefyd; rwy’n gwybod am rai rhieni nad ydych yn gallu cael gafael arnynt. Sut fyddech yn cael gafael ar y tadau nad ydynt yn byw gyda’r teulu a thadau nad ydynt yn gallu gweld y plant achos eu bod yn mynd trwy achosion llys? Mae’n gymhleth iawn, ac nid oes un ateb, ond sut all hyn fod yn fwy systematig, fel yr oeddech yn ei ddweud yn gynharach, er mwyn iddo fynd trwy’r ysgol a bod y plant yn teimlo’n gyffyrddus gyda’r hyn sy’n digwydd?		The same is true for the parents, too; I know that you cannot get hold of some parents. How would you be able to get hold of fathers who do not live with the family and fathers who cannot see the children because they are going through court cases? It is very complex, and there is no one solution, but how can this be more systematic, as you were saying earlier, so that it goes through the schools and that children feel comfortable with what is happening?
[117] Ms Keane: Mae hynny’n ymwneud â faint o ymddiried sydd gan y gymuned yn yr ysgol, faint mae’r ysgol yn ymestyn allan i’r gymuned a sut mae’r plant yn cael y profiad yn y gymuned. Mae hyn yn gweithio. Rwyf wedi bod mewn ysgolion cynradd mewn ardaloedd difreintiedig iawn yng Nghymru lle y maent yn ymestyn mas i’r gymuned, ac mae’r rhieni yn fodlon dod i mewn ac yn ymlacio yn yr ysgol ac yn teimlo eu bod yn perthyn yn yr ysgol, oherwydd mae’r ysgol wedi creu’r ddelwedd hon yn y gymuned. Mae’n gallu gweithio, felly, ond mae’n anodd.		Ms Keane: It is to do with how much the communities trust the schools, to what extent the school reaches out to the community and what experiences children have in the community. This works. I have been in primary schools in very disadvantaged areas of Wales where they reach out to the community, and the parents are willing to come in, and are relaxed in the school and feel that they belong to that school, because the school has created that image in the community. It can work, therefore, but it is difficult.
[118] Rydym hefyd yn sôn am stigma plant sy’n cael cinio am ddim mewn ysgolion cynradd, ac mae’r canran yn syrthio yn yr ysgolion uwchradd oherwydd y stigma ac oherwydd nad yw’r plant eisiau i’r plant eraill ddeall nad ydynt yn gallu fforddio talu am bryd ysgol. Fodd bynnag, mae polisïau fel brecwast yn yr ysgolion yn gweithio i helpu ar yr ochr o sicrhau bod plant yn cael bwyd digonol.		We are also talking about the stigma of children who receive free school meals in primary schools, and the percentage falls in secondary schools because of the stigma, and because the children do not want other children to know that they cannot afford to pay for their school meal. However, policies such as school breakfasts help with the aspect of ensuring that children get sufficient food.
[119] Hefyd, mae polisïau sy’n ymwneud â grantiau ar gyfer pethau yn cael eu defnyddio i helpu. Yn aml iawn, pan fo trip ysgol, ac rwy’n gofyn, ‘Wel, beth sy’n digwydd i’r plant hynny sydd yn methu talu?’, mae ysgolion yn dweud wrthyf, ‘Rydym yn gwneud hynny heb ddangos’. Lle rwyf wedi gweld yr achosion hynny, mae’n ymddangos i mi fod hynny’n wir: eu bod yn medru talu am y plant hynny heb dynnu sylw plant eraill at y peth. Mae ysgolion da yn gallu delio â phethau fel hynny. Wrth gwrs, nid yw hynny’n golygu eu bod yn gallu ateb holl broblemau cymdeithas.		There are also policies in place to ensure that those grants are used to help pupils. Very often, when there is a school trip, and I ask, ‘Well, what happens to those children who cannot pay?’, schools will tell me, ‘We do that without making it obvious’. It seems to me that that is the case: that they can pay for those pupils without drawing the attention of the other children to that fact. Good schools can deal with things like that. Of course, that does not mean that they resolve all of the problems in society.
[120] Bethan Jenkins: Mae gen i un cwestiwn i orffen. Rwy’n gwneud lot ar hyn o bryd gyda llythrennedd ariannol, oherwydd mae gen i Fil yn mynd drwodd o ran hynny o beth. Mae nifer fawr o fudiadau wedi dweud y byddai’n help i rieni allu cael access at undebau credyd o fewn yr ysgolion, felly, os oes trip ysgol, gallant drefnu i gynilo arian chwe mis yn flaenorol, er enghraifft, ar gyfer y trip, fel nad ydynt wedyn yn gorfod dibynnu ar yr ysgol. A ydych yn gweld bod pethau fel hynny yn digwydd mewn ysgolion?		Bethan Jenkins: I have one question to finish. I am doing a lot with financial literacy at the moment, because I have a Bill going through in that field. A number of bodies have said that it would be helpful for parents to have access to credit unions within schools, so that, if there is a school trip, they can arrange to save money over a period of six months, for example, so that they do not have to depend on the school. Do you see that those kinds of things are happening in schools?
[121] Ms Keane: Gallai hynny ddigwydd, a gellir hefyd roi cyngor ar ddyledion. Rydym yn clywed gymaint am bobl yn mynd i ddyled, ac mae’n bwysig eu bod yn gweld yr ysgol fel ffynhonnell cyngor ar y materion sy’n creu problemau iddynt yn bersonol.		Ms Keane: That could happen, and debt advice could also be provided. We hear so much about people going into debt, and it is important that they see the school as a source of advice on those issues that create problems for them personally.
10:30
[122] Keith Davies: Gaf i ofyn cwestiwn am brydau bwyd am ddim? Mae nifer o ysgolion yn awr sydd â system cyfrifiadurol, ac nad oes neb yn gwybod wedyn a yw’r plentyn yn cael bwyd am ddim. A yw’r rhan fwyaf o ysgolion uwchradd fel hynny yng Nghymru yn awr? Byddai’n help mawr pe byddai pob ysgol â’r system hwnnw. Byddwch yn ffaelu pigo pwy oedd yn derbyn bwyd am ddim wedyn.		Keith Davies: Could I ask a question about free school meals? A number of schools now have computerised systems, and nobody knows then whether the pupil is having free school meals. Do the majority of secondary schools have that system now? It would be a great help if every school had that kind of system. You would not then be able to pick out the free school meal pupils.
[123] Ms Keane: Mae unrhyw beth y gallant ei wneud i helpu fel hynny yn beth da. Nid ydym yn casglu gwybodaeth yn benodol ar hyn.		Ms Keane: Anything they can do to help in that regard would be a good thing. We do not collect specific information on this.
[124] Mr Rowlands: Gwnaeth y Llywodraeth adroddiad ar brydau bwyd am ddim ac ar y broblem ynglŷn â pham nad yw rhai plant yn cymryd prydau bwyd am ddim er eu bod yn medru. Nid y ffactorau hynny oedd y rhai mwyaf pwysig. Roedd hynny’n dipyn bach o syndod i mi, yn sicr, ond y ffactorau mwyaf pwysig oedd y rhai sy’n effeithio ar blant nad ydynt yn cael prydau bwyd am ddim—pethau fel ciwiau, safon y bwyd, ac ati. Mae’r ymchwil yn eithaf diddorol; mae’n mynd yn ôl tua dwy flynedd, rwy’n credu.		Mr Rowlands: The Government did compile a report on free school meals and the problems in terms of why some children do not take up free school meals even though they are eligible. Those were not the most important factors. That was quite surprising to me, certainly, but that was not the important factor. The most important factors were the ones that impacted on children who do not have free school meals—things like queues, and the quality of the food, and so forth. That research is quite interesting—it goes back about two years, I think.
[125] Ms Keane: A hefyd mae dewis o’r siop jips—mae’n gallu bod yn ddeniadol ambell waith.		Ms Keane: And also the choice of a nearby chip shop—that might be quite appealing sometimes.
[126] Ann Jones: We have touched on free school meals, and I wanted to carry on with that. Suzy has a couple of questions. We have a specific question on inspections, which I think we touched on, but we will write to you on that, because we are just running out of time. We will just do the free school meals.
[127] Suzy Davies: I will do my best. I wanted to ask you a practical question and a slightly more philosophical question.
[128] Ann Jones: We have got time. We can run five or 10 minutes over, but I do not want to go past that.
[129] Suzy Davies: I will invite short answers, then, if that is okay. Looking through not just your evidence, but evidence from other witnesses as well, on this particular report, which is to do with the effect on educational outcomes of low-income households, we have a plethora of terminology here, which includes ‘free school meals’, ‘low-income households’, ‘deprived’, ‘disadvantaged’, and ‘poverty’. Of course, these things are not synonymous. When we are talking about free school meals, we are talking, obviously, about low-income households, but they are low income for a specific reason, which is worklessness. By combining a group of children into a cohort that is seen to be disadvantaged—because, effectively, of worklessness rather than low income—we are marking them out as being disadvantaged for a specific reason. It is not necessarily because they are from low-income households, and I wondered whether you had a view on whether using the current free-school-meals headline, if you like, actually avoids children who come from other sorts of low-income households benefitting from the programmes that are aimed at children receiving free school meals.
[130] I also want to know whether you think the current changes happening in the UK, which mean that we have to define free school meal recipients differently, are not just complicated, which I am sure you would agree they are, but actually offer an opportunity to include other children who suffer forms of disadvantage that are related to poverty, but not necessarily worklessness, into those programmes. If so, what is the likely effect on how programmes are targeted? I will give you an example, because it is always easier to see through an example. If a child comes from a workless home because a parent or parents have mental health issues, then sensible leaders will understand that that is the particular disadvantage suffered by that child. A child from any other kind of background may have a parent with mental health issues, and that child may actually respond to programmes that they cannot access. They will both be disadvantaged. They may both come from low-income households, but only the free-school-meals recipient will get the benefit of the programme. Can you see a way forward with, shall we say, the complexities coming in with universal credit giving the Welsh Government an opportunity to make free school meals available or actually to change the criteria so that this reaches low-income households rather than just workless households? I am sorry that it is a very convoluted question.
[131] Ms Keane: No, I can see the point you are making.
[132] Suzy Davies: It would have a massive effect on the types of programmes and how money is targeted later if different children were involved. It can include as well as exclude children, this change.
[133] Ms Keane: Absolutely, and any particular set of criteria will often have the effect of excluding some that maybe should be included. So, there is certainly an opportunity, when anything changes, to take stock of the limitations of the previous criteria and to add in criteria that would reach more pupils in need. I think there are certain concerns about the way that the universal credit system and its roll-out will affect the free-school-meals indicator, because we have found—and I know that there has been a lot of debate on how good a proxy it is for disadvantage—and pretty much everybody comes to the conclusion that it may not be perfect, but it is probably the closest thing that we have to something that is reasonably usable.
[134] Suzy Davies: Do you think that that is still a valid position? Is there not another way of using low income to capture more children from backgrounds where there are disadvantages that are not just related to a lack of money?
[135] Ms Keane: I absolutely agree and I think that this is an opportunity to look more widely at criteria that would spread the net more widely and be a more sophisticated instrument for capturing and identifying those individuals.
[136] Mr Rowlands: I would agree, but, until now, that has not been our problem; our problem has been that the money has been spent on universal initiatives and interventions rather than targeting those in need. That has been the main problem that we have had with raising attainment and individual standards in education in Wales and it is probably currently the problem with the pupil deprivation grant. However, I think that you are right that, in time, people will start to focus on free-school-meals pupils to the exclusion of other pupils who could benefit from targeted support.
[137] Suzy Davies: It has an effect on the gap, does it not, if one of your measures is free school meals? You have already commented that the baseline for everybody seems to be rising, but the gap remains the same, for a plethora of reasons, which you have gone through a little bit today. That gap may never change—it is a bit like relative poverty, is it not?—if you keep using the same indicators. What we want is children doing better. I wonder whether this is a disadvantage as a measure from that perspective.
[138] Ms Keane: I would have to give that question more thought.
[139] Suzy Davies: I appreciate that.
[140] Ms Keane: I can certainly agree with you that it is not an altogether satisfactory measure. There is a time of change now and we may be able to be in a situation where we could take account of other things. However, as Meilyr has said, the effect on the ground is that this money is being spent for a slightly different purpose, where there is an overlap, but it is not the actual set purpose. However, my larger point is still valid here and that is that fixing the PDG is not enough. It is what I said earlier—[Inaudible.] So, it is a much bigger challenge.
[141] Ann Jones: I have just one question that I want to pose to you and we are happy to have a written response from you. Do you have any plans to modify the banding formula to reflect closing the attainment gap for children on free school meals? You will know that banding is put in for attendance now and deprivation is—
[142] Ms Keane: Banding is not our responsibility.
[143] Ann Jones: Would you have any recommendations that you would want to suggest? [Laughter.] You can give us a note.
[144] Ms Keane: Okay, I will give you a note on that.
[145] Ann Jones: That will be fine. We are out of time, but thank you ever so much for that and thank you for answering some of the very complex questions. It is always good to have you here. We will send you a copy of the transcript to check for accuracy and then, as I said, as our inquiry progresses, I am sure that you will look at the outcomes. Thank you very much; you have certainly given us a lot to think about in relation to the way in which we tackle this now, and we will look at other legacies for reports. I thank the three of you for coming today.
[146] If the committee is happy, we will break until about 10:45.
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 10:39 a 10:47. The meeting adjourned between 10:39 and 10:47.
Ymchwiliad i Ganlyniadau Addysgol Plant o Gartrefi Incwm Isel—Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 2 Inquiry into Educational Outcomes for Children from Low-income Households—Evidence Session 2
[147] Ann Jones: We will reconvene now to continue with our inquiry into educational outcomes for children from low-income households. We are delighted to have with us David Egan, who is professor of Welsh education policy and the director of the Wales Centre for Equity in Education at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
[148] Professor Egan: Sorry; it is a bit of a mouthful.
[149] Ann Jones: It is, but never mind. I think that those of us who have been in the Assembly for a few years will know that David is no stranger to coming to give evidence. Thank you very much for your paper, David, and for coming to give us oral evidence.
[150] Professor Egan: Thank you for inviting me.
[151] Ann Jones: We have a set of questions. Perhaps we could go straight into those, because we over-ran with the last set of witnesses. Members have loads of questions. We will start with the first set of questions, which is around Welsh Government policy and strategy. Would you like to take the first set, David?
[152] David Rees: Thank you, Chair. Good morning. We have heard concerns from various sources, and, obviously, in your paper you identified some concerns, over the level of performance to date in this respect. We also hear a lot of rhetoric from the Welsh Government. I will ask you a simple question to start. Do you believe that the policies and strategies that have been established are the right ones to take that rhetoric and deliver on it?
[153] Professor Egan: Yes, generally, I do. What I have tried to stress there, I think, is that there is increasing focus now. I think that the education system in Wales inevitably faces a range of challenges. I have felt for some time, going right back, in a sense, to the raising attainment and individual standards in education in Wales—RAISE—initiative, which is where I started, that this is the great issue in Welsh education. It is not unique to Wales; it is not as if, somehow, Wales is blighted by this. It seemed to arrive from another planet; it is a worldwide issue—an international issue. However, for me it is the defining issue in Welsh education. In a very cross-party way, a way that everyone in Wales has just about signed up to, we all have a good, general approach to what we should do. I think that the problems tend to be, sometimes, around implementation.
[154] David Rees: I suppose that that leads on to the implementation level, where that strategy is being delivered at a lower level, and whether the guidance coming from the Welsh Government is ensuring that local authorities, consortia and schools are actually able to be supported in delivering that.
[155] Professor Egan: I agree. I think that if we can get a consensus around what is one of the main themes of my paper—and I think that it has been a strong theme of what we have heard from the Minister recently—which is that schools have an important part to play in this but that they cannot do it alone. It is therefore critical that schools work with parents within their communities, and that we really think hard about how we will get that element of implementation right. At the moment, I think that there is a kind of feeling of happenstance around that. As I have stressed in the paper, you can go a few miles from here to a really seriously challenged part of Cardiff and see all of that coming together very nicely around the schools, Communities First, Families First, the sector-type partnerships, but all of the challenges that they face and the difficult situation that they are in at the moment gives you hope that that is moving in the right direction. You can go perhaps a matter of miles away from that area to another area of Cardiff and you see none of those things in place. I am sure that that situation could be replicated in each of the 22 local authority areas in Wales. It could be that, in some local authority areas in Wales, you would have to look hard to find what you would see as being the growth point, which is just not acceptable for any of us. If we are signed up to this agenda as a nation, and if we actually believe that the only way that we are going to deliver on all of the things that this place is about, which is growing the economy of Wales and growing the kind of society that we want to see in Wales, and if we see this as being one of the defining issues, which I do, not just in education but across the policy agenda, then it is just not acceptable. Collectively, we are not finding a way of moving forward the kinds of solutions that I think that we need.
[156] David Rees: In your paper you highlight those things that are outside of education needs, for example the Families First and the Communities First approach, and the wider community approach that has included major initiatives that help to deliver in terms of tackling issues in those areas. This morning we heard from Ann Keane about the community school concept. Is the Welsh Government therefore missing something in terms of driving community schools forward?
[157] Professor Egan: I think that we just need to have a stronger focus on this. We had the community-focused schools policy, and there was a grant that funded it, but that has ended now and has gone into the wider school effectiveness grant. However, I think that Estyn found, in the report that it did, as it always seemed to me, that every school in Wales was nominally a community-focused school. I am sure that you find, as Assembly Members, that what that means, from school to school, can be something that is actually quite exciting in one school to something that is quite mundane or is virtually just a badge that a school has and does nothing about. I think that it is the same kind of issue. We have the right words, and I think that we have the right instincts, but do we actually ensure in a systemic way that we carry those things through into policy delivery and practice?
[158] It interests me, as I have kind of pointed to in my submission, to look at countries, parts of countries and even cities. There is a lot of focus on London at the moment within the UK. London is getting double the output of Wales: it is getting double the numbers of young people on free school meals getting five good GCSEs, including English and mathematics. We would not have been sitting here 10, 12 or 15 years ago, because the Assembly did not exist, but we could have sat in Cardiff and asked, ‘Why is London such a basket case?’, because all that you had every day in the press and on the media was, ‘Failing school in Hackney Downs’. London has transformed itself. The reasons that I think that London has transformed itself are exactly the same as those in the discussions that we are having now about what the challenge is in Wales. It has done it in a very holistic, morally driven kind of way in terms of saying, ‘This is the capital city. With all of the challenges that we have, we will come together at a borough-by-borough level to create an outstanding education system’. We are not just going to say to headteachers and local authorities, ‘Please help us to do that’. Local authorities are, of course, very different beasts now in England. We are actually going to set it as a challenge for everyone within communities—all agencies and individuals—to work together to create a great education system. We are getting the moral purpose in Wales, but we are not getting the delivery.
[159] David Rees: You have obviously highlighted the gap, and you have just answered the question that I was going to ask about the way forward. You seem to be saying that we are getting there now. There have obviously been some slight changes in the past 15 years in terms of the way in which the systems have worked. Do we still have the right systems? Are we comparable to London, or have we taken those systems forward to meet the next generation?
[160] Professor Egan: No, I think it is work in progress. That is my honest opinion.
[161] Ann Jones: We move on to monitoring targets and benchmarking. Aled, you have got a question.
[162] Aled Roberts: Rwyf eisiau siarad yn Gymraeg.		Aled Roberts: I wish to speak in Welsh.
[163] Rydych wedi sôn am Lundain, ond mae’n anodd deall y sefyllfa—mae 50% yn fwy o blant sy’n derbyn prydau am ddim yn Lloegr yn cael pum gradd TGAU A* i C nag yng Nghymru. Felly, mae yna broblem. Mae polisïau penodol yn Llundain, ond rydych wedi dweud nad yw’r sefyllfa genedlaethol, i ryw raddau, yn broblem sy’n arbennig i Gymru. Fodd bynnag, mae’r broblem yng Nghymru yn llawer iawn gwaeth na hyd yn oed yn y wlad drws nesaf i ni, lle mae’r gyfundrefn addysg yn ddigon tebyg—wel, mae wedi bod yn ddigon tebyg hyd yma, beth bynnag. Pam ydym wedi cyrraedd y sefyllfa hon?		You have talked about London, but it is difficult to understand the situation—50% more children who receive free school meals in England get 5 A* to C GCSEs grades than in Wales. Therefore, there is a problem. There are specific policies in London, but you have said that the national situation, to a certain extent, is not a problem that is specific to Wales. However, the problem in Wales is much worse than even in the country next door to us, where the education system is quite similar—well, it has been quite similar up till now, anyway. Why have we reached this situation?
[164] Professor Egan: I think what is interesting, Aled—I was talking to the chief inspector outside just now about a piece of work that might be worth looking at, Chair. It is called ‘Unseen Children’. Estyn will not like me mentioning Ofsted—actually, I am sure it will not mind—but Ofsted has done a report called ‘Unseen Children’, where it revisited a series of urban areas in England that it inspected 20 years ago to see where they are now. Of course, the standout comparison is London. What they also point to is that there are some other areas—Manchester is certainly one—that have gone on similar journeys, although not to the same extent as London. However, they also point out that there are urban areas, 20 years later, that have not made that kind of progress. So, variation within the system is not confined to Wales; it is there in England.
[165] It is interesting that some nations—Finland is always the one that is quoted, but many of the Pacific Asian countries as well—have made steady progress, creating far more equitable systems. It is not just Scandinavia that has achieved this. That is interesting, and the variation in England is interesting when you look at the Ofsted report, as I was discussing with the chief inspector and her colleagues. You look at some of the datasets that are presented there, and you see the kind of variation that there still is within the system in England—between children who are living in poverty and those not living in poverty; between boys and girls; between different ethnic minority groups—and all those things play into Wales. Then, when you see the range, and you start to think about some of our areas in Wales, you see that they are not even on the page. Our areas in Wales—and you know where those areas are; of course you do—would not be on the page. That is how serious the situation is that we face. It is not that we do not have similar issues and similar variations, but it is that, where our performance is lowest, it is way below. That was the whole debate, after all, that led to RAISE back in 2006. Yes, we did not compare very well with England—or Scotland, because Scotland has always been leading the Celtic pack. Northern Ireland is a very different comparison to make, for all sorts of reasons. However, the real killer is that, when you actually break it down—and certainly I remember having this discussion with Ann at the time—and start to look at like-for-like areas, such as the north-east of England, which is interestingly actually still the slowest area to improve in England, you will see that the north-east of England, a former industrial area, now post-industrial, with all the similar kinds of indices, is ahead of Wales against most of the indicators. So, I think we just have to be honest about these things, really.
[166] Aled Roberts: O ran y grantiau blaenorol, fel RAISE, mae Ann Keane wedi dweud bod problem—rydych chi wedi codi hyn hefyd. Felly, hyd yn oed os yw’r polisïau yn gywir, ac os yw’r grantiau yn cael eu talu, nid ydym yn gweld llawer o wahaniaeth ar lawr gwlad. Mae hi’n dweud mai rhan o’r broblem gyda’r grantiau blaenorol yw’r ffaith nad oedd targedau wedi cael eu sefydlu gan y Llywodraeth. Mae deilliannau ar gyfer plant difreintiedig o fewn cynllun y Llywodraeth a gafodd ei gyhoeddi eleni ar gyfer trechu tlodi.		Aled Roberts: In terms of the previous grants, such as RAISE, Ann Keane said that there was a problem—you have raised this as well. So, even if the policies are correct, and the grants are paid out, we are not seeing much progress at grass-roots level. She said that part of the problem with the previous grants was that no Government targets were set. There are outcomes for disadvantaged children within the Government’s plan for tackling poverty that was published this year.
11:00
[167] Therefore, are you confident that the types of targets that are within that plan are taking us in the right direction? A few of us this morning have been frustrated by some of the frustrations that, certainly Estyn, is still telling us about regarding actual delivery at ground level, at school level.
[168] Professor Egan: I think there are two things. On the history of RAISE, and a bit of the history of the pupil deprivation grant, do we just, in a sense, get the money together, throw it over the wall and hope that it will do good work, or do we actually attach some expectations and indicators to it? It is a good debate, not just in education; it is a policy debate. So, I think there is a good discussion to be had about that. I have said something in my paper about what I feel about that, based on our experience in Wales thus far and based on the evaluation of the pupil premium in England, and about how I think that can be best approached and I am happy to expand upon that.
[169] Your second point, Aled, was about having indicators and milestones, which are certainly in the tackling poverty plan. As you are aware, I chair the expert advisory group there, and we were very keen as a group, working with Ministers and officials, to see some hard indicators in that plan. They were hard won because of everything that you understand. Officials will say to Ministers that it is fine to have those indicators, but do we have the wherewithal and the resource to deliver them or are we setting ourselves up to fail? It was that kind of debate. They were hard won in the sense that, in education, as you have heard from the chief inspector—and it is certainly in my paper—a rising tide raisnow the chief inspector has, paper, and i  the picture, which i o fail? it king with Ministers and officials to see some hard ies all boats, and so, the picture, which I have tried to describe in my paper, and I know the chief inspector has, is that performance has improved in Wales over a period of time, but we are not narrowing gaps.
[170] Therefore, the debate in education around that plan was whether you need targets that are stretching and are very idealistic because they focus everybody’s attention and they encourage people; I think that is a good debate. My answer to that is, ‘Yes, you do’, because I think those are the kinds of things that the cities, regions and nations that I have talked about have bought into. Set yourself very high targets and very high aspirations, and then make sure that you have the right thinking, as best you can, about how to reach those and really get your delivery and your implementation sorted, because having those aspirational targets is right. Having crazy targets when you do not have those kinds of plans in place is just wishful thinking.
[171] Aled Roberts: Mae angen, wrth gwrs, i’r targedau hynny gael eu monitro i weld a yw’r cynlluniau sydd wedi cael eu rhoi mewn lle yn llwyddo. Ble ydych chi’n meddwl y dylai’r cyfrifoldeb fod o ran y monitro? Nid ydym yn glir ar hyn o bryd a yw’r cyfrifoldeb hwnnw ar lefel ysgol, lefel awdurdod lleol, lefel y consortia neu ar lefel y Llywodraeth genedlaethol, yma yng Nghaerdydd.		Aled Roberts: There is a need, of course, for those targets to be monitored so see whether the plans that have been put in place are succeeding. Where do you think that the responsibility should lie in terms of the monitoring? We are not clear at present as to whether the responsibility is at school level, local authority level, consortia level or with the national Government here in Cardiff.
[172] Professor Egan: That is probably a good question, I would guess, to ask Ministers. It is interesting now that we have a Deputy Minister for Tackling Poverty who is very focused on implementation. In the group that I chair, we have had some very interesting discussions recently with Vaughan about his role. We are the only one of the UK administrations that has a Minister for poverty and we now have two Ministers for poverty. That is a real sign. You could see that as a negative, but I think that it is a positive sign that there is a strong focus in Government and in the Assembly on the issue, and the fact that he has been charged with implementation and that he is very focused on implementation, and is building up an implementation team, is very encouraging. I will not duck your question, however, because I think that it should be clear to everybody at every point in the system what the expectation upon them is. That is generally how we move performance forward. There is a bit of science about how you do that at school level, and how you start doing that within some of the partnerships that I am arguing for, which bring schools together with Communities First, Families First, the voluntary sector and parents, is, inevitably, a bit more challenging because where is the point of accountability.
[173] Aled Roberts: Where is the evidence, though, as far as the Welsh Government is concerned? You have mentioned, Ann Keane has mentioned, and I think that we all know, that we have variable performance at school level, and there has been little evidence from you that best practice is shared effectively. There is variable performance at local authority level, with five of the 22 authorities in special measures, to all intents and purposes, and this morning we have heard concerns regarding variability among regional consortia, and there was even a mention of capability.
[174] Professor Egan: Yes.
[175] Aled Roberts: So, what is the Welsh Government doing regarding tackling what are possibly deficiencies within the whole system?
[176] Professor Egan: Again, I am not here to answer for the Welsh Government. I did that once.
[177] Aled Roberts: What would your view be on comparing London and Manchester? Did they actually tackle some of these variability issues more effectively than it would appear that the Welsh Government has done to date?
[178] Professor Egan: I think that, if you have high, aspirational targets, and you have this belief, which I think we are getting now, about the ingredients that can lead to success—we have enough practical, inspection-based research evidence from within Wales and that we can take from around the world to say, ‘This looks like the set of ingredients’—you could always put them together in a certain recipe that works for Wales, or works for different parts of Wales, because Wales is a complex place with different types of communities. So, I think that there is no reason why we should not have the ingredients, but what we have to have is the implementation and the delivery. It seems to me that there is now a commitment across Government level, around the work that is being done with the Minister and Deputy Minister for tackling poverty, and very strongly from the Minister for education, to say, ‘We have got to find a way of implementing the ambitions that we have to meet the targets that we are setting ourselves’.
[179] Lynne Neagle: In terms of the numbers of local authorities that are in special measures, including, unfortunately, my own, have you got any evidence that those authorities are doing less well than other authorities in tackling these issues? That is my concern: that where local authorities are struggling anyway, these sorts of issues are going to be marginalised.
[180] Professor Egan: A characteristic of some of those authorities, as again I have said—. Poverty in Wales is both dispersed and concentrated. We are very aware now that the greater part of poverty in Wales is in-work poverty, and much of that, of course, is rurally located. What characterises my home area and the area that you represent—the former industrial areas of the Valleys, and so forth—is out-of-work poverty. In those areas, what you see is huge concentrations of poverty in the way that you do not see in more rural, dispersed parts of Wales, and it is inevitable therefore that some of those local authorities are facing the greatest challenges. So, if we are not doing well across the board with our free-school-meals children, and you have large concentrations within particular local authority areas, then the fact that Merthyr, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen are three of the authorities that are giving cause for concern to the inspectorate is not surprising. Merthyr and Blaenau Gwent have the two highest concentrations of free-school-meal students in the whole of the UK. They have the highest number of benefit claimants in the UK. They are, unfortunately, the two areas, and parts of Torfaen are not far behind that. So, the debate that goes on within the policy field about whether we should have a place-based policy like Communities First, or dispersal policies like Flying Start and Families First, seems to me, actually, to be for the birds, because we need both.
[181] We need to recognise that. I was in Powys last week, speaking at the very interesting conference that PAVO, the Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations, had called on poverty. There were 150 people in Llanelwedd and they made me very aware what the issues are around rural poverty, and, yes, I think that we all need to know and understand that, but when I come back home it is another matter. Yesterday, I was in Blaengwawr Comprehensive School in the Cynon Valley, I was in Tonypandy Community School in the Rhondda, and I ended up in Pontypridd High School in my home town, and when you see the situation that is faced in those schools, and particularly in some of the primary schools, it is the intensity of the problem there that I think is something that we have to take into account.
[182] Ann Jones: Are we finished on monitoring targets? Are we happy with that? We will move on. The next questions are on funding, with Angela. Do you want to pick up on that?
[183] Angela Burns: Thank you. Having read your evidence, for which I thank you, I wonder what your opinion would be of a view that might say that the pupil deprivation grant might be better spent being aimed at the parents of the children, rather than in the school setting? The reason why I make that comment is because you talk about the fact that,
[184] ‘Evidence suggests that by the time they begin formal schooling, children from our most disadvantaged homes can be up to a year behind in aspects of their cognitive development.’
[185] You talk about the benefits, on which I think that we are all agreed, of policies like Flying Start. Then, towards the end of that section, you refer to the fact that,
[186] ‘40 years of research around the world on school effectiveness, has led to the conclusion that schools are at the very most about one third of the cause of high achievement in pupils’,
[187] and that the other two thirds are peer pressure and parental pressure. So, everything always drives down to what the school can do because, of course, we can get hold of the kids and plonk them there and do something with them, but do you think that we could be more imaginative with the PDG and perhaps target it at any of those other two areas, and particularly the parental one, so that when they arrive at school, at the very beginning, they are not that year behind?
[188] Professor Egan: Yes. By the way, I spotted it, and the chief inspector also kindly spotted it. There is a howler on page 2. Perhaps I could just take this opportunity, Chair, to say that there is a howler on the top of page 2 of my submission, where I state,
[189] ‘Over the five years between 2005 and 2007’.
[190] That just shows that professors can be innumerate. Of course, it should state ‘2007 and 2012’. So, I would like to put that into the record, please. It does not matter how many times you look at something. I am sure that you all have the same experience.
[191] I think that the suggestion that you make is a very interesting one. Should there be, perhaps, some policy bending—I have talked about policy bending in there—in the use of the pupil deprivation grant, moving forward, to those kinds of family and community-based things that we know could be so powerful? I think that that is an interesting idea. In terms of the joint funding now between Communities First and the PDG, on which I am sure that you will be taking some evidence, I think that a lot of the work there will also be heading in that direction. I see no reason as to why the Minister and his officials, in the way that they are looking now at year 3 of the PDG, with an increased amount of money, might not be thinking about whether there should be some bending, as it were, to encourage or facilitate schools to get involved in parental engagement approaches and approaches that help them to work closely with Families First, Communities First, Flying Start and so forth.
[192] Angela Burns: Good, because I noticed later in your evidence—I think that we are talking about things like school trips and uniforms and so on—that you made the point that that should come out of standard budgets and not the PDG. I know, for example, because I represent a very rural area where a lot of the children who are in poverty and away from the centres find it very hard to get back in for trips, to join sports clubs and to continue their engagement. I just wanted to flesh that out slightly.
[193] Professor Egan: Yes, I think that it is part of the kind of standpoint that I have. I get on my high horse a little bit about this. Sometimes I annoy headteachers, but that is okay. I am also a school governor, so I think that these are practical things. I think that my approach is that there can never be enough money spent on education, as far as I am concerned, just as some people would say that there can never be enough spent on the health service, but we all have to live within budgets in difficult times. When a school receives a budget, it seems to me that most schools want to put that budget to good work. They want to get the best bang for the bucks, and if the biggest problem that we face in Welsh education is the achievement of a particular group of young people who are low-achieving, within those low achievers there will be a high percentage of youngsters on free school meals. So, I think that it is best to think of it in that kind of way, as I have stressed in my report. I think that the school should be focusing, bending its resources as much as possible, towards those children who need the greatest amount of support. When the pupil deprivation grant then comes along, that is an additionality. It was always meant to be an additionality. The way that it was brought in in England—and the politics of it are interesting—it was seen as being an additionality, as was RAISE previously, and something extra to do extra good work with, not to say, ‘Here is some money now so that, for the first time, you can start to help some of your most disadvantaged youngsters’. On the whole point about uniforms, trips and so forth, there is no evidence, of course, that any of that improves outcomes. However, all professionals feel that that is the right thing to do in terms of mitigating the effects of poverty. It is not going to prevent future poverty. It will not help those youngsters to get good the outcomes at 16 that will give them a chance of employment, and take them and their families out in future.
11:15
[194] Angela Burns: Might it keep them engaged?
[195] Professor Egan: It certainly can do that and it is certainly something that every school, set of governors, and headteacher should want to do, but they should think of using the whole resource to do that. I would tend to think that, actually, they should not use the pupil deprivation grant for that, because the pupil deprivation grant is public money that is intended to give them additional funding to help them to get those young people to fulfil their potential and to get to the levels of achievement that we want to get them to.
[196] Angela Burns: Could I confirm, for the record, what I think that I have deducted from your paper? I presume that you are concerned, along with Estyn, that the PDG is used collectively, so that it is the rising tide analogy that you used earlier, rather than driving it through to the individual.
[197] Professor Egan: Yes.
[198] Angela Burns: Do you fear that that is going on in a substantial part of the country now: just the collective use rather than—
[199] Professor Egan: I did not catch that. I came in in the middle of the Estyn presentation. I am sure that Estyn will have said what I am about to say now. We do not yet have one; there is an independent evaluation that has been commissioned by the Welsh Government on the pupil deprivation grant. Estyn has not taken a specific look at the PDG yet. It is collecting evidence as it inspects schools. My evidence, as I have described, is not published evidence. I have looked at two local authority areas in year 1; I work with a lot of schools; I am working with a couple of the consortia, in terms of helping them with their work. I think that there is a general concern. There is some really good and promising stuff happening around the pupil deprivation grant, as there was around RAISE, but there is a lot of other stuff that people are not too sure about. I think that it is because of just what we understand about school funding and the challenge that schools face. It is not because schools are deliberately—. I do not come across any school that does not want to do the very best for all of its pupils, including those who are disadvantaged.
[200] Angela Burns: I do not disagree with you. I fear that the PDG is shades of the foundation phase, in that it is an excellent concept but, with the implementation, there was not enough money put behind the training. You cannot just dump information on people and expect them to be able to absorb it and go out and practice. The question that I posed to Estyn, which I would like to pose to you is: do you feel that, in terms of raising or closing the attainment gap and making teachers not more poverty aware but more aware of the impact that certain programmes would have on children who are suffering poverty, that we need to go back to the teacher training programmes and start to put in there some kind of professional development so that they really understand it, rather than just be faced with trying to deliver their subject and manage a class?
[201] Professor Egan: I do. I heard what Ann had to say. I thought that it was a measured response. With an extensive background in my career in teacher training—I am working now very closely with Teach First in terms of its implementation in Wales—I think that getting the very best knowledge that we have into the people who, day in, day out, along with teaching assistants, who have an important role to play, are working with these young people, is absolutely critical. I am interested now to see that the Minister announced last week that, in terms of moving towards a national plan, as it were, for tackling poverty’s influence upon education, which we have not had before, because the focus has been so strongly on developing the numeracy and literacy framework as a national programme, he signalled the four elements of that plan, which I have mentioned in my submission. I think that I understand what early years mean; I understand what raising the aspirations of parents means. One of the things that is mentioned there is workforce development. I do not quite yet understand what that means, but I hope that it means what you have just said: that that would be about getting every headteacher and every governing body—because I do think that governing bodies have an important role to play here—to be a part of that. However, every teacher coming through the system, coming through their initial training, and coming through their NQT and professional development phase, should gain a strong understanding of how they can do the best possible with these young people who need them the most.
[202] Angela Burns: My final question would be: do you have confidence that, if the PDG is eventually absorbed into the revenue support grant, it will trail its way out to the appropriate person in the appropriate school, or will councils inevitably just use it as part of their—
[203] Professor Egan: I have tried to set that out here. I have thought hard about it. There has to be a carrot and a stick approach here. I am not convinced about the kind of idea where you throw the money over the wall and then publish extensive guidance. I think that we have done that for a long time. I have done it. Part of what I had to do when I was a special adviser to the Minister around RAISE was to work with officials to bring forward that kind of exercise. I just do not think that that is actually the way to go. I think that it is much better to say, ‘Look; here is the money. We trust your professional judgment, but we do want you to pay due respect to this inspection evidence, and to this research evidence. Here it is. You can find it easily on websites.’ That is where we are now. They can source that and we will say, ‘Please look at it’.
[204] We also then need to do what schools like most of all, which is to give them lots of case-study examples of things that are working, usually not in the school down the road, because of the way that we are in Wales, although it is probably a generic thing; it is much better if it is the school over the mountain, the school at the other end of Wales, or even the school across Offa’s Dyke. Somehow, that works better. A headteacher once said to me that an expert, as far as he was concerned, had to live at least 50 miles away from him. It took me a while to understand it, but I think that it is a cultural thing. You do not want experts, as it were, too close to you. However, I think that if you do all of those things and rely on their professionalism, it is then fair enough to say, ‘We are going to get the consortia and the system leaders within the consortia, once we have that element right, to ask you and your governors some very hard questions about this’. I think that governors really need to step up on this issue. We will say that we are going to expect Estyn, increasingly, in the new inspection framework, to be asking them some tough accountability questions about this. What I say on that is that Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector in Ofsted, has mooted the possibility that no school in England in future would get the grade of outstanding unless they could show year-on-year improvement in the performance of their free-school-meals students. So, they may be sending loads to Oxbridge, and they may be getting wonderful A-level and GCSE results, doing all sorts of good work, but if they are not raising the performance there, he thinks that they should not get the top judgment. Why would we do anything different in Wales? I think that the carrot and the stick thing actually makes sense to schools.
[205] Angela Burns: I thought that that was one of the most interesting things that I read: this whole thing about making a decision about their own funding, letting the consortia evaluate them, and letting the governing body evaluate the headteacher. It is a really nice idea: basically putting them in charge completely of their own kingdom. However, I wonder, first, about the effects that that will have on clustering and federation and, secondly, whether we have enough headteachers throughout the whole of Wales who have the capability to step up to that level. There are outstanding headteachers out there and, to be frank, there are headteachers who have kind of got there because it was Buggins’s turn and they are not really sure what they are supposed to be doing.
[206] Professor Egan: I think that there is a leadership issue. For me, the critical issues that we face now, moving forward, are getting the right thinking—it is coming; it is not perfect yet, but for me, the thinking is coming—the implementation, I think, and the focus that there needs to be on getting the consortia right in terms of doing the job of work there. Getting the consortia is not currently part of what is happening. The consortia are so fixated on getting the right kind of governance and the right delivery model. Those consortia need to be working with other agencies. They need to be working with other directorates. I think that it was a point that Keith made in the questions to the chief inspector. It is not about just thinking, ‘If we get a perfect education consortia, we are sorted’, because they need to work with children’s directorates and health directorates. They need to be strategic. That is the whole point of them. I think that that element is critically important for delivery, but I think that you are right: leadership is the other challenge that we face. What characterises those schools that make a difference, those local authorities that make a difference, those cities in the UK and around the world that make a difference for this agenda, and those countries that are moving everybody forward and closing gaps? They get that leadership in place.
[207] Angela Burns: I have one final, quick question. You are absolutely right: when you go to a school that is flying, there is always one person who is charismatic, motivated and totally committed, and they make a heck of a difference. We are a year and a bit into consortia and we have one that is okay and three that are not okay. We cannot get the leadership right in the consortia, let alone in the schools, so we all identify that it is the problem. It is the elephant in the room. Unless we can turn around and suddenly scoop 500 good leaders out of thin air to plonk into all these places, however, how can we address that issue as quickly as possible before yet more kids go through the system and do not achieve what they could because we do not have that desire in those people?
[208] Professor Egan: I think that we just need a sense of urgency about it. The Minister has announced today that the leadership development board, which the previous Minister said that he would set up, is set up and is populated, and I think that it has a very urgent task in terms of leadership development. Ann Keane mentioned that, in general, we have neglected that area. We decided not to have a national college for school leadership in Wales. We decided not to buy in to the English college for school leadership that was set up in Nottingham. I think that that was a mistake. I think that we have suffered the consequences of not buying into that. One of the strands within that leadership college in England has always been to develop leaders for the most challenging circumstances. So, if you go over the Severn bridge and you go to Bristol, a city that has not improved as much as London or Manchester in terms of the challenges—you will find pockets of Bristol that are hardly any different to pockets of Cardiff in terms of the challenges that are faced—you will see a different ethos. Of course, you will see academies, and you will see very different arrangements there, but you will see outstanding leaders whose career is dedicated to working in the most challenging circumstances and making the biggest difference. Now, we have not bred that. I think that that was a mistake, and we now have to attend to it. Hopefully, this leadership development board can now crack on with that.
[209] Ann Jones: Just before I bring Aled in, I have to say that I would be totally opposed to the pupil deprivation grant being put into the RSG at this point. I have some real examples of what happened with the RAISE money, even though guidance was given. I would not want to see that again. I feel that, until such time as we are sure that they can do that, I would not want to see it go into the RSG. In fact, I want to see stuff coming back out of the RSG and ring fenced for specific issues. I will put that on the record.
[210] Bethan Jenkins: I did not know that you were in favour of hypothecation. [Laughter.]
[211] Ann Jones: Absolutely, yes. Hypothecation to the last ha’penny is my thing. Aled, you have a point on funding, but then can we move on to the role of schools and I will bring Keith in?
[212] Aled Roberts: Yes. I think that we have covered the position. I was a bit worried that we were going to go down the road of pretending that the Welsh Government should say, ‘We want you to spend money on this that and the other’, whereas the whole ethos, confirmed in your paper, is that it is the school leaders on the ground who decide on the best way to spend the grant, and we then hold them to account on the delivery.
[213] Professor Egan: I think that we should trust them. I think that there is a role here for governing bodies and for governors. It is the same challenge with regard to the variability of governing bodies and governors, but I do not think that we should duck it.
[214] Aled Roberts: On the governing body, what evidence is there on the ground that—as Angela said, with the consortia, 18 months in, some are only just starting to function—there is connectivity with governing bodies, in challenging those governing bodies with regard to some of the decisions that have been taken?
[215] Professor Egan: I have spoken two or three times recently to regional conferences of Governors Wales. Sometimes they are things that happen on Saturdays, or at twilight times—the last one that I did in Swansea was a day event—and it is surprising the number of people you get there. Again, I am sure many of you in the room will have been governors, and it just confirms that there are people out there who really do want to make a difference, and want to give their time, and I do think that they get this issue, and they feel very strongly about it. I am not sure that we empower them sufficiently.
11:30
[216] Regarding your question about the consortia, somewhere on the list of things that the consortia are meant to be doing is to take forward governor training. It has always been there in the local authorities. However, by taking this from 22 bodies and consolidating it within four, you would hope that the ante would be upped and that there would be more ability to empower governors through that training and process. I do not know whether you are taking evidence from Governors Wales. You usually do, do you not?
[217] Ann Jones: We have some spaces left.
[218] Professor Egan: I am sure that Governors Wales would have something to say to you about that. You are absolutely right: the relationship between governors and the consortia is probably understated at the moment. It seems to me that the consortia, with one exception, which I have mentioned in the report and I have also declared an interest, because I have done a body of work for it—. One consortium is focused on this agenda. Otherwise, the consortia have been focused on trying to get their act together, and on literacy and numeracy.
[219] Aled Roberts: When we had an issue with school improvement in the local authority of which I was a member, what was surprising initially was that the relationship between the school and the school improvement team within the local authority was conducted entirely through the headteacher. There was no direct reporting to the governing body. No officials ever visited primary school governing bodies to discuss issues until the crisis had hit the fan. Is there any suggestion that that situation will change, that these consortia will directly engage with governing bodies and will report properly as to how the school’s performance is assessed objectively, and then challenge the governing bodies as to what is being done?
[220] Professor Egan: I do not have any research evidence on that. I can only speak from a personal basis, and, as a governor, the system leader from the consortia attends our governing body once a year and is part of the performance management process of the headteacher. So, I think they are trying to go in that direction. Simon Brown said that the capacity is now in place. So, capacity is in place, but capability is obviously an issue, in the way that he expressed it. However, should the capacity of the people who are in place again be focused on particular schools and governing bodies, if you see where my question is? I was in your part of the world earlier this week, meeting with the consortia people to talk about the work that I am doing in this area. They have capacity but, currently, that capacity is spread very thinly, because every school gets an entitlement. Clearly, there are some schools and governing bodies that have a greater need than others, in relation to the kind of challenge that you are describing.
[221] Keith Davies: Byddaf yn gofyn fy nghwestiwn yn y Gymraeg. Yn eich papur, rydych yn dweud mai dim ond un o’r consortia rhanbarthol wedi gwneud rhywbeth ar yr agenda hwn. Rydych hefyd yn dweud nad oes un awdurdod lleol wedi gwneud unrhyw beth. Felly, yn y pendraw, rydym yn dod yn ôl i’r hyn a ddywedodd Angela, mewn ffordd, sef mai’r lle gorau i wneud hyn yw yn yr ysgol. Felly, beth yr ydych chi’n credu y dylem fod yn ei gwneud gyda’r penaethiaid, achos mai nhw fydd yn arwain y ffordd yn y pendraw, rwy’n credu? Beth sydd angen ei wneud ar eu cyfer? Pwy all weithio â nhw? Os nad yw’r consortia na’r awdurdodau’n gweithio, sut y byddwn yn sicrhau y bydd y penaethiaid yn gwneud y gwaith hwn?		Keith Davies: I will ask my question in Welsh. In your paper, you mention that only one of the regional consortia has done anything on this agenda. You also say that not one of the local authorities has done anything. So, at the end of the day, we come back to what Angela was saying, in a way, namely that the best place for this is in school. So, what do you think we should be doing with headteachers, because it is they who will be leading the way ultimately, I think? What do we need to do for them? Who can work with them? If the consortia and the authorities are not working, how can we ensure that headteachers will be carrying out that work?
[222] Professor Egan: I think that the consortia have to work. It seems to me that, if we are going to do what I have argued very strongly here, namely to take a national policy across Government within education and really make it work now with the resolve that I think exists, it has to be done through the four regional consortia. As I said in my paper, trying to do it through 22 local authorities, like many other things, just does not work. We know that. Estyn has confirmed that, in a sense. Some of us have known it for some time. We therefore have to make the consortia work. If someone were to ask me my top 10 things to do in relation to this agenda, high on the list would be that we have got to get the consortia to step up on this issue. They have got to be held to account.
[223] They then, obviously, which is the point of your question, have to work very closely with their headteachers. That is the key relationship. Estyn comes around every now and again, by its very nature. Welsh Government comes around every now and again, as far as schools are concerned. Banding is once a year. The consortia need to be working day in, day out, to take this forward. I can now see, to be fair, that one of the consortia has been fastest off the blocks on this issue. I see, certainly, two of the other three now really realising that they have to step up here. I am not saying that the other has not. It is just that I have not, personally, had a conversation with it recently, although I am due to have one next week. So, I think that there is a kind of feel now of ‘we have all been fixated on getting our appointments made, getting our challenge and system leaders in place and trying to figure out how we are going to run this new organisation.’ We all know from our lives I am sure—I certainly know it from my life in universities and, before that, in schools—that you sometimes lose a year or two years when you are trying to make those kinds of changes. I think then they were fixated because that is where the pressure was from the Minister after the programme for international student assessment results—‘get literacy and numeracy moving forward’. They always saw poverty as the third national priority. It was something that was over there. It was something that, if you tackled literacy and numeracy, you tackled poverty. Well, of course, you tackle some of it, but you would not tackle the whole. That is far too simplistic a view of the world.
[224] So, for me, the critical thing now is that the consortia step up quickly on this issue and they then begin to bring their headteachers together to develop that resolve, to share effective practice, which is what headteachers like, as you know—to work together, but also to have expectations of them. Some of the headteachers whom I have worked with closely over the last few years in this area exemplify that maxim that, if you want to make a difference here, it is the toughest thing. The easiest thing for a headteacher is to go for the low-lying fruit. It is to say, ‘I know where my kids are who are going to get the five good GCSEs, who will make my most voluble parents happy, who will get me high up in the banding, who will get me my Oxbridge places.’ Those are the low-lying fruit. The more difficult fruit are the children who may be disengaged from families, where there is a chaotic kind of family background, or who, for whatever reason, are just low achieving. However, where you have headteachers, and we have a lot of primary headteachers who have that mind set and we have some secondary ones—there is a bit of an issue there, is there not?—who say, ‘No, I want to make a difference, most of all for these children’, they tend to do that. I think that is what consortia need to buy into. Why can that be so random? Why can two schools with very similar sets of circumstances be on very different levels?
[225] Ann Jones: We have a number of issues and we are fast running out of time. So, we will see how far we get. Bethan, you have a question on parental engagement.
[226] Bethan Jenkins: Rydych wedi sôn eithaf tipyn yn barod am ymwneud â rhieni. Mae hynny o ddiddordeb, ond rydym wedi clywed dipyn yn barod am y ffaith i chi ddweud bod ysgolion yn gweithio’n well os oes nifer o wahanol fudiadau yn rhan o’r hyn sy’n digwydd. Y pwynt yr oeddwn eisiau ei ofyn yn benodol oedd am y ffaith eich bod yn pryderu, o ran y cynllun amddifadedd cenedlaethol, nad oes digon o ffocws, o bosibl, i ddatblygu dulliau gweithredu yn y gymuned fel rhan o hynny. Efallai y gallech esbonio i ni tipyn bach ynglŷn â beth yw eich pryderon chi yn hynny o beth.		Bethan Jenkins: You have mentioned quite a bit already about parental involvement. That is of interest, but we have heard a lot already about the fact that you said that schools work better if lots of different bodies are part of what is going on. The point I wanted to ask specifically was about the fact that you are concerned, in terms of the national deprivation plan, that there is not enough focus, possibly, on developing community action plans as part of that. Perhaps you could explain a little about what your concerns are in that regard.
[227] Professor Egan: I think what I have said there, and it may be my misreading of the situation because all that we have had, thus far, from the Minister last week—I was speaking at the conference, where he spoke—was the kind of pillars of what he now wants to see in place in this national plan that he is developing. So, it is a matter of interpretation, really, is it not, of how you see those four things that he mentioned? It could be that the community dimension is implicit in that. I would not be surprised if that was the case, because he is somebody who, previously, was Minister with responsibility for tackling poverty in different times and who has always had a huge commitment to Communities First. Perhaps implicit in there is that Communities First dimension. In a sense that begs a question, does it not?
[228] We are now aware that the majority of people who are in poverty in Wales are in in-work poverty and, due to the way in which Communities First has now been restructured, the majority of people in poverty will be living outside Communities First areas. It is a little bit like the discussion that Suzy sparked off with the chief inspector about how we define the target group. If we see community as being absolutely critical to working with schools to make a difference for young people and their families, then how do we define community? The community of Welsh-medium schools in south-east Wales is quite spread and diverse. At the moment, I am working with schools in the Rhondda Fach area, and you have Ferndale Community School there, at the top of the Rhondda Fach, which has a group of primary schools, so it is easy-peasy to define that community. However, Ysgol Gyfun Cymer Rhondda is also part of the conversation that we are having and it has a much greater dispersal of youngsters, both in the valley and outside the valley. Therefore, how do you define that community? How do you define a community in inner Cardiff, given that middle-class parents will move children around the city and across boundary areas if they can? That would be different in valley communities. The notion of community is something that we have to look at very carefully. It cannot be as simple as Communities First. The point is that schools should really think that there is a community out there that they need to relate to very strongly. It may be a difficult community to get hold of, but, nevertheless, they should conceive of it as being a series of Welsh Government programmes, voluntary organisations, groups, and individual families that they need to reach out to. All the evidence in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report that I interpreted into Wales is that that is a very powerful way of thinking.
[229] Bethan Jenkins: Y broblem yr wyf yn ffeindio yw bod yr emphasis ar gymunedau ond bod pwyslais arall wedyn ar dargedu rhieni o gartrefi incwm isel. Felly, sut yr ydych yn diffinio un gymuned pan fo is-gymunedau o fewn hynny? Efallai fydd angen i rieni o’r grŵp penodol hwnnw ddod i mewn i’r ysgol, ond efallai y byddai rhywun arall yn dweud bod angen cael pob rhiant i mewn a thrin pawb yr un peth. Felly, sut yr ydych yn dod â’r ddau beth at ei gilydd?		Bethan Jenkins: The problem I find is that the emphasis is on communities but that there is another emphasis then on targeting parents from low-income households. So, how can you define one community when there are sub-communities within that? Perhaps parents from that particular group will need to come into school but perhaps somebody else would say that every parent should come in and that everyone should be treated in the same way. Therefore, how do you bring those two things together?
[230] How do you bring those two potentially conflicting elements together?
[231] Professor Egan: I take your point, Bethan. This is a more complex situation than might appear to be the case. However, where you see it happening, I think it is because there is a real resolve to do something about it: it is not going to be easy, but it can be achieved. As the chief inspector said, in an infant context—nursery or reception—it is almost taken for granted that mums, occasionally dads, and often grandmothers, are part of the school. The programme that Save the Children is promoting, Families and Schools Together—you are taking evidence from Save the Children, are you not?—when you hear about that, that is just the natural way in which that programme works. It brings particularly the hardest-to-reach families into the school to work alongside teachers and teaching assistants with children to start making a difference. When you start to think of a secondary context in Welsh-medium, church and community schools where parents are dispersed quite widely across a city or a valley terrain, where transport can be a problem, it is not easy sometimes to define what your community is. However, if working with those parents and reaching out to that community is an important part of what you see as a success factor, there is a good chance that you can achieve something with it. If you throw your hands up in the air and say that the trouble that you face is not the kids, it is the parents and that you cannot reach the parents who you most of all need to work with because they do not respond and will not come in—. It is that can-do mentality.
11:45
[232] I am not going to name this individual school, as it would not be appropriate, but, thinking of a school, which is in an urban context in Swansea, it said, ‘Look, we do have kids who, because of the nature of the school, come from a huge part of the city. If we put on a traditional parents evening, we know that we are only going to get a small proportion of our parents to come and see us. We take it for granted that the parents who we want to see most of all will be the ones who we will not have there. We are not going to do that any longer’. So, what do they do? They close the school for the children for the day and tell them to stay at home; they annoy their local authority, which gives them a row for doing it, but they sort that out, and they say to the parents, ‘We are going to be open at 7 a.m. and we will stay open until 10 p.m. Come and see us when it is appropriate for you’, because people will have different working arrangements and different domestic arrangements. They get 90% of the parents coming in and they have been doing that for a few years. They sit down and draw up a contract with the parents and everybody signs the contract in terms of what they feel that the young person has to do to reach the target of getting the best outcome that they can. As to the 10% that they do not get in, they will try to deal with on an individual basis through outreach activities.
[233] Therefore, if you throw your hands up in the air, then you will not achieve anything, but you could say, ‘Our parents are complicated and our communities are complicated, but we are going to do something about it’. That sounds like I am on my high horse and I am telling schools what to do. It goes back to variation again. If some schools can do it, why cannot all of them?
[234] Ann Jones: Aled and David are next, but then I am going to stop it, as we have run out of time—
[235] Professor Egan: Sorry, Ann.
[236] Ann Jones: No, it is fine. We will probably come back to you. So, Aled and David quickly, then I think that we will write to you with the rest of the questions.
[237] Aled Roberts: Mae problem yma, onid oes? Wrth ichi sôn am dlodi mewn gwaith a thlodi drwy ddiweithdra, un o’r problemau yw bod y rhan fwyaf o’r rhaglenni cymunedol hyn yn cael eu hariannu ar hyn o bryd drwy Gymunedau’n Gyntaf. Wrth i raglen Cymunedau’n Gyntaf newid, ac wrth i’r clystyru ddigwydd, mae’r rhan fwyaf o ardaloedd bach a oedd o fewn ardaloedd Cymunedau’n Gyntaf yn y gogledd a’r gorllewin—ardaloedd gwledig—wedi diflannu. Felly, mae ardaloedd yng Nghymru rŵan lle nad yw’n bosibl i’r rhaglenni hyn gael eu cynnal.		Aled Roberts: There is a problem here, is there not? As you talk about in-work poverty and poverty through unemployment, one of the problems is that the majority of these community programmes are currently financed through Communities First. As the Communities First programme changes and this clustering takes place, the majority of these small areas that come within Communities First areas in north and west Wales—rural areas—have disappeared. So, there are areas in Wales now where it is not possible to run these programmes.
[238] Professor Egan: I completely accept that. The issue of rural poverty is one that, again, you will find is an issue that is very much on Vaughan Gething’s list in terms of implementation. He has these local authority champions now—every local authority has two champions for poverty—a politician and a senior officer. I am sure that he will address those issues there, but the issue of rural poverty is a significant one. Our understanding of the complexity of poverty means that we are to go back over the same ground. We are aware that the majority of people live outside of Communities First areas and the majority of people are in in-work poverty. Therefore, Communities First—a place-based programme—is not going to be enough.
[239] What I do not understand, as I said earlier, is why you then get a debate that it should not be place-based and that it should be dispersed. The two have to be brought together. At the next meeting that we are having of the poverty expert group, we will have a policy seminar in the morning before we meet with the Minister and officials in the afternoon, and we are going to focus on that area, because it is a critical one.
[240] David Rees: I have just a quick question. You mentioned clearly the issue of dispersal of schools, and Ysgol Gyfun Cymer Rhondda, as an example, which has a wide catchment area. You also highlight in your paper that the challenge is more at secondary level than primary level, perhaps because primary school teachers, as you say, have more contact with the parents through the community. If we move down the path of superschools, are we creating a greater difficulty for those schools to engage with communities, particularly if those communities are in Communities First areas, and if they are further away from the school?
[241] Professor Egan: You have such a school developing in your area. I am aware of that, you know [Laughter.] Having worked with politicians for two and a half years, it is always good to have your antennae to be as sensitive as possible. So, I will not use that example, because I know Cwrt Sart; I was there last summer and I understand the issues there. I think that, for example, you have this interesting development in Aberdare, where I was yesterday—I was in Blaengwawr, which is in Aberaman—where there are three comprehensive schools. There is a boys school and there is a girls school, and we only have three boys schools and three girls schools in Wales now. That is going to come to an end in Aberdare. The boys school, the girls school and Blaengwawr, the community comprehensive school in Aberaman, are coming together to create a superschool. The geography there does not get in the way, because it is all clustered around the town of Aberdare, and so it is not going to be an issue.
[242] Bethan Jenkins: People from one area of Aberdare would say something very—[Inaudible.]
[243] Professor Egan: My antennae are not sharp enough, Bethan. The point I would make, David—to get out of this quickly—is that it is possible all the time to see barriers, is it not? There always are barriers. If you make any kind of change, there is a potential barrier, and if you try to overcome one barrier, you create another. I think that where you get success in this really challenging area—this is not an easy-peasy area; I said to the journalist from the BBC last night, ‘If schools knew how to solve this problem, they would have solved it years ago’. It is not that we have schools out there that do not want to solve our problems for us. They are some of the best things that we have in Wales, for God’s sake—our schools, our teachers and our headteachers. However, this is a very challenging problem, and every time you look to find a solution, you will find that there are barriers and there are problems. If this is a sense of national purpose, we just have to overcome those. If it is the right thing to do in Aberdare and the right thing to do in Port Talbot—
[244] David Rees: My concern is that we are talking about tackling poverty through mechanisms such as Communities First, and if we are moving further away from that type of area, are we creating a more difficult job for the get-up-and-go-type headteacher who will not take it on?
[245] Professor Egan: I do not think so, necessarily. The conversation that I had with the head who is going to be the head of the superschool in Aberdare, whom, of course, they call ‘Super Sue’, was why would you not, in the way that you have a chance to design your school, build into that space for Communities First, Flying Start or Families First to be located there? Why not co-locate? Why not all work together in that context? So from what can, absolutely, be a challenge, why not create an opportunity?
[246] Bethan Jenkins: There we are then.
[247] Ann Jones: We will end on that. David, thank you very much. There are a couple of issues around inspection and free school meals that we wanted to explore with you, so we will drop you a line on those. Thank you very much. I knew that we would run out of time. It has been very interesting to hear your views, and I am sure that Members agree with that.
[248] Professor Egan: Thank you very much to the committee for inviting me.
[249] Ann Jones: Thank you very much.
11:53
Papurau i’w Nodi Papers to Note
[250] Ann Jones: We just need to note the response to our letter from the Minister on the Welsh Government draft budget.
Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog 17.42 i Benderfynu Gwahardd y Cyhoedd o’r Cyfarfod Motion under Standing Order 17.42 to Resolve to Exclude the Public from the Meeting
[251] Ann Jones: I move that
the committee resolves to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting in accordance with Standing Order 17.42 (vi).
[252] I see that every committee member is in agreement.
Derbyniwyd y cynnig. Motion agreed.
Daeth rhan gyhoeddus y cyfarfod i ben am 11:53. The public part of the meeting ended at 11:53.