Agenda item

To report on the Local Authority and Education Achievement Service - A support for blended learning and to discuss the quality assurance processes in place.

Sharon Randall-Smith presented the report and answered the Members’ questions, with additional responses from Will Mclean.

Challenge:

Recent research from the National Foundation for Education Research shows Wales bottom for the effectiveness of learning at home. What is being done to address this?

Longitudinal studies show that, over time, there is not as great a difference between learning face-to-face and distanced learning as was originally thought. As always, the impact and effectiveness will be from the quality of the teaching. Since lockdown, EAS has supported our schools with a lot of advice and access to research and a range of professional learning, including the general skills that teachers and teaching assistants need to develop and deliver effective blended learning. Also, how to audit their skills, consider what good distanced learning looks like, and maintaining good professional learning to support that. Teaching assistants in one school have been heavily engaged in that, and are now disseminating it across other local clusters. In addition, as a region we are developing a Quality Assurance toolkit that will help schools to identify where their strengths and weaknesses are, but also evaluate what that quality begins to look like. Compared perhaps to other regions, we have made great strides in determining what the quality looks like.

One piece of research by the Education Policy Institute last week picked up the number of contacted hours during lockdown in Wales, recognising that the steps Wales had taken in providing IT kit was the best of the four nations. There was a range of different measures in the report that were differential, depending on which one was being considered. Hopefully, we can take both pieces of research together and learn from them.

Has there been an assessment of how well FSM children are doing compared to non-FSM children? And how much homework is being completed compared with the norm pre-Covid?

During the summer term, schools were very keen to track the engagement of all learners, with a particular focus on vulnerable and FSM pupils. Schools maintained regular contact to ensure that they had the necessary equipment, information and support. For vulnerable learners not engaging quite so well, we looked at engaging through attendance at hubs, or different kinds of support that we could give them. Certainly, we are tracking FSM pupils and engagement closely. We have meetings soon with schools to go through their development plans, and to look at their Accelerated Learning plans, as to how those will support the FSM pupils. Much of the best learning is the feedback given to pupils – that is still very possible with a distanced or blended learning model. Some schools have been using a technique called Blip learning: where a lot of learning happens independently or in small groups, and then brought to a general classroom for the teacher to give feedback. The feedback is therefore more positive and immediate for the learners. Very early on, teachers were trying to give formal feedback the way they always had, which became overwhelming for students and teachers. Over time, they have made things more manageable and effective. There will be some online assessments but they won’t be the best and most effective way of learning.

Given everything that is happening, is there an argument to be made for delaying implementation of the new curriculum?

Blended learning is the best way forward for us to deliver the curriculum so that children have the opportunity to develop those skills through a range of contexts, to make learning realistic for themselves and benefit from it. The process has been accelerated a little earlier than we thought; we understand the curriculum seems to be coming towards schools very quickly. But, whether schools are expected to be up and running perfectly at that point, given the current circumstances, is quite unlikely. That point was stressed in a recent survey. A lot of work has already been done by schools in moving forward with delivery of the new curriculum, but we accept that it isn’t going to be perfect; in fact, it likely wouldn’t have been even if we hadn’t had the pandemic. This period has given our schools, and particularly clusters, the opportunity to share resources; for example, one cluster has a shared database, to which examples of practice and resources are uploaded for everyone. This makes the process more manageable.

The fifty five ‘mandatory’ references in the bill are seemingly opposed to the general approach of local curricula; by contrast, the Education Act of 1996 had no references to ‘mandatory’.

This is an understandable point. When we, as a region, reviewed our view on the curriculum and whether it should continue as it is, we also looked at responses from headteachers, trade unions, secondary head groups, etc. to understand how it felt being in school delivering it. Most felt that the flexibility with which schools work now was supportive, and the flexibility in the new curriculum enables them to make learning experiences valuable and worthwhile.

Chair’s Summary:

We have had reassurance about blended learning. It is set to continue, so the better schools become at delivering it, and the more support that the authority can give, the better. Interesting points were raised about NFER, which we might consider in the future, and the issue of FSM pupils’ performance – about which this committee is always concerned. Perhaps pupils from a more supportive background find blended learning a bit easier. We are keen to track the engagement of learners. Issues were raised about distanced learning; this committee will come back to that. We heard concerns about the new curriculum, but we have been reassured about the flexibility of schools’ approaches.