Educational leadership and school renewal in Wales.

The paper sets out the main characteristics of the school system in Wales since 1999 when responsibility for education was devolved to the newly-created National Assembly for Wales. It moves on to consider the advances made in student attainment during this period, some of which can be ascribed to progress in learning and teaching pedagogy, leadership development and good practice in the field of school effectiveness. It suggests, however, that these improvements have reached a plateau and that without major systemic reform, embracing changes in pedagogy, leadership and school effectiveness, the aspirations of the Assembly Government to develop a world-class education system in Wales will be difficult to achieve. The paper sets out the main features of the tri-level reform movement which is now beginning in Wales and which seeks to transform the school system over the next three to five years.

Overview

The schools system in Wales has a number of predominant characteristics. Firstly, for the size of the country Wales has a large number of schools. A population of nearly three million is served by 1,606 primary, 43 special and 227 secondary schools. The fact that the student population is set to fall from the current 479,023 to 437,800 by 2013 points to considerable spare capacity within the system. Based on September 2004 figures there is currently a gross number of 82,931 places unfilled in schools. The general decline in the birth rate is, therefore, exacerbating a situation where already Wales has a large number of small schools, serving both great swathes of rural Wales where population density is low and the postindustrial SouthWales valleys where a decline in population has occurred in an area where the iron and coal industries once reigned supreme.

Contrasting with this picture of demographic flux is another prominent feature of Wales' education system and that is the relative homogeneity of the actual school system (National Assembly for Wales, 2006a, b). With a fee-paying sector covering only two per cent of the school population, the overwhelming majority of students attend a local community comprehensive primary or secondary school. In some parts of Wales, mostly the north and south west parts of the country, that school will teach through the medium of the Welsh language as the natural first language of the young people who pass through the school gates. In other parts of Wales there is a limited availability of schools where Welsh is the medium of instruction, but where the overwhelming majority of the students are not natural Welsh-speakers in the sense that they do not come from a Welsh-speaking home. These 'Welsh-medium schools' as they are known, are still community based and non-selective, but for many students they are not the 'local' school and attending them will involve longer journeys than if they attended their local school.

Together the 'natural' and 'Welsh-medium' schools comprise 29% of the primary and 24% of the secondary schools in Wales. The demand for places in 'Welsh-medium' schools has increased enormously over the last 20 years and currently this trend shows no signs of abating (Williams, 2003).

All the schools where Welsh is the language of instruction have a mixed-sex intake, the predominance of which type of provision is another widespread feature of schooling in Wales. There are but three communities in Wales--two in the valleys of south east Wales and one in the Vale of Glamorgan--where single-sex secondary schools have survived due to parental and community resistance to them being transformed from the grammar schools that they once were to coeducational comprehensives. Their continuing existence may be seen as something of an anachronism.

The final piece of the Welsh schools jigsaw is provided by faith education. Altogether about 13% of primary and 7% of secondary students attend either Roman Catholic or Church in Wales schools. At primary level, these are community comprehensive schools in character: at secondary level, however, the Church in Wales schools, like Welsh-medium schools in many urban areas, tend to attract much larger numbers of middle-class parents. This results in these schools having a far more privileged socioeconomic population demonstrated by a lower quotient of children being entitled to free school meals than would be expected for the area in which the school is located.

One final characteristic is worth capturing. The proportionately high number of schools in Wales is mirrored at district level where 22 local education authorities (LEAs) exist. These range in size from Merthyr Tydfil with 31 primary and 4 secondary schools to Rhondda Cynon Taft with comparable numbers of 124 primary and 19 secondary. LEAs in Wales have retained far greater powers than their counterparts in England and in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government take the lead responsibility in providing the school education service (National Assembly for Wales, 2006a; Welsh Local Government Association, 2007).

The state of the nation

Over the last 20 years this strongly unified school system has succeeded in making significant advances in student performance. Table 1 records the progress made at the ages of 7 (key stage 1), 11 (key stage 2) and 14 (key stage 3) in expected student performance in the core subject areas of the curriculum. National testing of these age groups was ended for 7-year olds in 2001 and for 11- and 14-year olds in 2005 and the outcomes are, therefore, those provided by teacher assessment (Welsh Assembly Government, 2007a, b).

Table 2 tracks, over the same period, student performance at the age of 16 in the achievement of five 'higher passes' (grades A to C) and five passes at any grade (A to G) at the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) national examinations at the age of 16.

While the overall trend is clearly a positive one there are, nevertheless, a number of features apparent in the statistics that give cause for concern. The decline in performance from the age of 11 is apparent. In 2001, 68.3% of 11 year olds attained the expected level of performance in the core subjects. By 2004, only 57.6% of this cohort, now aged 14 years old, achieved the expected level. By the time they had reached the age of 16 in 2006, only 39.2% of the cohort attained the expected level.

At all points within the system girls attain at a relatively higher level than boys. Table 3 shows the relative performance of boys and girls in attaining the core subject indicator (the expected level in Mathematics, Science and either Welsh or English) at ages 11, 14 and 16 in 2006.

A noticeable factor in this profile of relative underachievement by boys is the lower scores they obtain in English. Table 4 shows the percentages of boys and girls achieving the expected level of performance in English at ages 11, 14 and 16 in 2006.

Further analysis of assessment and examination results reveals that while girls also out perform boys in Mathematics and Science, the gap is not so great. The effect of low levels of literacy resulting from poor performance in English tends, however, to have a multiplier effect for boys depressing their performance in other 'literary' subjects such as modern languages, History and Geography. Between the ages of 14 and 16 this becomes the major cause of their poorer levels of performance at GCSE (National Assembly for Wales, 2006b).

This picture of relatively lower levels of education performance by males compared to females in schools is widespread across the education and training system both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Its causes are complex and contested. Its consequences are certainly as dramatic in Wales as in any country. While this is generally accepted in Wales as an area of concern, it has not yet produced a major national strategy designed to remediate its effects.

Although Wales has a relatively small percentage of ethnic minority students (about four per cent, mainly concentrated in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea) compared to other parts of the UK, the relatively lower level of performance of students from some ethnic groups are also a matter of concern.

Many of these ethnic minority students live in some of Wales' poorest communities. As a formerly heavily-industrialised and now post-industrial society, Wales has a proliferation of these. Recent research suggests that with up to one-third of its school population living in child poverty, Wales has one of the highest levels of deprivation in the UK (Joshi, 2007).

The stark relationship that exists between social and economic disadvantage and low educational attainment in Wales was highlighted in a report on poverty and social exclusion in Wales from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Trust in November 2005 (Egan, 2006; Kenway, Parsons, Carr, & Palmer, 2005). The authors highlighted that the unambiguous improvements in educational outcomes in the second half of the 1990s had generally stalled around 2000, disadvantaging students at ages 11 and 16.While students from more disadvantaged backgrounds had shared in the overall improvement, the gap in performance with more privileged students had not narrowed.

Most tellingly of all, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Trust evidence highlighted problems with performance at the age of 16 and the consequences this had for young people in later life. Having improved over a number of years, progress at GCSE has stalled and is now stuck on a plateau. The report also noted that those with fewer than five 'good' GCSEs at the age of 17 were unlikely to acquire any further qualifications as they grew older. This leads to a situation where one in four 19 year olds were without basic qualifications, representing no real improvement since 1997/98.

The tendency of the education system in Wales to produce a 'long tail' of performance with many young people, especially in its most disadvantaged communities, leaving school at 16 with low or no qualifications, had first been highlighted as long ago as the 1980s and is clearly still a weakness of post-devolution education in Wales (Reynolds, 1990).

This type of evidence persuaded the Welsh Assembly Government in April 2006 to invest 16 million [pounds sterling] of new money in a two-year program called Raising Individual Standards in Education, targeted at improving performance in schools in Wales most disadvantaged areas (Davidson, 2006).

What the above analysis suggests, therefore, is that overall student achievement in Wales has improved considerably over the last decade. This has taken place at a time when power over education policy has become devolved to the National Assembly for Wales and when a series of innovative and distinctive policy initiatives have been introduced, including moving away from national testing at the ages of 7, 11 and 14 to a system based on assessment for learning (Egan &James 2001a,b, c, 2002b, 2003e; Welsh Assembly Government, 2001). Nevertheless, there are a number of instances of student underachievement within the system. Some of these, such as the relative performance of males compared to females, reflect wider international experience. Others, such as the low equity factor in achievement, appear to have deeper roots within the history of schooling in Wales. This analysis would, therefore, suggest that Wales can be characterised as a high performance, low equity education system. As part of the wider education reform agenda now developing within the country, which is attracting international attention, addressing this issue will be a major priority.

Teaching and leadership

The quality of teaching in the schools of Wales presents a similar picture to that presented above on student standards. Inspection evidence on the quality of teaching in Wales schools points to considerable progress being made between 1999 and 2006. In 1999 the inspectorate reported that the standard of teaching in 48% of primary and 56% in secondary schools was good or better. By 2006 these percentages had risen to 79% in primary and 69% in secondary schools. In 1999, the standard of teaching was considered outstanding in 4% of primary and 6% of secondary schools. In 2006, this figure had risen to 17% for both primary and secondary schools (Estyn, 2007).

Two observations might be made about this evidence. The first is the correlation between the improvement in the quality of teaching in primary schools and the better performance of primary compared to secondary students. Second is the relatively small proportion of teaching in Wales' schools that is of the highest quality. Given the clear link that exists between high quality teaching, school effectiveness and high student performance, this is an area for concern.

Ratings given by Estyn to initial teacher training and teacher continuing professional development (CPD) in Wales present a similar picture of good and improving quality, but a lack of truly outstanding performance and relatively low levels of professional networking and promotion of innovatory practice. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Richard Elmore's depiction of teaching in the United States of America as 'a profession without a practice' applies with equal salience in Wales (Elmore, 2004).

Opportunities for developing the quality of leadership in Wales' schools have increased considerably in recent years as part of the National Headship Development Program funded by the Welsh Assembly Government. The National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) program is now a mandatory qualification for those aspiring to headship in Wales. It is provided by a consortium comprised of three universities and two LEA advisory bodies. The initial iteration of NPQH had teething problems and received a critical external evaluation. Subsequent versions of the program have been more successful, with an increasing emphasis being placed on school improvement work within the individual candidates' schools.

The NPQH application and selection process has also been refined following external evaluation (Egan &James, 2003c).The numbers applying for NPQH and, following the completion of the course, the pool of candidates trained for headship are both healthy in relation to demographically-based forecasts for headship vacancies. On a growing number of occasions, however, there appears to be difficulties in filling vacant posts. The reasons for this situation are complex, but they include a mismatch between where vacancies exist and NPQH completers are available and an apparent shortage of candidates able to work in Welsh-medium schools. More worryingly there also appears to be anecdotal evidence that many in the NPQH pool are not attracted to applying for headships given the relatively small differentiation in salary between deputy headship and headship.

An induction program for new heads is available in the form of the Professional Headship Induction Program delivered by LEAs. Whilst in many cases this has provided useful support to new heads, the evaluation of the program pointed to variations in quality of provision that were often associated with the capacity of LEA advisory services to offer support (Egan & James, 2003a).

More successful has been the Leadership Program for Serving Head-Teachers provided by a private contractor on behalf of the Assembly Government. The evaluation of this five-day program suggests that it has been very well received by participants and is strongly aligned to school improvement paradigms (Egan & James, 2003b). Some head teachers have been able to build upon their experience through a two-day leadership seminar pilot program.

These programs have undoubtedly contributed to the improvements which Estyn has noted taking place in leadership and management skills in Wales' schools. In the most recent annual report of the inspectorate, leadership and management are said to be at least good in 75% of the schools that were inspected, with outstanding features in just over 20% (Estyn, 2007).

As with the outcomes on quality of teaching, the fact that only 20% of management and leadership in Wales' schools is of the highest quality provides no room for either celebration or complacency. It can also be suggested that these programs as a totality do not provide a coherent philosophy of the role of school leadership within the wider context of school effectiveness and, in particular, do not embrace thinking on distributed forms of leadership.

The above analysis suggests that, as with improvements in standards achieved by students, considerable advances have been made in the quality of teaching and leadership in Wales over the last decade. A great deal of this can be related to the increased support that has been offered to practitioners through the leadership programs and the work of the General Teaching Council for Wales (see below). In both teaching and leadership, however, challenges confront the Assembly Government as it seeks to raise standards even further as part of its reform agenda and so that greater equity in student performance can be achieved.

School effectiveness and school improvement in Wales

In general, the outcomes of research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement have had limited influence and effect in Wales. David Reynolds and colleagues at Cardiff University carried out some of the earliest studies in this area in Welsh comprehensive schools (Reynolds, Sullivan, & Murgartroyd, 1987). The impact of that work and that of David Hopkins through the Improving Education Quality for All project (Hopkins, Ainscow, & West, 1994) has not been as great as might be expected, being confined to isolated LEAs and small groups of largely secondary schools.

In 2002 the Welsh Assembly Government and Welsh Local Government Association commissioned a study of factors that might explain the gaps that existed in the performance of secondary schools in similar socioeconomic circumstances (Welsh Assembly Government, 2002). In 2005 this was followed by a similar study for primary schools (James, Connolly, Dunning, & Elliot, 2006;Welsh Assembly Government, 2005).Taken together these studies highlighted the following as being critical to successful school improvement strategies in the challenging circumstances that these schools faced:

* having strong leadership in place, at all levels, to drive school improvement;

* promoting effective learning and teaching practice;

* effective use of attainment data;

* a culture of self-belief and high expectations; and

* strong teamwork.

Developments in the field of learning and teaching pedagogy, within the context of teacher CPD, have also contributed to school effectiveness. In particular the General Teaching Council for Wales, utilising funding made available by the Assembly Government, has since 2001 provided every teacher in Wales with the opportunity to undertake personalised CPD. A range of award categories including bursaries, study sabbaticals, teacher research scholarships, professional networks and whole-school initiatives have been made possible through this unique scheme. Although the outcomes of this scheme are sometimes criticised for focusing on individual teacher development, they can be seen to have also impacted directly or indirectly on school effectiveness (Egan & James, 2002a, 2003d, 2004).

The research activity and initiatives described above have undoubtedly made useful contributions to school effectiveness in Wales. There has not been, however, any systematic attempt to apply the outcomes of international research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement in Wales. Neither has there been a development a school effectiveness program, embodying new models of leadership, specifically designed for the needs of Wales. It can be suggested that the absence of a strong school effectiveness movement has contributed significantly to the way in which student performance has, particularly in secondary schools, reached a plateau, the serious relative underachievement of boys compared to girls, and the all-pervasive link between disadvantage and levels of performance across the education system.

Moving to tri-level reform

The education and training policies of the Welsh Assembly Government are set out in two strategic documents: The Learning Country, published in 2001 and its successor The Learning Country: Vision Into Action published in 2006 (Welsh Assembly Government, 2001,2006b).The 2006 document sets out the actions to be followed up to 2010 to achieve the objectives of the Learning Country program. There is a recognition that a body of knowledge exists 'on how schools can transform themselves using the outcomes of research on school effectiveness and improvement, which should be more widely employed' in Wales. It is also commits the Assembly Government to utilising 'the vastly increased knowledge we have of how learning takes place and what makes for successful learning and teaching'. The role of leadership is also recognised and that 'effective leadership, at all levels, plays a key role in improving the quality of all education and training' (Welsh Assembly Government, 2006b).

These commitments are part of a wider strategy to adopt tri-level approaches to the systemic reform of the education and training system in Wales and to introduce a national education effectiveness system designed to address current weaknesses within the system. This development has been led by a Tri-Level Reform Board encompassing in its membership representatives of all the major stakeholder and representative organisations in Wales, including the Welsh Local Government Association, the General Teaching Council for Wales and Estyn (Egan & Marshall, in press).

The tri-level reform program has been strongly influenced by the ideas of leading educational reformers such as Michael Fullan, Brian Caldwell and David Hopkins, all of whom have become involved in developments taking place in Wales. In September 2006 the Assembly Government was represented at an international conference on tri-level reform in Toronto where nations involved on educational transformation shared their experiences (International Leaders' Dialogue, 2006).

At the heart of the tri-level reform agenda in Wales is the need to raise overall levels of educational performance and, in particular, improvements in the equity of educational achievement by all socioeconomic groups. To achieve this major systemic reform is being sought at each level within the system: at national level, within the LEAs and at the critical level of schools. Implicit within the reform process is the need for greater interdependence and interconnectedness between these levels in the education and training system.

Closely aligned to the tri-level movement is the work being undertaken to reform public service delivery in general in Wales under the banner of the Assembly Government's Making the Connections program. The underpinning philosophy of this program has been articulated through the work of a group commissioned by the Assembly Government to produce a blueprint for public service reform in Wales. This group, led by Sir Jeremy Beecham, reported in July 2006. It recommended that rather than following the contestability, choice and consumer-oriented agenda that had become dominant in England, that Wales should look to develop a citizen model for public service delivery built around the provision of high quality community services based, wherever possible, on collaborative activity. One of the areas suggested by the Beecham Report for such work in the field of education was that of school improvement (Welsh Assembly Government, 2006a, c).

The tri-level reform process has been pioneered at the national level through a major organisation and development review of the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills. The department was itself a product of a Making the Connections reform initiative, being formed in April 2006 as a result of the merger of the former Department for Education and Training Department of the Assembly Government, the Curriculum and Assessment Authority in Wales and Education and Learning Wales, the body responsible for all post-16 education and training outside of the universities. The current review, to be completed by late 2007, will lead to the creation of a department specifically organised to lead the effectiveness and improvement agenda in education in Wales through a new, regionally-based relationship with local government, schools and other providers.

The reform agenda has also been embraced by LEAs in Wales through their involvement in the Tri-Level Reform Board, the international seminar in Toronto, a number of regionally based seminars with LEA directors and head teachers and through ongoing discussions. The Welsh Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Education in Wales have begun to reform their structures, using funding made available through the Making the Connections initiative. In particular they are seeking ways to strengthen joint working and to overcome the capacity difficulties flowing from the existence of 22 LEAs of different size.

At the critical level of school reform, the Department for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills has commissioned a major School Effectiveness Program to commence in late 2007. It deploys new approaches to school effectiveness and leadership in Wales that draw upon leading edge research and professional practice in these fields. At the core of the program will be a narrative which asserts the need for reform to be led not by 'top-down' prescription, but from within the school system by head teachers using specified approaches that draw upon the robust bodies of knowledge on school effectiveness. The new leadership paradigm associated with this program will see a group of head teachers acting as system leaders, working with a small group of schools and developing in those schools distributed leadership at all levels (Hopkins, 2007).

The program draws heavily on the perspectives of leading head teachers in Wales as well as the existing international discourse on school effectiveness. The views of these successful head teachers were captured in series of seminars with representatives from primary, special and secondary schools. They highlighted the factors (set out in Table 5) as having been critical to their work in making their schools effective organisations.

Critical also to the School Effectiveness Program and the wider tri-level reform agenda in Wales is the development of a pedagogy strategy to be used across the various education and training sectors. This has been developed over the last two years having initially been brought into being by the Education Minister, Jane Davidson, stimulated by the experiences she gained while making a study tour to New South Wales. The strategy is currently being refined and tested by a group of pedagogy champions appointed through open competition by the Assembly Government and drawn from outstanding practitioners in each of the education sectors in Wales. It is anticipated that the outcomes of their work will create an innovation bank for the use of all practitioners in Wales, providing them with successful approaches to learning and teaching that they can adapt for their purpose and then deploy within the school effectiveness program.

Alignment for effectiveness

Since the devolution of power over education to Wales in 1999 much has been achieved within the education system. A distinctive system has emerged with a suite of innovative policy developments. The challenge that confronts schools, LEAs and the Assembly Government, however, is levels of student performance within the system. Whilst these have improved overall, there is unevenness in performance between primary and secondary level, a clear slowing in progression in the early stages of secondary school, marked differences between the relative attainment of boys and girls and strong association between disadvantage and low performance.

The tri-level reform movement in Wales is driven by the need to address these challenges in raising student achievement. New models of school effectiveness, leadership and learning and teaching pedagogy are being developed to enable schools to move to levels of performance that will compare favourably in international terms. In order to achieve this the education system in Wales and the policies developed since 2001 as part of the Learning Country program will need to be aligned to this purpose.

Keywords

government school relationship

learning plateaus

improvement programs

politics of education

leadership

student improvement

References

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David Egan

University of Wales Institute Cardiff

Steve Marshall 

Welsh Assembly Government

David Egan is a Professor of Education at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff, where he is Director of the Wales Institute for Applied Education Research. Email [e-mail]

Steve Marshall is Director of Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills in Wales and former Chief Executive of the Department of Education and Children's Services in South Australia.

Email [e-mail]

Table 1 Percentage of students attaining expected levels
of performance in national curriculum core subjects 1999 to 2006

                  1999   2006

English KS1        81     83
English KS2        67     79
English KS3        62     68
Mathematics KS1    86     87
Mathematics KS2    69     81
Mathematics KS3    63     72
Science KS1        86     89
Science KS2        75     86
Science KS3        59     73

Table 2 Percentage of students attaining five subjects in
GCSE national examinations 1999 to 2006

                               1999   2006

5 or more higher passes         48     54
5 or more passes (any grade)    83     86

Table 3 Percentage of students attaining the core
subject indicator in 2006

                  Female   Male

CSI Key Stage 2     79      70
CSI Key Stage 3     63      53
CSI Key Stage 4     43      36

Table 4 Percentages of students attaining expected
levels of performance in English at key stages 2 to 4 in 2006

                      Female   Male
English Key Stage 2     84      73
English Key Stage 3     76      60
English Key Stage 4     67      49

Table 5 Factors in school effectiveness identified by successful head
teachers in Wales in 2007

Strong leadership                 * distributed throughout the school
                                  * involving the governing body
                                  * setting high expectations
                                  * putting learning and teaching
                                    first
                                  * providing vision and purpose
                                  * empowering staff and pupils
                                  * leading planning for effectiveness
                                  * developing new leaders
A rich and balanced curriculum    * providing transformative
                                    experiences for students
                                  * personalised to meet student need
                                  * developing creativity
                                  * utilising ICT
                                  * exploiting outdoor learning and
                                    visits
High quality teaching             * providing models of successful
                                    practice
                                  * reducing internal variations in
                                    quality
                                  * exploiting shared knowledge
                                    gained from curriculum tours
                                  * through common approaches to
                                    lesson planning and delivery
                                  * reducing 'teacher talk'
                                  * maximizing the use of support
                                    staff
A strong focus on learning        * behaviour policies related to
pedagogy                            learning
                                  * a focus on literacy
                                  * developing skills and independence
                                  * use of mentoring support
                                  * appropriate subject knowledge and
                                    expertise
                                  * assessment for learning
                                  * developing thinking skills
                                  * links between primary and
                                    secondary phases
                                  * appropriate use of learning styles
                                  * importance of learner voice
The importance of data            * appropriate for purpose
                                  * of high quality
                                  * rigorous analysis and deployment
Internal accountability           * based on self evaluation
                                  * performance management
                                  * departmental review
                                  * use of responsibility posts to
                                    lead learning and teaching
The importance of continuing      * available on demand
professional development          * linked to national funding
                                    strategy
                                  * for all teaching and support staff
                                  * within the workplace
                                  * utilises action research
                                  * professional learning communities
Networks                          * enabling teachers between schools
                                    to share and access good practice
External partnerships             * with parents
                                  * outside agencies
                                  * family learning
                                  * community schooling
A rich environment for learning   * buildings
                                  * resources
                                  * a feeling of ownership by pupils