A minister’s view: Jane Hutt

Feb 28 2008 by Our Correspondent, Western Mail

THE work of our schools arguably has the greatest long-term impact on our success, wellbeing and happiness as a nation.

It’s no exaggeration to say that schools are the single most powerful resource at our disposal, given that they shape the knowledge, ability and attitudes of our children and young people. We need to make every effort to ensure that we get the maximum benefit we can from each of our schools.

In short the bottom line objective should be optimum performance by every child and young person.

As the Chief Inspector reported in Estyn’s annual report for 2006-07 we have cause to celebrate, because there has been a significant improvement in the performance of students of all ages in Wales over the past two decades.

But measuring progress against our own past isn’t good enough. International benchmarking shows we compare less favourably with other countries and other parts of the UK. We also see big variations in performance between pupils at different schools and, most strikingly, discrepancies in the achievements of students within the same school, including between boys and girls.

Of course individuals are endowed with different levels of ability and some schools are challenged by more difficult demographics than others.

However, the growing knowledge we have from around the world tells us we can narrow the gap in performance and raise attainment overall. These global perspectives tell us that each and every school in Wales can become more effective for its pupils and its community.

The new School Effectiveness Framework launched this week, Building Effective Learning Communities Together seeks to bring together what works and to put learners at the heart of education policy and delivery.

The framework is the product of collaboration between head teachers, local authorities, the Assembly Government and other national bodies. It is a developmental tool for all schools to help them to reflect on their strengths and to share and develop good practice.

The framework seeks to engender a high-performance culture in all schools which includes:

Leadership which encourages the development of best practice within individual schools, across schools and across local authorities;

Teaching which enables children and young people to develop skills, knowledge and the understanding needed to reach their full potential, encouraging them to become more effective learners;

Improving on best performance by analysing strengths and weaknesses, identifying improvement activity and setting high, but realistic targets and standards;

Intervening and supporting to address areas identified for improvement purposefully to improve effectiveness;

Developing professional learning communities that build capacity for continuous and sustained improvement;

Developing closer working between schools, their communities and other agencies to establish joined-up programmes to deliver improved learner outcomes and wellbeing.

There is an urgency about this issue if we are to enable all children and young people to develop their potential and to become economically active and engaged adults.

Jane Hutt is Minister for Children, Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills