Those with influence should listen ☝️ When I attended the first sessions on Successful Futures/CfW, I was enthused. Lots is good about CfW. But, WG need to act now to ensure CfW leads to successful futures and doesn’t become an embarrassment that fails children - especially our most disadvantaged.

I have a wry smile to myself when on the one hand schools are quite rightly tasked by Estyn to improve their self-evaluation processes. However, on the other hand schools attempting to ascertain where their cohorts are versus UK standards are now seemingly doing the ‘wrong’ thing - interesting 🤔

Any school that does both will see the discrepancies as clear as day. It’s the elephant in the room…

read *brigade above.
The confusion over online testing is interesting! The WG personalised assessments are now more user friendly but they still don’t compare with regards formative assessment usefulness to GL imho. When you do both, the higher WG SSs versus GL are interesting 🤔 Around +20 for most

exists with CfW as it has from the ‘getgo’. There’s no clarity nor is there consensus from ‘on high’ as to what good curricula and good teaching looks like. There has also been an anti all things English bridge who are prepared to damage children’s life chances for reasons only they know.

So glad you mentioned the Estyn thematic maths report. I felt like cheering when I first read it as it was one of the first times we felt truly vindicated that what we were doing - following the science - was endorsed by an official body in Wales. The same
old, same old problem obviously still…

Your strength of characters and determination to ask questions of those in authority and stand up for what is right is commendable 💪 Why so many basically join the gravy train and keep their heads down to the detriment of the nation’s children is unfathomable to me. Bravo both for not doing so!

The biggest travesty is that when we don’t use pedagogies and teach curricula that is evidence informed and carefully structured the children this damages most are those very same children WG says it’s trying to improve the life chances of. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Keep up the good work both 😊

the next, I realised that learning something was very different to what I’d been told during my PGCE. I changed my practice to reduce the content and increase the retrieval. It worked! I now know why because I’ve independently researched. Teaching isn’t ‘hurling mud’ and hoping some sticks…

Some of these researchers need to speak to teachers like me who have taught the same cohort of children for up to 4 years. I know that I’ve ‘taught’ knowledge and skills that I’ve been 100pc satisfied the children have mastered. However, because I taught these very same children the next year and…

This is a fundamental issue hampering the success of CfW and disgracefully damaging attainment - it has been from the get go. Teaching was to be ‘evidence formed’ in CfW, but yet, surprise surprise, the evidence teachers find when they look, hasn’t aligned with the narrative of those advising WG.

You are dead right about independent learning. The independent learning recommendations are pointless at best and highly damaging at worst because it’s blindingly obvious that ‘independent learning’ currently means different things to different schools and different inspectors.

The most important being ‘quality teaching and learning’ and Wales badly needs some clarity as to what this is and its teachers need reassuring that doing the right thing and following the evidence isn’t regarded as ‘wrong’ by Estyn, WG etc.

A bigger problem at the moment isn’t the speed of the trains, it’s the lack of trains, due apparently to an endless issue of crew availability. It’s particularly problematic at weekends and getting worse month after month. Trains on a Sunday aren’t a ‘thing’ anymore seemingly.

I thought the ‘held the line’ comment was interesting. Whose ‘line’ was this? Maybe I’m wrong, but isn’t it the role of WG to decide upon and set out policy based, surely, on ‘best bets’ research, and Estyn’s role to hold the government’s ‘line’ when it inspects and reports on its findings.

In my class, certainly this time of year, 50% would probably say that their well-being pathway would be best served by letting them stay inside at break time, cancelling X country, and letting them eat a biscuit and not an apple! 😀Should I let them, if this new guidance becomes law??

Everyone’s ‘well-being’ pathway is different to someone else’s surely…? Teachers are well aware that they have 30 individual children in front of them and do their best to manage everyone’s ’well-being’ daily. Difficult to mandate into curriculum design though or am I missing something…?

In the absence of clarity/training, we decided to follow the science. We researched curriculum design in depth and in great detail. Ditto re pedagogies that are the ‘best bets’ to try to close the disadvantage gap. If this guidance becomes statutory, I might just throw my hat in and change career 😀

Much of the advice has been contradictory. We reviewed the 4 purposes guidance recently & were confused! Also, there’s WG guidance, versus Estyn reports and recommendations 🤷‍♀️ Add what ITT institutions seem to be saying to students into the mix and we have what might generously be called a ‘muddle’!

What’s troubling about this, is the more I’ve researched curriculum development and successful pedagogies, the more it’s become clear that the guidance from WG and the direction it’s promoting is simply not evidence informed. Forget ‘ethical and informed’ it’s more unethical and ill-informed to me.

Sadly not all our children can earn a living being actors

of a handful of people who do not agree with the current ‘best bets’ with regards pedagogy, then I hope they are ready for the fallout. Schools were told to follow the science and now it seems we may have to follow something else without the money to have a hope in hell of making it work. Hey ho!

They can’t mention it as they know the training, resources needed and additional ‘enabling’ staff would cost thousands and thousands of pounds which schools don’t have. Schools were told to follow the science and that is not play based enquiry learning. If WG are going to follow the whims and dreams

…known in years. Keeping schools safely staffed is a challenge. Where exactly are these ‘enablers’ going to come from? One teacher and 30 mixed ability children is a big ask and the play-based, enquiry approaches etc will surely mean, without classroom support, the disadvantage gap will grow more.

Was talking to a colleague about this today. Even if, and it’s a massive great ‘if’, this was a good idea, the ‘enabling learning’ approach needs highly skilled, available adults to ‘enable’. FPh may have been more successful if this had been the reality. There is the biggest funding crisis I have….

Vital things. It’s impossible to accurately assess children when curriculum statements are not written in a precise manner.

It reeks of a personal mission to me somehow, but I agree, surely one person can’t have this much influence. Whoever it/they are needs to be challenged and provide the evidence, any evidence, that this will improve the life chances of a single child, let alone those who most need adults to adult!

What’s a mystery to me, is why anyone who knows anything about evidence informed teaching and keeps up to date with such matters, would think this was a good idea. Who is influencing WG? We are years into CfW and now this! It’s all so bizarre and worrying. If it was April 1st, I’d think it a joke.

I asked Wales’ school inspectorate Estyn for emails regarding phonics and/or cueing following the publication of our report in September.

I’ve received a response which says while they do hold relevant information, they need more time to decide whether releasing it is in the “public interest” 👇