Shake up needed in Welsh schools, says IFS

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that pupils in Wales were performing as well as disadvantaged children in England last year.

The study follows Wales’s weak performance in the Organisation for Ecomonic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) most recent Programme for international student assessment (Pisa) standings.

They found that the results in Wales declined by about 20 per cent of a standard deviation which is more than other UK nations. The results were well below the average across OECD countries.

Laura Doel, national secretary at the National Association of Head Teachers Cymru, said that Welsh schools are "working hard to deliver for their pupils, but this dedication hasn’t been matched by the investment needed, especially on the back of the pandemic and cost of living crisis."

She said: "School leaders are facing impossible challenges in making budgets add up, with some having to make teachers and teaching assistants redundant when they actually want to recruit more staff to help those pupils with the greatest needs."

Doel added that the most positive action now would be to pause any "unnecessary reforms like changes to the school day, and a concerted effort to increase support for schools so they can ensure all children get the education they deserve."

Wales’ lower attainment cannot be explained by higher levels of poverty, according to the IFS, as pupils in areas of England with higher or similar levels of deprivation such as Liverpool or Gateshead achieved “significantly higher” GCSE results than their counterparts in Wales.

In England, the gap in GCSE results between disadvantaged and other pupils was equivalent to 18 months of educational progress in 2019 before the pandemic. In Wales, it was even larger at around 23 months in 2019 and has hardly changed since 2009.

The IFS called for the curriculum in Wales to place greater emphasis on specific knowledge. As well as this, they suggested that reforms to GCSEs should be delayed to give proper time to consider their effect on long-term outcomes, teacher workload and inequalities.

A move towards school report cards, alongside existing school inspections, could be an effective way to provide greater information for parents without a return to league tables, they added.