NEW categorisation information published by the Welsh Government suggests that there has been an improvement in school performance.
Introduced in 2014, the National School Categorisation System places schools into one of four colour-coded support categories to demonstrate the level of support they need – green, yellow, amber and red.
There are now more schools in the green and yellow categories when compared to last year. Green schools require just four days of support and yellow schools receive up to 10 days of support.
This year sees a small change to the factors that decide a school’s category. Instead of just looking at areas such as performance, including GCSE results, there is now a much broader assessment that considers areas such as teacher assessments from other subjects, wellbeing and the quality of teaching and learning.
The National Categorisation System was introduced in 2014 to help identify schools in need of support to improve.
Under the system there are four categories – green, yellow, amber and red. Schools in the green category are deemed to be in need of the least support while schools in the red category are those identified as needing the most support.
This year’s results show that there are fewer schools in Wales in need of the highest levels of support when compared to last year. Similarly, there are more schools categorised as needing lower levels of support.
The purpose of including a broader and more sophisticated range of factors is to understand the kind of support needed by a school and to give parents a better picture of how a school is performing.
Out of over 1,500 schools across Wales only 4 appealed against their category.
In summary:
85.3 per cent of primary schools and 68.3 per cent of secondary schools are now in the green and yellow categories. This increase from last year continues the upward trend since 2015.
There has been a very small rise in the proportion of red schools – those identified as needing most support – by 0.4 percentage points in the primary sector and 2.9 percentage points in the secondary sector.
45 per cent of special schools have been categorised as green, and needing less support, with no schools categorised as red and in need of most support.
Cabinet Secretary for Education Kirsty Williams said: “I’m pleased to see that more schools are now in the green and yellow categories, which continues with the upward trend we have seen over the past few years.
“These schools have a key role to play in supporting other schools to improve by sharing their expertise, skills and good practice.
“Last September, I announced that to further raise schools standards we would make changes to the school categorisation system following advice from the OECD.
“As well as taking into account a much broader range of factors about a school’s ability to improve, categorisation now places more of an emphasis on discussions about how the school could improve – leading to a tailored programme of support, challenge and intervention.
“I’m confident that the changes we have made to the categorisation process are in the best interests of pupils and will help ensure schools are given the right support at the right time.”
David Evans, Wales Secretary of the National Education Union Cymru, said: “There are some real positives in the figures published today. The significant increase in the number of primary schools placed in the green category is particularly pleasing and highlights the trend of good news we’ve seen relating to school standards following on from the recent Estyn report that highlighted the greater cooperation that has been taken place between schools. Of course these are but one measure of performance and while schools and teachers should rightfully be applauded in light of these results we have always warned against seeing them as a definitive picture of how and why schools are performing. The really important take away is to ensure that where support is needed it is delivered, where resources and finances are identified as lacking they are provided and where excellence is identified it is shared across the sector.”
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