Lynne Neagle AM: Thank you. We're going to go on now to Suzy. I'm going to appeal for brief questions and brief answers so that we can cover the rest of the questions.
Suzy Davies AM: I'll shorten these questions, okay. We know why you got rid of the old measures. We've got interim measures now. What are they telling you about the success you've had in trying to avoid the bad behaviour? Short answers.
Kirsty Williams AM: It's impossible. [Laughter.] I think it's inevitable: whatever kind of measures we put in place, people will look to maximise their success in those measures, and I don't think we'll ever come up with a system where those measures are absolutely perfect. What's really important to me is that we're really, really, really challenging schools to look at the performance of all of their children, rather than just at a very, very narrow cohort around those C/D boundaries, which we knew was detrimental, potentially, to more able and talented children and really pushing those Bs to As and those As to A*s, and children for whom actually just getting in to school on a daily basis is an achievement, and the school has done well to provide that. So, our new capped 9 makes sure that there is breadth across a range of subjects, rather than just focusing on a narrower and narrower bunch of subject opportunities for children, and our new third-third-third system enables schools to really look at their performance. So if their capped 9 score is high, what's driving that? Is it because the bottom third of the cohort is doing really well, and the impact on those children is above and beyond what could be expected, but actually, you're not doing very well for your more able and talented; you're not pushing them on? Alternatively, maybe your capped 9 score is because your MAT children are doing incredibly well, but actually, you're not really making the progress for the middle tier of those children. It allows us to have a greater focus on the performance of our FSM children—where they really are within that system. So, it's a much more granular—. And crucially for me, it looks at the impact for every child, because every child has to matter in the system, and what we had before was a narrowing of curriculum choice and a narrowing on a certain cohort of children.
Suzy Davies AM: So are the permanent measures likely to be pretty similar to what you've got now? Because the research—I don't know if the research is complete yet. When will you be publishing the new permanent evaluation?
Kirsty Williams AM: Sue, you're right: they're interim measures at the moment, and we will need to make sure that the performance measures are aligned to the new curriculum. That, potentially, of course—. Because Wales's review of qualifications potentially has an impact on what those finally will look like, so that work is ongoing at the moment, and unless Steve can tell me off the top of his head when we expect that to be completed by, I will send you a note. But they're interim at the moment, because we need to align them to the new curriculum.
Suzy Davies AM: I think we understand that. [Inaudible.]—date.
Steve Davies: No, no. This is not a quick fix. This is a two to three-year research base. The new qualifications for the new curriculum will not start until 2025. They have to be in place for 2022. There's a three-year roll on. I would expect the broad structure of the interim measures to continue over that time. There will be some tweaks for consistency. It's what's wrapped around those interim measures that I touched on earlier: the other evidence that we bring to bear about the effectiveness of a school, but we do want to say to schools that on the whole, broadly speaking, the interim measures will carry on for two, three years.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay, and the reason I asked that is right at the beginning of this session, the Minister said to the Chair that this £100 million that's going into school improvements will be going into things that work. We need some evidence that the interim measures are going to work as well, so when are they going to be evaluated?
Steve Davies: Well, we've only just used them for one year.
Suzy Davies AM: That's what I'm asking you.
Steve Davies: We've signalled that they're only going to be in place for three years. We are carrying out our own review of the impact of those and that's been built in, but I expect the OECD report—because it is an extensive report—to give us feedback on how those things are working now, and some steer, as they did with the last report, as to the direction we would want to go into.
Kirsty Williams AM: And what I'm also interested in is those performance management measures around schools. Yes, they're about outcomes for children, but actually are about a broader suite of behaviours within that school, so, yes, qualifications and grades are an important part of a performance measure, but actually, I have other expectations of schools, above and beyond simply qualifications. And so, we would want our permanent set of performance measures to look at a wider set of behaviours within a school, and I think because—. Exams are important—of course they are, qualifications are important—but the way in which those schools achieve those results are also important.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay. Thank you.
Lynne Neagle AM: Would you anticipate that including well-being, then?
Suzy Davies AM: In a whole-school approach.
Kirsty Williams AM: I absolutely—and we need to find a way of how we can truly measure that. Sometimes, children's well-being is influenced by lots of things outside the control of a school. So, I don't want schools to be held accountable for things that they have no control over, because of the circumstances in which a child may be living. But, absolutely: well-being and how the culture of the school addresses well-being is really important to me.
Lynne Neagle AM: Okay, thank you. Suzy. Move on to PISA, please.
Suzy Davies AM: How useful is PISA for you in helping school improvement? I know that it's not always the thing that you enjoy watching or looking out for. But, genuinely, how useful is it?
Kirsty Williams AM: It is one of a range of tools that we need to look at. Siân, quite rightly, talked about consistency. PISA is one thing where there is a level of consistency, so it will continue to be, I think, an important part of how we test how our system is doing.
Suzy Davies AM: We know that you are a little bit encouraged, but we are not out of the woods yet. You mentioned this in Plenary when we talked about PISA. How confident are you that we are on track for meeting these targets that were set before your time, or do you think that having those targets is helpful? Is it setting up aspirations that are incapable of being met within a period of time?
Kirsty Williams AM: Well, those long-term targets of a score around 500 are part of 'Our National Mission', and we have to keep the pressure on to strive. They are testing, but we have to keep the pressure on to strive to reach them. In some cases, I can be quite encouraged. If we look at reading scores for girls, we are almost there, but that just demonstrates what a journey we've got with our boys to address. For me, one of the ways in which we will reach those targets and achieve them is further progress on our more able and talented children. Although we are now performing at an OECD average, I will be the first person to admit that, although we have seen an improvement in the higher level skills of our more able and talented children, we do not perform at an OECD average with regard to those level 6 and level 5 scores.
Suzy Davies AM: Even within the UK, really, we are quite far behind.
Kirsty Williams AM: Yes. So, I think that's where we really need to push on. That's one of the reasons why we have introduced a more able and talented budget to support that, and our Seren programme, which is delivering fantastic results post-16. That's why we're introducing the principles of Seren earlier into children's careers, bringing it down from year 9 upwards, to be able to drive improvements. So, I think that that's the area that we are particularly keen to work on: making sure that more of our children perform at the OECD average at level 5 and level 6. Clearly, we've got more work to do on reading. We are working with southern Ireland, who have consistently done well with reading scores, to look to see what lessons we can learn to press on with there with reading.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay. My final question on this. You recognise it as a priority, particularly for boys. Does that mean that the focus will then drift slightly from maths, where there has been some success; and drift from science, where the encouragement of more people to take GCSE science has reduced the number of high-level passes?
Kirsty Williams AM: First, we have to have a system that is capable of doing all of those of things at the same time. We can't accept a system that says, 'Well, we can do a bit over here, but that means we have to—.' We have to have a system, Suzy, that can drive improvements at all levels. That's my expectation.
Suzy Davies AM: The balloon needs to be bigger not just squeezing it at one end.
Kirsty Williams AM: Absolutely, yes. That's my expectation of this system. You have to deliver across all of these. We have seen some progress. As I've said, it's far from perfect, and we've got more work to do, but we have to deliver across all three domains, as we did last time. And I'm not going to make any apologies for changing the performance indicators around science. It was a travesty that there were children who never had the opportunity to sit a science GCSE. We don't have to make assumptions about the nature of many, many, many of those children. We have seen a significant increase in the number of children who are having the opportunity to sit GCSE science and who are passing GCSE science. So, I'm not going to make any apologies about that. One of the reasons that I suspect we have ended up with poor science scores is because of the previous policy around science entries and science qualifications. Again, one of the reasons that we have changed it isn't just solely because we need to do better in PISA, but I think that by changing it, we will see an impact on PISA.
Suzy Davies AM: Okay. Thank you for that.