Dawn Bowden AM: Thank you, Chair. Yes, just around preparations for the implementation, really. You touched on this briefly in response to some questions from Hefin David earlier on, but I'm just interested to know how the money that you announced for supporting teachers for the preparation of the implementation, how that's actually been used. What specifically have teachers been doing to prepare for its implementation? I know you've set aside about £24 million over two years. So, it's not an insignificant amount. I just wondered how that was being utilised.
Kirsty Williams AM: You're right, first of all, it's not an insignificant amount; it's the largest investment in professional learning since the history of devolution. So, you're right that it is not insignificant, and it was a hard-won resource, I can tell you, from my colleagues. Because, as I said earlier, the curriculum itself can be amazing, but if our teachers and our professionals are not equipped to deliver it, then all this change will be for nothing. So, investing in the profession is absolutely crucial. That money is being made available to each and every school and has empowered headteachers to really think, 'What are the professional needs of my school and the practitioners in my school?' Because, as we've just heard from Claire, there are some schools that have been part of the pioneer process from the very beginning and therefore are further along that development chain. There are other schools that maybe are only beginning now, now that it's published, to be really engaging with the curriculum.
Dawn Bowden AM: So, there hasn't been a national programme, as such.
Kirsty Williams AM: There is a national element to it, but we've given the money to individual schools and individual headteachers because I have no way of knowing how each individual practitioner is ready or how much additional support they're going to need. There's no way I can know that. The people who do know that are the headteachers that are running our schools. But we have worked with the National Academy for Educational Leadership to put together a programme for headteachers, and that's national. The four regional consortia are working together to have a national approach for the first level of engagement. So, actually, the beginning of their discussion is about how you would implement a curriculum. The next stages will be much more focused on individual AoLE and area-specific professional learning. So, there is a national approach in terms of leadership. The regional consortia are working together to provide consistency for classroom teachers and teaching assistants, and then the next stage of that development is for subject specifics. Claire referred to the AoLE networks, and there's an opportunity then for people to engage in that. It's also important to say that that's not the end of the process. So, this September is the start of our new ITE courses, taught for the first time, and that's great. I'm concerned about what happens to people when they come out of ITE. So, we're looking at developing potentially a stronger set of support, again on a national basis, for those who are newly qualified, beginning their teaching career, because I don't think we've done that on a consistently good level across the country. We're also working with the regions to revisit and improve their coaching and mentoring schemes that they have across the system. We're also involved in—and I'm sure the committee has heard about it, so forgive me if I'm going over old ground—schools as learning organisations and the OECD work to support schools to develop that culture as a learning organisation. We know from very successful education systems in other parts of the world there is a strong, strong culture of self-evaluation as a first step in their school improvement system, and we've not been very good at that in Wales, we've not been strong at that, that's not the culture that we have had. We've kind of depended on a culture where a school does its thing and then somebody comes along and tells you whether you're good or bad, rather than the school really thinking itself deeply about, 'What are we doing well and what do we need to improve on?' So, the schools as learning organisations are an important part, again, so that money is being used for schools participating in that programme with support from the OECD.
Dawn Bowden AM: Okay. And the money that you announced for this  professional development preparation, if you like, was for two years. So, there's going to clearly be an ongoing programme of preparation development and personal development, as well as anything else. But is there likely to be any more money allocated specifically beyond the two years that you've already allocated or is that going to be a question and negotiation with your colleagues? Or do you see what you've put in as being, 'This is what we need to develop or to prepare for the implementation. The rest would be what would be normal professional development beyond that'?
Kirsty Williams AM: The money that was agreed was for a two-year period and, clearly, I continue to have conversations with the Minister for Finance and the First Minister around future allocations for professional learning, and I'm sure this committee and, indeed, members of this committee could help me in that task.
Dawn Bowden AM: Okay, fine. Can you tell us a bit about the innovation schools—the 16 innovation schools—and how you've made your decisions about who they might be, across which sectors, in primary, secondary and so on? So, basically, how they were selected and what you're expecting of them.
Kirsty Williams AM: Okay. So, all of our schools that had previously been pioneers were invited to apply to morph into the next phase, which is innovation schools, and they were asked to apply and there was a discussion held both internally within Welsh Government and with the consortia about which schools were best placed to be able to do that role and to continue to work with us, going forward. I think one of the lessons learned, and this was said in the committee, was that there was an upside to having pioneer schools, but there was a downside to having pioneer schools, and I think, at this stage of the game, we need to move away from that model and to really get the message to everybody that they all had to be pioneers now—everybody had to be a pioneer—because this is coming down the track and we don't want anybody just sitting there waiting until September 2022 and saying, 'Oh, gosh. I've got to do something new today'. Not that they would have done that, but—. So, the move away is partly to engender within the sector the fact that we've all got to engage in this now. The innovation schools have led to a very specific piece of work as we do the final refinement, and their main role is working with us on these final refinements to the content but also to the assessment issues and accountability issues. Steve.
Steve Davies: Yes. There were 60 applicants from 170 previous pioneer schools. We've had 16—four per region. It was important that we engaged with the regions to get their view, and we've had evaluation being carried out—
Claire Bennett: Yes. So, during the first term of work, we asked them to really look at the curriculum as a whole—so, take the whole curriculum guidance and then think, 'How would I apply that in the school?, Does it make sense?, Can we work with it?, What are the issues?, What are the questions that arise for us for assessment?', and each of the schools produced a report setting out their reflections on, 'If I were putting this into practice—'. So, it's slightly different to the feedback we've had from other people, which has been more, 'Maybe you should emphasise this or change that wording' and kind of quite practical, and really about how you would realise this curriculum in a school. That's been drawn together into an overall report, drawing out the themes, by Wavehill, who are a kind of research company. It's been really useful, and the innovation schools met as part of the workshops last week. Having 16 headteachers in a room talking about how they see this curriculum and the way in which they would practically engage with it has been invaluable, in just making us think, even with all the practitioners that have been involved, 'How do we make this work for schools?', given that we've got schools and headteachers really engaging in the detail of how they would use it practically. So, it's been invaluable, and they're continuing on that work now this term to keep making sure that what we're doing is something that schools can actually realise practically.
Kirsty Williams AM: If you think of the pioneer model, pioneers were looking at specific aspects of the curriculum. So, you might have been a pioneer school because you had particular strengths in health and well-being, or you might have been a pioneer schools because you were particularly looking at professional learning needs to support the curriculum. This is about, at this stage, where we have a high degree of certainty about what it's going to look like, 'Actually, how do I as a school practically implement this in the round?', and the schools were chosen because of their ability to do that. But also we did need a mix of sector—secondary, primary—but also linguistically, to just try to make sure that this works in all the different types of schools we've got. Faith schools, as well, are involved. So, just trying the practical implementation now, now that we know exactly—not exactly— but we have a good idea what it's actually going to look like, so, 'How am I going to go about doing this?'
Lynne Neagle AM: Okay. Siân has a supplementary. If I could ask as well, maybe you could provide the committee with a list of the new innovation schools.
Kirsty Williams AM: Yes, sure. No problem at all.
Sian Gwenllian AM: Are you confident that every school across Wales is participating in this process of change now, because the danger is, in getting these pioneer schools—? I understand that they are discussing in clusters, and so on, but can you put your hand on your heart and say that every school is participating in this project now?
Steve Davies: I can't tell you that, absolutely, 100 per cent are definitely, totally, absolutely equally involved. The structure we've got in place across the regions is working with schools on their readiness to actually—not readiness to engage—start to deliver as we move through to the future. So, each region is a member of our operations board, which was in our governance structure. And we don't have a roll-call against all schools, but we require them, or request of them that they keep us informed of the networks. Every school is part of a network that links to it, and they gauge (1) the level of activity in it, (2) the outcomes of that work, because each of the networks, each of the clusters, produces work that the region brings together. But we've not got a monitoring system that says, 'Tick every box'. What I would say, and it touches on the point you raised earlier and in relation to Scotland, I think if we had 22 units of local authorities trying to do this, it would be incredibly complex and very difficult to deliver. At a regional level, we require the regions to engage with all schools through the cluster model.
Lynne Neagle AM: Thank you. Dawn.
Dawn Bowden AM: I just wanted to clarify, because in your paper you talk about giving £30,000 to each, or to the innovation schools. Was that £30,000 each, or £30,000 for the project?
Kirsty Williams AM: Each school that participates in the innovation schools programme gets £30,000.
Dawn Bowden AM: Okay. Thank you for that clarification. My final question in this section is just about how we are going to deal with the issue of teachers who are not trained in Wales. So, teachers trained in England apply for jobs in Wales, but they obviously haven't been trained in the new curriculum. How are we actually going to deal with that?
Kirsty Williams AM: Okay. Well, you're right—we will continue to have a system where teachers trained in Wales will teach in England and teachers trained in England or who have worked in England will come across the border, as well as teachers from other parts of the world coming to teach in our schools. I think that that will continue to happen. Indeed, when I'm feeling at my most confident and bullish about these issues, I think Wales will be a really attractive place to be a teacher because of the autonomy that we will be giving to our professionals, as well as an exciting new curriculum. So, I think, actually, potentially, we will have people coming across the border to teach here because it'll be a great place to be a professional. Clearly, already in some ways, programmes of study are already distinctive in Wales. We have a different exam board, if you're teaching at a secondary level. So, our programmes of study are already different and that does not preclude anybody from coming across to teach in our system from a different system. I believe that that's not a barrier to people continuing to do that. Clearly, there may be pedagogical concepts in the new curriculum that perhaps somebody who had trained in a different system would not be completely au fait with, but that is the ongoing role of professional learning within our school system, because we've just talked about the two years' worth of money; in an ideal world, if I was able to make long-term plans, I think there will be an ongoing, and there should always be an ongoing, provision for professional learning in our classrooms. And this shouldn't just be about just getting people ready for the curriculum and then taking away professional learning budgets. One of the ways in which I think we can attract teachers to Wales is to send a very clear message— and actually attract people into the profession and keep them in the profession, wherever they train—that you will have a career in teaching where you will be continually supported in your practice via professional learning. So, I do not see that this is an insurmountable issue.
Dawn Bowden AM: So, you'll still be recruiting on the basis of skills and adaptability and so on.
Kirsty Williams AM: Yes, of course.