“I can’t remember a single Challenge Adviser actually giving me a menu of support and saying ‘oracy needs to improve, and here is A, B, C for you’ and ‘here, this is a list of a few schools that have good practice in this’. – Primary School Headteacher, Carmarthenshire. “The menu of support isn’t tailored. What’s really needed is ‘where have we seen this before’, ‘who’s had similar challenge and what did they do’. Who can we go and meet to talk it through.” – Secondary School Headteacher, Pembrokeshire. It is clear that schools strongly believe that the Menu of Support is clearly not tailored enough for schools. Among all the schools that actually discussed ERW’s menu of Support verbally their view was unanimous that the menu of Support was too general, as a Primary Headteacher from Swansea put it – “I think the menu of support is really about us being given what can be provided, rather than being provided what we really need.” No positive statements/comments were made regarding the Menu of Support. Even so, as we can see when looking solely at the Headteacher Feedback Analysis statistics below, 91.89% of respondent actually believed that they had in fact received a relevant Menu of Support. Did you receive a relevant menu of support as a consequence of the adviser's visit to your School? Swansea % Do/Yes 23 71.88% Naddo/No 9 28.13% Total Answered 32 Neath Port Talbot % Do/Yes 25 96.15% Naddo/No 1 3.85% Total Answered 26 Ceredigion % Do/Yes 14 100.00% Naddo/No 0 0.00% Total Answered 14 Powys % Do/Yes 45 100.00% Naddo/No 0 0.00% Total Answered 45 Carmarthenshire % Do/Yes 45 100.00% Naddo/No 0 0.00%
Total 180 From the Feedback Analysis Pembrokeshire and Swansea again feature as one of the 3 LA to give more negative feedback compared to others. The overall positive or negative experience with their CA’s and ERW as a whole could have affected this response and the remaining answers. But on the whole we can see positive feedback as over 50% of the respondents are of the view that ERW’s communication has been mainly effective, with Satisfactory having 26.11%, therefore there is room for improvement as only 16.67 believed that it was very effective. Robin Hughes Interviews Schools valued that they were able to pick up the phone or approach someone with responsibility within ERW easily “ERW seem prepared to listen. That is reassuring. I feel I can contact them, even the MD directly.” – Primary School HT, Swansea “ERW had the same expectations of us special schools as other schools, to begin with. We spoke up, ERW listened, and we now have a special schools network. We spoke to the MD and she listened.” Special School HT, Powys. “I had a concern with a Challenge Adviser, and I approached the Pricncipal Challenge Adviser. It was dealt with. That relationship with the Senior Challenge Adviser is really important.” - Powys Primary HT Group. “If I have an issue, I just call the Md. She’s approachable and supportive. But I guess that isn’t really sustainable.” Secondary HT Group, Swansea “I had four different Challenge Advisers in 7 years and begged the MD to have some stability. She listened and I now have an Adviser who is supportive. She has my respect.” – Primary School HT, Pembrokeshire. Headteacher feedback Analysis When asking School which method of communication do you find most helpful to gain information on ERW's work, this was their response: Method of Communication Frequency Y wefan/Website 41 Trydar/Twitter 22 Cylchlythyr/Newsletter 61 E-bost/E-mail 158 Arall (nodwch)/Other (please specify) 5