National Assembly for Wales

Good morning, and welcome to today's meeting of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. In the absence of the Chair, the first item on today's agenda is to elect a temporary Chair. Therefore, under Standing Order 17.22, I call for nominations for a temporary Chair.

I nominate Carolyn Thomas to be Chair of the committee.

Carolyn Thomas.

I'm happy to second that. 

I see that there are no objections, in which case I invite Carolyn to take the Chair.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to today's meeting of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. Apologies have been received from Buffy Williams and there is no substitute today. Vaughan Gething is joining us online. The public items of the meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv. A Record of Proceedings will be published as usual—a record for checking. The meeting is bilingual and simultaneous translation from Welsh to English is available. Are there any declarations of interest from Members? No declarations.

So, we're going to move on to item 3, which is scrutiny of Qualifications Wales’s annual report 2023-24. I'd like to welcome David Jones and Philip Blaker here to the committee. So, David's chair of Qualifications Wales and David Blaker is chief executive of Qualifications Wales. Can I thank you both for appearing today? You will be sent a transcript for checking after the committee.

So, if we can move now to item 4—sorry, not. If we go now through to the areas of questioning. If I just start off today, can you tell me what are the main achievements by Qualifications Wales in the past 12 months in delivering its two principal aims, which are meeting the needs of learners and promoting public confidence in qualifications and the qualifications system in Wales?

Bore da, thank you for the welcome, Chair, and thank you. Good to meet Members of the committee. I'll just start in responding to your question. We're very clear on our responsibilities to this Senedd and to this committee, and our annual report, which we published in the last week, which you have in front of you, sets out our achievements over the last year.

It has been a challenging year. I think there are still a wide range of challenges facing the education sector in Wales, but in terms of our very specific role as the qualifications regulator and the two principal aims that we have, we believe that's set out in our report that it's been a particularly successful year. We've progressed significantly with developments associated with the new GCSEs associated with the Curriculum for Wales, and also, very importantly—certainly from my point of view as somebody who's got a background in vocational education, apprenticeship and training—made what I think are some really inspiring developments in relation to broader qualifications that I think young people can benefit from, notably the proposals to develop VCSEs, vocational certificates of secondary education. And I think it showed a lot of foresight from colleagues—Philip and others—to recognise a number of years ago that maybe the VCSE brand, something that we trademarked, was something that would be useful at some point.

So, I think Wales is leading the way, not by just saying that there's parity of esteem between academic or general qualifications and vocational qualifications, but also by actually really trying to make that happen on the ground. I think the suite of qualifications that are now going to be available through a phased process for 14 to 16-year-olds is going to be a really transformational opportunity for schools and, importantly, for young people in Wales. But I would also say that this is all happening at a time of great challenge to the system in Wales, linked to things outside of our control around absenteeism and some of the challenges with mental health and so on. There are more things than that, but we've outlined them quite significantly in our report. I'll hand over to Philip at that point, perhaps, to add any other particular points you want to add.  

I just wanted to add one other point, which is around—. One of our major areas of work is around the delivery of the main exam series, which the WJEC, as the awarding body, deliver, so GCSEs and A-levels. And clearly, since the pandemic in 2020, we've been going through a very careful and phased return to pre-pandemic arrangements and standards, and this year has seen the last step in that. So, I think one of the other major achievements, principally delivered by WJEC, but within the policy context that we set and the regulatory oversight that we have, is to return us to a situation where we're in step with all of the other UK jurisdictions, and we can protect the value of those important GCSE and A-level qualifications for learners, by saying they are now of equal value across all of the UK jurisdictions.

Thank you. Yes, Gareth. 

Thank you. Just to come in on that point and, obviously, you've mentioned there that you're in the final phase of the recovery from COVID-19. Do you believe there is a full recovery that's throughout the education system in terms of GCSE students now who would have been in year 7, perhaps, during COVID times? Do you think that there are any remnants of that left or do you think that's something that needs to be factored in as part of a decision in the future? 

So, interesting. We are going to be producing a report that will come out in January that looks at the grade boundaries and what we've seen in terms of performance across some subject areas. And it does highlight some areas and particular grade boundaries in some subjects that indicate that performance hasn't recovered fully. So, if we look at something like maths as an example, grade boundaries at the higher level—so, grade A boundaries and the like—seem to have recovered. We've seen performance of learners being good there. At grade C boundary and below, performance isn't probably where it should be. Now, the question becomes: is that a consequence of the pandemic or are there other things at play? So, I think it's difficult to unpick whether things can be directly attributed to the pandemic or whether there are wider societal things at play, and actually whether some of those wider societal things that are at play are a consequence of the pandemic. So, it's a complex network.

We all know that, particularly in year 11, attendance is low. Low attendance is bound to have an impact for some learners who are more likely to be at the lower end of the attainment scale in terms of their overall performance. What we did this year was we had a protection mechanism in place. So, awarding works on the basis of the awarding body—WJEC here—making a decision around where the grade boundaries will lie. Grade boundaries change year on year because papers are never of exactly the same level of difficulty, so they need to change according to the level of difficulty. Over the last few years, grade boundaries have had to change to reflect the grading policy, because, in previous years, we've had that midpoint policy as we've been edging back towards pre-pandemic standards. This year, there was a floor placed on it, where we basically said that grade boundaries could be protected in circumstances where the performance was very low, and, in effect, in that balance between examiner judgment and statistics, statistics would win the battle, so to speak—it would be weighted towards statistics if outcomes would otherwise be lower.

That would really be, in our interpretation of that, if the statistics had to overrule a decision that was made by the awarding committee. That didn't come into play this year, it wasn't necessary to go to that point, but some of those grade boundaries were at the bottom of the range that awarding committees would have been prepared to accept. So, I think there are still issues there. They seem to be in particular subjects, and they seem to be at particular grade boundaries, but it's difficult to unpick if they are directly attributable to the pandemic. But, as a regulator, we've got to look at standards, and we've got to look at protecting the value of those qualifications for learners. And we've also got to look at the interests of GCSEs and A-levels as a qualification that are regulated separately across three UK jurisdictions, but we want those qualifications to have the same value for learners, because they're going to need to use them in Wales, or in England, or, potentially, in Northern Ireland as well. So, we want them to have that common currency.

Thank you. That was useful—

Chair, I think those questions come across the two areas that I was going to pursue, and that is both about statistical protection, but then about grading policy. I think you've answered that statistical protection wasn't used to ensure that the overall results did not fall substantially below 2019 standards. And I think we're using a phrase that—. Not everyone who's watching the committee may understand all the phrase, what 'statistical protection' means, but I think you've essentially explained that in answer to Gareth's earlier question. And so, it's whether you're clear that statistical protection was not used to ensure that results didn't fall substantially below 2019—the last pre-pandemic year—and just to clarify whether you see a need to continue that protection moving forward, bearing in mind what you've said about needing to understand the piece of work you're about to publish in the near future on how much of what we see in our educational system now is as a result of the pandemic and wider societal change, and the undeniable link in some of those behaviours that we're seeing in any event.

So, I think we're clear that statistical protection wasn't used this year. Whether it should be used in the future is an interesting question, because what we don't want to do is to be in a position where there is artificial support that is put in place, which actually means that results are statistically driven rather than driven by what we call 'attainment referencing'. Because what you end up with is, if you rely solely on one source of evidence for grading, you end up with issues whichever way. So, the idea of having a balance between statistical and judgmental evidence is that you're trying to rely on the strength of each and balance the weaknesses of the other. So, if you rely on statistical protection, you start to get into a position where people will say that it's a predetermined percentage of the cohort that is going to get certain grades. And, actually, that often gets interpreted by stakeholders as a cap, rather than a floor, and that is a real issue, because some people do see it as a cap.

The idea of judgmental evidence is that the statistics aren't solely leading the award, and that learners' attainment, as referenced in the examples of learner work that the awarding committee look at, actually contributes to that. And it is about the learners' performance as well as those statistics. I think we would not want to see statistical protection going forward, because whilst it hasn't been used this year—so, there's no evidence of its absolute need by virtue of the fact that it wasn't needed this year. But also, if attainment were to fall, actually, it's right that the qualification outcome should fall as well. Because this is intended to be a valid and reliable measure of learners' attainment, and it's important that learner performance standard does come through and does get included in the overall grading. Otherwise, you could end up in a situation where you have one set of data about learner performance telling you one thing and, potentially, GCSEs saying something else. So, if we look at individual test data that comes out of Welsh Government's tests, if we look at Programme for International Student Assessment outcomes, they tell a story. What we would not want to see is for GCSE outcomes to tell a different story, because that would devalue the qualification and, ultimately, that's to the detriment of learners, because we wouldn't want them to have a devalued, disenfranchised qualification as the main qualification that they come out with at the end of 16, at the end of compulsory education.

Can I just check? Again, I'm thinking about people who might be watching this and are in the world of qualifications and exams policy, the phrases used, when you talk about the balance between statistics and judgment, you're actually talking about judgment as attainment. Because there's a point about objective attainment that you made that I think is important, that you don't simply say, 'Cohorts will all have the same percentage outcomes in terms of grade boundaries' So, I want to be clear that, when you use the phrase about the balance between statistics and judgment, you're actually talking about attainment and how you judge the more objective form of attainment. And that then goes into the next question around grading policy, but could you just deal with that part first, and then I'll go into the point about grading policy and how it's communicated?

Yes, absolutely. By judgment, I'm talking about the awarding committee that WJEC will have, which will bring together a group of senior examiners who will look at a range of learners' work, and they hold a performance standard in their head. So, they understand what a grade C would look like, the characteristics of a grade C. It's quite hard to write those down, but those senior examiners would have done a lot of marking, they would have seen a lot of work over a number of years, and they hold that standard in their heads. What they will then do is they'll look at that work, they'll have a range of marks that they're looking at, so the statistics will guide a zone where they believe the grade boundaries will be. Those examiners will start to look at that work and they'll go through it. They'll normally start at one point, start at the top of that mark range, and they'll go through and they'll tick, 'Yes, that's definitely a C, that's definitely a C, that's definitely a C; I don't know.' They'll then go to the bottom of the range and they'll go, 'No, that's definitely not a C, that's definitely not a C; I don't know.' You will then end up with a much smaller range of marks, which is known as the zone of uncertainty, where they will then have a debate over whether it's this mark or that mark that is the grade boundary. And, of course, that's trying to reflect that the questions are different year on year, so the grade boundary won't be exactly the same year on year, so it is that important element of judgment. But it's the statistics coming into play as well, because, obviously, they wouldn't want to set a grade boundary where the statistics were basically telling them that that doesn't appear to be plausible, so they're using a combination of that data.

Okay. I think it's helpful to have the point around a sample that's used, and I'm sure at some point there'll be AI methods used to help do some of those things as well, but that's not where we are.

But I'm interested in the point around grading policy that we are getting into as well, and this is about whether you think the grading policy for last year was communicated as well as it could be. It's not necessarily a point of criticism, it's actually about whatever grading policy is announced, there is almost always commentary from some commentators. You can hear it all the time, 'The exams aren't as tough as they used to be; you've deliberately moved grading policy to make it look better', all the typical criticism, and others saying, 'Actually, these are still meaningful and worthwhile qualifications and don't underplay the performance of teachers and learners.' So, I'm interested in how you see last year and whether you think that, actually, in terms of grading policy—how you thought it was communicated, and if you think there are things to learn from and improve, whether yourselves or, indeed, other stakeholders.

Yes, certainly. So, the grading policy was communicated in September of last year for this summer, so it was communicated well in advance and at the beginning of the academic year. It was reinforced throughout the year, so I think there was a good understanding of the grading policy from those that will look at it. It's interesting, I don't think grading policy is necessarily something that penetrates the consciousness of lots and lots of people, so it’ll only be those people who are interested in it who will engage with it and understand it. But I think there was a good understanding of that.

And in terms of the issues of 'the exam was too easy' or 'the exam was too hard', we run a survey each year called 'Have your say', which allows teachers and learners and anyone else that's got an interest, to express an opinion about the exams during the exam period. We had very little feedback that was of concern to us. In fact, there was no real feedback of concern to us. There were no themes coming out. We have, in the past, had themes around that A-level maths might have been too hard and concerns about particular questions. We've had none of that. So, it's been a very quiet year in terms of concerns that might have been raised around the difficulty of papers or any specific issues.

Okay, thank you. Vaughan. Sorry, Vaughan, it's muted. Could you start again on that question? You were muted at first. Thank you.

Yes, no problem. Sorry. My final area of questioning is about your relationships with Medr, the Commission for Tertiary Education Research, since it became operational in August this year. We're always interested, wherever there's a new intervention into the education landscape, about how it actually matches up with what's there already, and the ongoing process of reform, some of which you've touched on, for example where you're reshaping vocational qualifications and a range of other GCSEs as well. So, I'm interested in how you envisage that working relationship developing as we move forward. And it will be something we'll obviously want to take up with Medr when they come back to the committee at some point as well.

Shall I kick that one off?

Yes.

We've watched with interest how the development of Medr has progressed from the Hazelkorn review, through to CTER, through to Medr. Qualifications Wales, I think, was formed nine or 10 years ago, something like that, after some similar work. And, clearly, Qualifications Wales is a significantly smaller organisation than Medr. However, the background of where we came from as Qualifications Wales and what we're doing and where we are now is very much of interest, and I think can be of help to Medr. So, certainly when Simon Pirotte, who was appointed to the chief executive's role at Medr—. As I said, he was appointed—he's somebody I've worked with as a fellow college chief executive. I certainly spoke to Simon, I know Philip did as well, and others, to say, 'Look, we've gone through a process of learning, got a few things wrong along the way, in terms of developing corporate governance and the way we operate 10 years ago. We're different organisations but we're all in team Wales.' I know it's a bit of a throwaway thing, but it isn't a throwaway thing for us. We are in the Welsh public service, trying to do the best for Wales and for the learners and young people and for Wales. And we felt there were things that we could share, sometime quite practical things, that could make things easier for Medr. So, we've done that right from day one. The chief executive, Simon, and the chair couldn't make it, but they were invited to the board of Qualifications Wales about six months ago. So, we've had that level of engagement as well.

We've also used some of our senior staff to work alongside senior staff at Medr to help embed some of their corporate governance policies and procedures in place, and, at our board meeting, which was two weeks ago, our board signed off a memorandum of understanding between Qualifications Wales and Medr, which sets out some more specific longer term ways in which we're going to work together across a range of different activities. And we hope, in so doing, even though there's only a small intersection, I think, between our areas of work—I still think that it's really important that we work together, because I think, by doing that, we can make better use of the resources that we all have in order to support the bigger picture, which is education and standards in Wales right across the age groups.

Can I add a couple of things? So, I meet regularly with Simon, the chief executive, so we have those meetings in place. Now that Medr is established as well, the stakeholder groups that we've got that would previously have had Welsh Government in them have now got Medr joining us, so that's starting to work well. We've got some particular areas of interest with Medr, where there are very direct links. So, there are some of the recommendations within Welsh Government's vocational qualifications review that was led by Sharron Lusher, which are shared recommendations across Medr and ourselves, or Welsh Government, Medr and ourselves, and there’s a steering group that’s been established now to look at how those could be taken forward. And we’re particularly interested, because one of the main recommendations there was for Welsh Government to establish a vocational education and training strategy for Wales. That’s obviously something that would then wash into Medr’s work and into our work. So, we’re very keen to build those links, to make sure that, actually, there’s a real opportunity for us to have some synergy across the three parties, and to work much more closely.

And outside of the VQ review, one of the areas where I think we can do better is in the review of apprenticeship frameworks, and making sure that the work that we’re doing, in terms of reviewing and reforming qualifications in the post-16 sector, is truly embedded into the review of apprenticeship frameworks, and that that works more efficiently than it maybe has worked in the past.

Okay, thank you. 

I think those are all interesting areas to pursue in the future, Chair, in particular, the linkage between schools into higher and lifelong learning. So, that’s really encouraging to hear, but I’ll leave it there, Chair, as I know there are other questions to get to.

Okay. Thank you, Vaughan. Does anybody else want to come in on this? Cefin, before I bring you in, I'll just ask a question. Could you describe the working relationship between the Qualifications Wales board and Welsh Government during the period that the report covers? Is there anything you want to draw our attention to, in terms of impact on your work in that regard?

We’re clear that there are a range of key stakeholders, and the Senedd, this committee and the Welsh Government are some of the key stakeholders. But one of the things that has developed, particularly over the last, I would say, four years, has been a much wider approach to stakeholder engagement. And I think that’s reflected strongly in our annual report, notably with learners, but well beyond that.

In terms of the engagement that we have with Welsh Government—I think Philip will probably come in in a second and explain the sorts of links that he has because of his chief executive role—as chair, if I think back to earlier this year, when Lynne Neagle was appointed as the Cabinet Secretary for Education—she used to sit in that seat on a number of occasions—Philip and I attended a meeting with her at Tŷ Hywel, to provide her with a briefing, as she was just coming into role. So, those sorts of things happen now and again, where there’s a key issue where we feel we need to brief the Minister. I think that’s the only one we’ve done this year.

Beyond that, the links with Welsh Government, on a sort of ongoing basis, for me as chair, are through the sponsor unit within Welsh Government. The sponsor unit observe all of our board meetings. I encourage them to contribute where they can, but, clearly, they’ve got a very specific role, and it’s largely to observe. Also, on top of that, this year—well, in the last couple of weeks—we’ve gone through a process with the sponsor unit, and with the public appointments unit, to appoint three new members to our board, because we have some vacancies and other members leaving in the new year. So, that’s something that I chaired, alongside external experts on the appointment panel, and with Welsh Government, in order to go through a process that led to recommendations, which then were sent to the Cabinet Secretary, which were approved. So, we have three new board members next year.

And, finally, at a very personal level, and in line with my contract, then, for this role, I have an annual review with the Minister. It’s actually tomorrow, with the Cabinet Secretary, where my performance in the role—[Interruption.] [Laughter.] Thank you. That takes place tomorrow. So, yes, those are sort of the main things. In the past—I don’t want to dwell too much on the COVID period—there were a lot more meetings at that time, because, clearly, we were all facing something we hadn’t faced before. But that sort of describes a relatively normal year of activities and engagement at the chair’s level. 

Okay, thank you. Philip. 

At a working level with Welsh Government, I think we’ve got a good working relationship with them. But we’re an independent regulator, so it’s important that there are boundaries around that, and I think that that independence in our work is well understood by Government. We have some dependencies on them that we look to. So, we’ve been developing this range of national 14-16 qualifications. We were very keen for Government to develop guidance that sets out what 14 to 16 looks like as a period in young people’s education. That guidance is now out there. I think there are still some things that we’re waiting for from Government. One of the main areas is around accountability arrangements for schools, because those accountability arrangements will change with the new curriculum. I guess we're always concerned that accountability arrangements can drive school behaviours in terms of the qualifications they're taking up. We're developing a new and exciting range of qualifications. GCSEs are well known, but there are going to be things there that are new and novel, like the skills suite, the individual project, VCSEs and foundation qualifications. We're trying to draw together and consolidate and make more sense of 14-16 qualifications. That guidance is really important, but the accountability measures are really important as well, because they will influence school behaviours. So, we're doing some of those things. 

The other area where we have a direct responsibility to Welsh Government is over our finances. So, we have close relationships with them so that there is a transparent relationship in terms of finances and where we are. We saw the draft budget come out yesterday. It's as we were expecting in terms of flatline, with some small changes for some of those recurring costs that have come up from this year, with pensions and with pay awards. But, moving forward, we're anticipating a period of flatline budgets at best. That in itself will place pressures on us as an employer. It will mean, we think, that we will have to get slightly smaller as an organisation. So, we think that we're going to have to reduce in size a little bit to be able to accommodate that. That will have an impact on our work as well. The regulation work is not discretionary. We have to do that regulation work. The reform work, we may need to replan some of that. Obviously, 14-16 qualifications, this is a massive project. That's got to be a priority for us as we go forward over the next few years, because we want to see that as a very successful change in the system. But we are going to have to move more of our staff from reform into the regulation team as those qualifications go into early life and need that extra attention, from a regulatory perspective, while they're being introduced. So, we're having to think very carefully about the additional reform work, other than that that we've already got on our books, so to speak, because we need to really deliver what we're already doing.

Okay. Thank you. We'll move on to Cefin now. 

So, the new Cymraeg strategy that we're developing is intended to build on 'Choice for All', the existing strategy. That’s delivered really well and, actually, we’ve seen a step change, I think, in awarding bodies’ engagement with making qualifications available through the medium of Welsh. So, that’s been done through lots of small steps, in effect.

So, we do have a grant pot that's available and we have had some additional underwriting from Welsh Government, should we need it. Because what will tend to happen is awarding bodies will put in a bid for the grant and then they’ll underclaim against it. What we don’t want to do is to limit the grants that we’re allowing or that we’re giving on the basis of the money that's available should everybody claim everything. So, we’ve got that arrangement with Welsh Government, which is very useful.

We set a target of having 120 qualifications supported by the grant in the first two years. We’ve exceeded that target already. That's happened because of some very specific work: we’ve built better links with Welsh-medium schools through CYDAG, through the college, with FE provision. So, we’re getting much better information around where the demand for Welsh-medium qualifications is and therefore we’re able to communicate that to awarding bodies to say, 'There is a demand for it, please make those qualifications available.'

We have to recognise, though, that, certainly in post-16 vocational qualifications, 85 per cent of the qualifications that are delivered in Wales have fewer than 100 learners in total, and, obviously, the number of Welsh-medium learners will be a much smaller figure than that. And in those circumstances—David was talking about the commercial pressures—there are commercial pressures. A lot of awarding bodies aren’t profit making, they're on a charitable basis, but, even so, they need to have an economic argument for making the qualification available through the medium of Welsh. Sometimes, that’s really difficult, because it’s just not economically viable for them. There may be other reasons as well around operational delivery. What we’ve been trying to do is overcome some of those operational delivery issues as well. So, we’ve set up a group with awarding bodies to support them, so that good practice can be shared between awarding bodies, so those awarding bodies that are delivering Welsh-medium qualifications for the first time aren’t doing so from ground zero—they can build on the understanding from others.

I’ll be meeting with the chief executive of FAB—the Federation of Awarding Bodies—later on today.  We’ve collaborated with FAB to develop a database of Welsh-medium assessors, because one of the things that awarding bodies have said is, ‘Well, even if we were to make the qualification available through the medium of Welsh, we can’t find the Welsh-medium assessors that would then go and mark, award, validate the qualifications.' So, we’re working on that.

We’ve also put some policies in place so that there is an active offer set of guidance there now, because we’d like to see awarding bodies move towards an active offer. And we’ve also placed a requirement on them to state clearly on their website what their policy is towards the Welsh language. So, that 'Choice for All' is delivering a lot at the moment.

The new Cymraeg strategy is going to build on that, but it’s also going to integrate our work in complying with the Welsh-medium standards. We do a lot already—we probably do 80 per cent to 90 per cent of what we're expecting to do under the standards. There is going to be a lift to do that extra 10 per cent to 20 per cent. That will be in some of our meetings that are currently not bilingual, that we would probably need to make some more of those bilingual. A lot of the communication services we offer—in fact, all of the communication services we offer—are already bilingual. So, there is some work to do, but we think it's manageable to do it. It will create some cost pressures on us, though.

We're listed under the Act in June and one of the expectations is that we develop our well-being objectives by April of next year. We've already published those in the summer, so we actually were well ahead of the game in terms of developing those objectives. We've taken an approach that is not about having some bolt-on objectives; what we've done is we've actually developed those well-being objectives as the core of our corporate plan moving forward, so we have three well-being objectives: one about learners, one about the qualifications system and one about us as an organisation. So, those are all now in place, and, actually, a lot of our planning is now flowing from delivering against those objectives.

David mentioned that we've got a good relationship with the commissioner's office. Actually, we asked the commissioner to give us some feedback on our approach. Obviously, Audit Wales will be conducting an audit on how we've established our objectives in a more formal way, but we've had very positive feedback from the commissioner's office. The task that we have now is—actually we do a lot of this implicitly already—making it explicit, so that people understand the relationship of our work and the ways of working and the well-being goals. We have just included some questions on that in our staff survey and, obviously, we're just in the process of building that understanding, but it was really reassuring, because staff were telling us through the staff survey that they'd got a good understanding of the Act and of the ways of working. So, we're going to build on that to make it much more explicit within the organisation, but I think we've made a really good start.

I think the challenge we have, in summary, is that a lot of our expenditure is people, our own people. So, 76 per cent of our budget is staff costs, and that's a deliberate strategy, because we brought more and more work in-house so that we could develop the skills to be able to deliver those things as efficiently as possible. What that means is that as the cost pressures come in, they squeeze the non-pay budget, and we've been squeezing the non-pay budget over the last couple of years to make sure that we can balance the books. Our scope to do that is reducing, because you can only squeeze your non-pay so far.

Our concern is, over the next few years, that we'll have to start looking at reducing the pay budget, which is why we're thinking that we might need to reduce our overall staffing numbers over a number of years. We're not seeing that through any redundancy scheme or anything like that. We think it's manageable within the natural turnover that we'll have within the organisation, but it does mean that we'll have to make difficult decisions as vacancies appear around whether we recruit into those posts or not. So, that's the reality of the next two or three years for us. As David said, so long as we're not taking on any large-scale reforms, we think that that's manageable. If there are large-scale reforms that come out of, potentially, post-16, then we'll have to look at what the funding arrangements would be for those.

I've seen the consultation. We do intend to respond to it. I think there were two areas in particular that we would be interested in responding on. I think we've touched on one already, which is the Welsh-medium qualifications and building that capacity within the system. The other area that we would be very keen to—. Actually, what we'll probably be doing is putting a requirement into the system, rather than commenting on it. So, one of the areas you're looking at is destinations data and getting a better picture of destinations data. We think that would be really important. It would be really important for us, as well, because if we're thinking that qualifications are a currency with a value, which is used so that young people can progress on in life and adult learners can progress on in life as well, actually, what I'd really like to be able to see is where do they go, what do they do, how useful were those qualifications in getting there. So, I think we will be wanting to respond to you about the information ecosystem here, and actually how that could become better to be able to inform the system as a whole.

That's interesting. Would those destinations be the initial, first destination, or would it be over a longer period?

It's interesting, isn't it, because if you go for just the immediate one, there can be quite a lot of churn in that, but the longer you go, the harder it is to capture that information, so there's always a balance here. And I think, with all of these things, you're never going to get a perfect information system, but it's actually having better information than we've got at the moment.

One of the things that would be really useful—and I think this does play into what the committee is interested in—is if we're looking at post-16 progression routes into immediate FE, or staying on at school or whatever it may be in terms of those routes, actually how well prepared are learners for the next phase in their education. One of those things will be the retention information around whether they're retained in college. Do they change courses? Why do they change courses? How do they change courses? I think some of that information would be really interesting. Because you may have learners who are naturally progressing on to academic qualifications, where they may well be better served by going on to vocational qualifications. They may move on to those, but the system loses sight of them. So, I think having better information on that would be really useful.

Personally, I think that would be a really interesting and important piece of work.

Thank you. Do you think that we should be looking at it from an earlier age, as well? When young people make their choices, looking at post-16 education, from choosing GCSEs at 14 years of age—. We discuss very often that they need to—. You're looking at destination data, but they might choose subjects that they're good at, but are they the right subjects for the job or what they actually want to do in the future? How do they know, going forward? Maybe at an earlier age they should be even thinking about that, as well.

I absolutely agree. I have a 16-year-old, who has just started doing A-levels, and talking to his friends, I don't think they understand the importance of the GCSE choices that they made in terms of where that might lead them, and actually, the importance of GCSE outcomes to what university they might be able to go to, because universities are making offers based on GCSE data. So, I think it's really important that young people have a good understanding of what the consequences are of the decisions they make at 14. Some parents will have a lot of influence over the subjects that they take, other parents won't. That creates an inequity in itself. I would very much like to see a guidance system that allows learners to understand those influences early, because otherwise, it sets them on a predestined course, which may not be where their ambitions are. Not everyone will meet it, but it's important they understand it early. 

Thank you. That's useful as we go into our work. If we move on now to reforming GCSEs and Gareth.  

Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, everybody. During the committee’s ongoing scrutiny of education reforms, we've heard that the failure of the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales was that the new curriculum was in place without knowing how learners would gain qualifications. How do you respond to that claim and do you believe that schools will be adequately prepared to teach new GCSEs?

It's interesting. The cart or the horse, which comes first, has been something that has been talked about for some time. Qualifications are there to assess what we would call a construct, so a body of knowledge, skills and understanding that is established. They are in themselves, they should not be the curriculum. So, it was very important that the curriculum was established first, so that qualifications could be developed to assess those things that are within the curriculum. If you took the counterview and you looked at qualifications being developed first, I think you would end up with lots of problems that are already notionally in the system getting a lot worse. We know that there is always a risk of what's called teaching to the test, so the curriculum becomes narrowed to the requirements of the qualification, rather than looking at the breadth of knowledge that might be required in a subject. Qualifications can only ever assess aspects of a subject; they can never assess the whole understanding of the subject. It's very difficult to do that. 

Is that an issue that can be addressed and improved or achieved through better guidance or structures, or perhaps personnel? What's the—?

Human behaviour comes into it, doesn't it, because teachers want their learners to do well in the measure that they're going to use to move on. Schools want to perform well against public qualifications because they become a measure of them. So, I think you've got a whole behavioural thing that is very well embedded, which makes it difficult. If you had qualifications before the curriculum, I think what you would end up with is you would turbocharge that teaching to the test element.

There's always a risk as well. Qualifications are intended to be for 14 to 16-year-olds, so it's GCSEs for years 10 and years 11, but there's year 7 through to 9 in secondary school as well. If you were entirely qualifications led, rather than curriculum led, the backwash effect from qualifications would go right the way back to year 7, and you would end up with a very narrow secondary curriculum and you would lose what, in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence, is called a broad and general education. You would lose many of the things that the curriculum is endeavouring to deliver for young people. So, from a technical perspective, you can't do that, you can't develop the qualifications first, because you wouldn't have a construct to develop them on. But even if you were to take that approach, the backwash effects through secondary education would be so profound, I think you would end up with some very significant problems. 

The second part of the question was around how well prepared teachers may be. It's going to be a heavy lift for them—we know that—in terms of preparing for the new qualifications. That's one of the reasons why we're phasing them, because we understand that there is a change load, and that, if you did a big-bang approach and you did everything in one go, that would be unmanageable for us, it would be unmanageable for the awarding bodies and it would be unmanageable for schools, I believe. So, trying to have a phased approach is trying to make sure that that becomes more manageable.

I think teachers are at the principal heightened moment of anxiety about new qualifications right now. The reason that they are at that heightened point of anxiety is the specifications were published at the end of September. So, the ask is there for teachers, but the sample assessment materials and assessment packs are just about to be published by WJEC. Professional learning is just starting. The resources are just starting to come through as well. So, the ask is there without the solution for how we are going to get there being entirely in place.

I think there needs to be greater transparency across all departments that are involved in this about the role that they're playing, what they're going to produce and when it's going to be available. So, I've made an ask of Welsh Government, WJEC and Adnodd—they're going to be securing some of those resources—that we sign up to a change charter early in the new year, which sets out all of the roles and responsibilities that we have, so that there's clarity on who's responsible for what. I'd like to see a list of what's coming, a very definite list of products that are going to be for GCSE history. Where there are new areas of history that are being explored, there are going to be these resources that are available. And I know that Adnodd's already looking at resources to support the Welsh history element of the new qualification. Let's make that more transparent to teachers so they understand what's coming, and I'd like to see a timeline against that as well, saying what's coming, when it's coming. I think that will help with the anxieties. And there is a big programme of professional learning that WJEC's going to be delivering through the first half of next year to prepare teachers. So, there's a lot of work to do. I can see that we're at a point of heightened anxiety at the moment. I'm not underplaying the amount of work that's needed, but I think it's doable.

Do you think the guidance and the content from the WJEC is almost like an exclusive remedy to that heightened anxiety, or do you think it requires more steps to be taken through local authorities, trade unions et cetera? Do you think it's a wider issue, or do you think the guidance is the silver bullet, if you like?

It's not, it's a system change issue. Our responsibility as the regulator is to make sure that the changes are well understood. I think we're a little bit of a ringmaster here in terms of trying to make sure that all of the other parties come into play and do what they need to do.

One of the areas that we're wanting to develop is what's the route to be most effective for working with schools, because, from a scale perspective, we want to try and be as efficient as possible, and we're seeing local authorities as a better route through to that. So, we're going to look to work with the Association of Directors of Education in Wales and directors of education to build, I think, better more tangible links, so that we can go in and use them as a route to talk to schools about the support that's available, and build that understanding about the changes that are coming. 

Thank you. To cover the inclusivity element of it, my question is around what measures are being taken to ensure the new GCSEs are as inclusive as possible, obviously factoring other things like British Sign Language, additional learning needs issues and things like that. Do you think there's enough vision and enough scope within the new GCSEs to factor in all of those inclusive elements to make sure that nobody slips through the net or gets lost within the system, if you like?

I think inclusion goes beyond the GCSEs. So, the whole intent behind having a suite of national 14-16 qualifications is to recognise that GCSEs aren't going to be the solution for everybody. So, there are going to be VCSEs, there are going to be GCSEs, there are going to be foundation qualifications for those learners who aren't yet ready to engage with the level of demand that is within GCSEs. There's going to be a skills suite, and the skills suite is scalable, so it can be anything from 60 guided learning hours up to 244, 480 guided learning hours in terms of the scope of units that can be delivered to an individual. So, inclusion is at the heart of the design of the suite. If we're then looking at how do you make those qualifications accessible to individual learners, we have guidance in place called 'Fair Access by Design', which is a product that we have developed alongside CCEA Regulation, so the regulator in Northern Ireland. That's long-standing guidance for awarding bodies on how to make qualifications as inclusive as possible. And then there's the whole suite of access arrangements that are in place for individual learners that can respond to those demands, like modified papers, additional time, all of the things that can be put in place to support a learner in accessing those qualifications.

Thinking about the new suite of qualifications, some of the parameters have changed. So, if we think about the new core Cymraeg qualification, 50 per cent of that qualification is oral in its nature. Now, actually, thinking about that from an inclusivity perspective, there might be some learners who are mute, who wouldn't then be able to access the oral part of the qualification. The reasonable adjustment regulations, which are set by Welsh Government because Welsh Government is the regulator for reasonable adjustments—that power hasn't been transferred to us yet—at the moment set a limit of 40 per cent. So, we're now working with Government to say we would want to see that threshold upped from 40 per cent to 50 per cent to make sure that all of the GCSEs are available.

The other point that you mentioned was around British Sign Language. Is it probably worth me just saying a few things about British Sign Language now? So, that was a very difficult decision for the board to make in terms of suspending that qualification. There are three main tenets behind that decision. We had the intent to develop this new GCSE qualification for Wales. We knew that it would be a more difficult qualification to develop, because there isn't one there at the moment and there isn't one in England yet. In fact, there isn't a GCSE across any of the jurisdictions for BSL, so it really is starting from scratch. As we got into the detail of it, it became more apparent that there were three issues. One of those issues was who would teach this qualification in schools in Wales. A lot of the BSL tutors that are out there that are delivering other BSL qualifications are not operating within school environments, so they're not qualified teachers. Those tutors wouldn't be able to deliver a GCSE course in a school unless they had qualified teacher status. So, it's around who would deliver this qualification in reality in schools. And that was an issue that we presented to Government and there was no immediate solution to it. So, that was one of the reasons why we looked to suspend the development of the qualification.

The second reason is that there isn't a common lexicon of language, of British Sign Language signs, like there is in England. So, actually having a common construct—while that's not a showstopper, it is an issue. And I was only looking at some evidence the other day, actually, where a BSL tutor was talking about the fact that the signs that they are teaching are different to the signs that another tutor is teaching just a few miles away, because of that difference in the lexicon and not having a common lexicon.

Do you think there is a pathway to improving that in the long term, though?

There is, but it would take work. In England that has been initiated, some work, and higher education came into play to do some work on that. It just needs some work that is outside of our scope as a regulator that needs to be done by others, and we did write to Government about that.

The third area was we were failing to see what the demand would be in schools for the qualification. So, I don't have anything scientific here except for the fact that I go out and visit schools regularly, and one of the questions I was asking was, ‘Do you think you will deliver the British Sign Language qualification?’ And the answer was ‘no’. And the answer was ‘no’, one because we didn't know who would teach it—so, this issue of qualified teacher—and the other was concern given the fact that learners only have three or four option choices, depending on which school they are in. When British Sign Language would be competing against Geography, History, Computer Science and all of those established GCSEs, schools were concerned that people just wouldn't choose it. And we have seen that with some of the other novel qualifications that have been developed—that you put them into the market and then there just isn't the uptake. If I give an example, A-level built environment, which I think is a really interesting-looking subject—there were only two entries for it last year. So, the field of dreams—if you build it, they will come; I think you have to have some confidence that they will come, otherwise you end up with a qualification that is commercially and operationally unviable. So, all of those three things together led us to the conclusion that it was unlikely to be the successful introduction of a new qualification.

Now, we also needed to recognise that BSL is part of the curriculum, so we're looking to put British Sign Language units into the skills suite. So, there will be some accredited learning that learners can engage with, through smaller units—it will be a 10 or 20 guided learning hour unit, rather than a 120 guided learning hours whole GCSE. The development of the GCSE in England is continuing, as far we know. We have just launched our what we call 'designation policy', which is the policy that will allow qualifications to sit alongside the national qualifications offer. And one of those is to have qualifications for learners that have got protected characteristics. So, where there might be equalities issues, we are looking to designate the GCSE in British Sign Language that's being developed in England, where it will be more commercially viable because of the bigger population, to be available in Wales.

And I guess the last thing is, there's often a misconception that this GCSE was being developed primarily for deaf learners. It was being developed primarily for learners who are acquiring BSL through school, so it wasn't for deaf learners. Just like with a modern foreign language, if your parents are French and you speak French at home, there wouldn't be a bar on you entering the GCSE in French, but GCSE French is not designed for native speakers. So, it was going to be a similar thing with the BSL GCSE—it wasn't being designed specifically for deaf learners, but deaf learners would have been able to take it. And those qualifications that are currently in place that are delivered by Signature, the awarding body that has most of the market for British Sign Language—those again, through the designation policy, will be allowed to continue.

We are running over time. I'm being a terrible Chair, my first time—

No, no. [Laughter.] That was really interesting.

But it was really important to give the BSL an airing, because it's been raised so many times as a concern in the Senedd, and also, as Chair of the Petitions Committee, we've had petitions on this. It was raised that teachers go through teacher training—if it could be open to them to learn BSL. There aren't enough signers available, even for us to have them present here. And also for parents who have children born who cannot hear—they themselves can hear—they're struggling to actually learn to sign as well. So, it is a big issue, so that's why I wanted to give it some airing. David, do you want to come in on this?

Can I briefly add one comment? Going back to the start of Gareth's question about the introduction of new GCSEs, as part of the commitment we have as a board to get out there, and not just listen to what Philip and his colleagues tell us, but actually go out there and speak directly to stakeholders, two weeks ago, we visited a secondary school, the whole board, and we had presentations from a range of secondary headteachers. We wanted to find out what it does feel like to them on the ground at the moment, facing up to GCSE changes. And I think it's fair to say there's a broad spectrum, from people saying, 'Yes, all is fine', to others saying, 'It hasn't gone far enough', and others say, 'It's gone too far.' But I think the one common thing is that the reality is at the moment, with the challenges facing the school system in Wales, the next couple of years are going to be really, really difficult. That's my view. That doesn't mean the introduction of these new qualifications and the new curriculum is wrong, it's just the reality of facing up to it—it's a big change, and change is difficult.

Yes, and I imagine it probably would have been the same when the O-levels went to GCSEs, and when there have been reforms in previous years and decades—it's a process, isn't it?

Yes. But we need to support and work together, as a range of stakeholders, to get people through that. I think that's the message that Philip has given.

At this point—. Because we are—. It's been very interesting—thank you so much—and we're learning so much. Are you able to stay a little bit longer?

Yes.

Yes.

Thank you. Would that be all right if we just go over a little bit? Okay. Can I welcome the young people to the gallery here, to listen to our committee? Welcome. Thank you very much. We're just discussing Qualifications Wales and taking GCSEs, and we were just then talking about British Sign Language as well, and the need for signers, so, welcome. Gareth, you’ve got a couple more questions.

Yes, I just wanted to finish, if I may, on the science single approach. You said in discussions with the committee on your annual report last year that learned societies weren’t in favour of a single science award, but then there’s been evidence of ongoing developments in terms of looking at that approach. Have those sorts of fears from the learned societies been allayed, or are there still processes and developments going on in terms of trying to achieve a singular award for science, or is it going to be the sort of status quo going forward?

So, I think we’ve got a set range of qualifications now that are going to be developed ready for next year, for the specifications being published next year. It’s interesting—I want to just clarify some language at the beginning. 'Single award' is an integrated single award. There is also the issue of separate sciences, so I’ll use the difference in language between 'single awards' and 'separate sciences'. Separate sciences are the GCSEs that exists at the moment, in terms of GCSE Biology, GCSE Chemistry, GCSE Physics.

So, the learned societies have a position that says that they think the double-award science—and, in our case, double award of the sciences—is enough. That is enough for progression to A-level. Getting the content right is important, so that those links can move on to A-level. They don’t think it needs the three timetabled blocks of separate sciences. And they are of a view that, actually, making decisions at 14 means that learners may set dispositions towards sciences in the future. So, in other words, if a learner is going down the double-award route, they may not see themselves as scientists when some of their peers are going through a separate sciences route, when they are perfectly able to go on to do scientific A-levels or other qualifications post-16. So, I think the learned societies have a concern that there’s some pre-determination through the routes that people go through. Also, not all schools offer separate sciences, so if there is that mental mindset, then some learners don’t even have the agency over which route they’re taking. So, that was the reason to come down to a single route through sciences—which was our original proposal—to have just the double award for sciences, and, obviously, that’s what the learned societies were looking for.

When we consulted in 2022 on the range of qualifications, teachers told us with a strong voice—. Actually, they told us two things: one, they wanted to keep the separate sciences, which was obviously very much at odds with the learned societies; and the other was that double-award science would be too much for some learners, but it was really important that they stayed engaged with the sciences and had scientific education up to the age of 16. So, we made the decision to stay with that decision not to have the separate sciences. So, we’re very much guided by the learned societies, and by our founding principles in this piece of work around having an inclusive and coherent range of qualifications. You wouldn’t have an inclusive and coherent range of qualifications with the separate sciences because of some of the issues that I said earlier. But we did feel that the voice from teachers around having a single-award integrated sciences for those learners that might not engage with the level of content in the double award was important, because, scientifically, that education is important up to the age of 16. So, that led to the decision to have that separate integrated single science. And that is the plan moving forward, for there to be a single science and a double award.

Has it allayed the concerns of the learned societies? Probably not, because I think they are very set in the mindset of a single route through sciences through the double award. But I think we just have to balance that with the reality that that qualification would be too much for some learners. So, we want to have—'an escape route' is the wrong set of words—but we want to have an alternative that’s there for those learners who wouldn’t be able to engage with the double award.

Okay. 

Thank you very much.

All right, thank you. If we move on now to Tom. 

Thank you very much. I should say that I just noticed before I came in that I’m actually using a Qualifications Wales pen. I picked it up, and I wanted to put that on the record, in case anybody thought there was any impropriety going on.

A conflict of interest. [Laughter.]

I just happened to pick this up this morning. [Laughter.]

I wanted to come in on VCSEs. Obviously, you mentioned them at the beginning. How much collaborative working do you envision in the delivery of the VCSEs between schools and colleges, in order to make them work in the way that learners would expect?

Do you want to start on that one?

Yes. So, with my background, I'm not here representing FE, but I think that this is a great opportunity. I know that the colleges had some concerns about the introduction of VCSEs because they thought that it was a back-door way that schools could do vocational qualifications in an easy way, using not the right equipment, to stop them going to college. It's really not that at all. This is a really positive development. As I said earlier on, it genuinely moves away from the rhetoric of parity of esteem to actually saying, 'In Wales—the only place—we've got these qualifications.'

I would imagine that most of the learners in schools who are going to benefit from VCSEs—. It's not a new thing to have this range of alternative qualifications. There are over 400 of them, I think, available at the moment, but they're quite incoherent at the moment. They're just a range of qualifications, alongside GCSEs, that schools are doing. This brings a coherence to this offer. But I would imagine that most of the learners in schools who follow VCSEs are probably going to go to college anyway—not necessarily all of them, but I would imagine they would. So, if I was still a college principal, what I would be doing is building on the relationship that I already have with headteachers, and looking at ways that I can use my staff to work alongside learners, teachers, headteachers in the area to help schools to deliver them, which will then help the learners on the transition, which I think is going to happen, at 16 to the local college. It's a win-win-win if this is taken positively. So, I think that it's a very positive development.

It's not trying to do vocational competence, as you'd get in an NVQ, or whatever, at the age of 14. It's something different. It's trying to get people hooked into some sort of learning at the age of 14, when otherwise the school offer, perhaps, for some people just doesn't work for them at all. This is done positively, and I would really urge all colleges to get involved, not just leave it to the schools, but do it with them. And there could be lots of ways of doing that. I would imagine that the qualifications would be delivered in the schools, not at colleges. They could be delivered at colleges, I suppose, but I think it's about doing them at the schools, but using them to really create even stronger bonds between schools and colleges for the benefit of learners and employers in the area.

I agree with all of that, but I think in terms of the practical implementation of this award, obviously there is that tension, isn't there, and there always has been between schools and colleges. So, when you're designing the specific VCSE, how have you had to adapt from what you would like to do, versus what you've actually done, to meet the difficulty, perhaps, as we'd put it, in the relationship between schools and colleges, to make it a more classroom-focused qualification? 

I'll say one thing and then hand over to Philip. I think that my message has been to colleges, my ex-peers, 'Get inside the tent with the schools and work with them. Don't stand back and leave it. If you've got, rightly, some concerns about the standards associated with vocational qualifications'—colleges present themselves as the vocational qualification experts, and by and large, they are—'well, use that expertise to help the schools and learners then.'

I'll be brief, because of time. So, the approval criteria, as we call them, for VCSEs and for the wave 3 qualifications have just been published. So, awarding bodies will now be starting to look at those approval criteria and think about the design of their qualifications to fit with those approval criteria. The fundamental thing here is that they're not intended to be heavily classroom-based qualifications. They're about practical learning, but they're about practical learning within the reasonable resources and reasonable skills that are available to schools. So, that's the main parameter. If we're thinking about school-college collaborations, absolutely brilliant, we'd love to see that happen, but if those collaborations aren't in place, we still want those qualifications to be deliverable within the reasonable resources available to schools.

So, in essence, what you're saying is that you could have a highly technical VCSE that would hopefully, as you say, then lead to people taking up apprenticeships in FE, but actually a lot of that learning is classroom based. And I reflect on what you said at the beginning about some of the challenges that are outside of your control—you mentioned absenteeism as one of them. And I think this is a real opportunity to engage learners who perhaps aren’t engaged in the more traditional academic routes that exist in school, and I think that’s a very good thing. But I do worry that, if somebody who is pursuing what they think is a more vocational hands-on course only to then find it is a classroom-based qualification, that will disenfranchise them further, if you like, and therefore create further issues with things like absenteeism.

Yes, so, the intent is for this to be practically focused to make them different to GCSEs.

Okay. In terms of that conversion then to apprenticeships, is there worth in either you or other partners who you work with setting a target around how many people doing VCSEs then go on to do apprenticeships? Is there value in doing that, do you think?

It wouldn’t be for us as a regulator to do that. I think you also—. Targets are interesting, aren’t they? Because they can sometimes drive the wrong behaviours. You’d have to think quite carefully around whether it was the right thing to do.

We talked earlier about destination data. That’s one of the things I’d be interested in: so, do people who take VCSEs in a certain domain go on to do that same domain in further education, or do they do something different? And if we want to think about these bridges between vocational and academic education, do people who do VCSEs go on to do A-levels and then go on to do academic subjects in higher education? There’s a whole network here, which I think is really important to understand. And if we look at systems like Germany and some of the European systems, one of the strengths that is stated in those is this ability to transfer between vocational and academic routes. So, I wouldn’t want to see VCSEs predestine people to go into apprenticeships; I’d like to see them as a route to allow flexibility.

So, I'm curious then, if we come back and look at this five years, say, after a roll-out, how we would judge whether this VCSE roll-out had been successful.

We're just developing our evaluation criteria and our evaluation approach at the moment for these reforms. And a lot of it will be based on what the uptake looks like. How have they actually been received in schools? How are they being used? How has the landscape changed as a consequence of these? So, we will be doing some evaluation on that basis.

So, you think the success will be judged by the uptake, just to be clear on—

I think it's one of the main routes. And obviously, if there is destinations data, then that becomes another metric to look at.

Okay. I'm curious about a brief conversation earlier in the answers you gave to Cefin around years 7 to 9—pre-GCSE years—and how we ready leaners, if you like, for vocational education, or to choose to do vocational education at 14, if perhaps the years prior to that have not been vocational by their nature in any way. So, are you working with schools to develop young people’s understanding of what a vocational qualification is, what sorts of things are involved, at an earlier age, so that when they have to make that choice at 14, it’s not some massive gear change?

I think that comes into that guidance issue that you're looking at as well. It wouldn't be our role as a regulator to be doing some of that—as a regulator of qualifications. But I think it's really important that people like Careers Wales are in a position where they can inform learners, so that they can understand what the choices are. So, I think it comes back to the area of interest that you’ve got moving forward about careers guidance.

Can I just add? I think it’s more to do with—. I think it goes back to the question that Gareth asked about what comes first—curriculum or qualifications? I think the curriculum has a role in those age groups to make sure that the learner is having that breadth of experience.

Okay. And I'm curious about VCSEs and their use and their take-up more generally. And I'm conscious of something you said earlier that about 85 per cent of qualifications have fewer than 100 learners—

That's post-16.

Sorry, obviously in post-16—apologies. But you’ve got 26 qualifications here. Realistically, how many of them do you think each school would be offering? Would they offer a full suite, part, certain ones, depending on need?

So, for GCSEs and VCSEs, it’s unlikely that a school would offer a full suite, because they’ll work on the basis of the teachers and the facilities that they’ve got available. So, there are 17 VCSEs, and of those 17, I would imagine that schools would probably want to have two, three, four that they’re offering that are most applicable to their learners. You’ll know that timetabling in the qualifications phase is often done on options blocks. If I think about the way that my son’s school works, they’ve got a vocational offer in each of those option blocks. You’d maybe like to see at least one vocational offer in each of those option blocks, maybe two, so that there is some choice and ability to mix, but I don’t imagine that they would be offering all 17.

And I wonder about the breadth, as well, in terms of the ones on offer. So, if a typical school would offer three or four, obviously, the ranges, if you like, of some of these qualifications are very different—hair and beauty is very different to construction, as an example off the top of my head. So, how are you ensuring that schools not only offer a sufficient number, but sufficient difference, if you like, in the types?

Again, not our job as regulator of the qualifications system, but I would imagine the Welsh Government and local authorities will have an interest in the range of qualifications that are offered, and actually, going back to the point earlier about accountability measures, that would be a good accountability measure: what's the breadth of offer that's available within the school? Because that would start to drive towards not only having breadth, but also meeting the requirements of the local curriculum, which is one steering ethos of the curriculum.

And just finally, then, in terms of that local curriculum, thinking about how you use vocational qualifications in terms of meeting local job markets, I represent Port Talbot, where there are particular issues, obviously, with the steelworks closing, and now the free port, so there are opportunities in the future in certain industries, and I wonder how we can use VCSEs and other vocational qualifications in order to ensure that young people in particular local areas see and have opportunities to access jobs that we know will exist in the future in that geographic area. But that, I think, falls down unless you've got that offer in local schools and colleges earlier on in a young person's journey.

But if that's up to 16, it's around having a generic offer that's as broad as possible but still manageable. I think, in addressing some of those issues, we've really got to look at what the post-16 offer is, because if we think about education up to 16, it's about breadth as much as anything else. You start to get into those specialist areas and skills for the future, then you need to start looking at the post-16 area. I think that's the main focus for me.

I only ask because, obviously, you mentioned that you saw it as this kind of feeder through to apprenticeships and post 16, so, obviously, if the journey starts there, but it isn't available there, I worry about—

I think it's just trying to keep it as broad as possible there at 16, because, actually, what you don't want to do is limit people's ambitions as well; it's about keeping options open for people.

All right. I'll leave it there because of time.

Will VCSE be valued the same as GCSEs or will it be valued slightly less? Because, looking at the list here, it actually sounds to me that it's giving pupils a taster of what is out there in the wider work environment as well, rather than just a subject, which is really interesting. Could you just answer that first question?

Value is in the eyes of the beholder, just like esteem is.

Yes, absolutely, because, for a young person, it would be deemed that they needed to go to a school, college, university, and get as high a qualification as possible, whereas maybe a route through college and doing vocational is not seen as quite as valuable, in a way.

We can't control the value. I think one of the aspects of value is, if you think about GCSEs, everybody knows what you mean. If you talk about vocational qualifications available in schools: boom—suddenly you can't conceptualise that any more. So, the strength of the VCSE, vocational certificate of secondary education, brand is you've got something you can coalesce around. So, I think you can only build value on that based on having something you can coalesce around and you can conceptualise. So, having a common model, common grading scale, same size as a GCSE, fits in the timetable alongside GCSEs, all of those things start to contribute to value.

David, can I just ask you, because you said collaborating with colleges, so would they collaborate if—I mean, in the past, I don't know if it still is—it's seen as competition? So, children, numbers, mean money, so there's been a little bit of competition perhaps between sixth forms, to fund the rest of the school, and colleges. So, do you think that would be an issue?

I think it's going to vary from area to area. So, probably, if you're in an area where all or most of the schools have got a sixth form, there tends to be more competition, whereas if you've got an area such as Flintshire, as an example, most of the post-16 learners go to Deeside Sixth, which is a partnership between schools and the college. So, I think one of the big benefits of those sorts of arrangements is it's removed most of the competition, and so, if you're in a school situation, I think there's less concern about how many of these learners they can keep in the sixth form, whereas there's more of a confidence and a happiness to have those conversations with colleges to look at how you can help learners.

I think a lot of the conversation we've had in the last few minutes and throughout this really helpful session, for me, has highlighted how interesting and how important your work on routes to post-16 is. Picking up on Cefin's point around destination, which I really would urge you to look at at all levels, and on the point around targets that was mentioned, I think, sometimes, it's less about targets and more about measures. It's just about knowing so you can inform. Sometimes, targets can put people off or, as Philip said earlier on, create the wrong sort of action. But I do think that piece of work is going to pick up a range of things that we've picked up today.

And the pathways at 14 to 16, the VCSE subjects, so choosing them and GCSE as well—that earlier stage we talked about. I think we should expand it, possibly. We'll talk about it later, yes. Thank you.

Just the last set of questions, for a lot have been answered already. Regarding the findings of the essential skills Wales qualifications review, they highlight a number of challenges, including that employers struggle to release apprentices, and it can be costly and time-consuming for learners to travel to complete their assessments. So, what actions can and are you taking to address these challenges, and how are you working with learning providers and employers in this regard? It was also raised with me that there was a young person who was having an apprenticeship somewhere, but he had to choose between doing that or having funding for that and doing A-levels—you can't do both. So, would you be able to—?

So, we've just done the review of essential skills Wales qualifications, and that's going to lead into a programme of reform. When I said our reform agenda is going to be limited, moving forward, because of resources, essential skills is one of those areas that we definitely want to do some work in and to reform those qualifications. It's interesting, isn't it, because learners will go on and do an apprenticeship, and essential skills Wales are used widely in apprenticeship frameworks, because they want to do learning in carpentry or whatever it may be. The maths, the literacy and numeracy element of it are a bolt-on, and employers, when they talk to the system through people like CBI, often talk about communication skills, numeracy, literacy as the core things being the things that are really important and the things where they see weaknesses in learners. So, there's a bit of a dilemma there between employers' and learners' willingness to engage, or desire and motivation to engage, with some of those essential skills qualifications when, actually, their focus has moved on to carpentry, engineering or whatever it may be. So, there is a little bit of a dilemma there.

There is a manageability issue with essential skills Wales qualifications. So, that's going to be one of the focuses in the reforms, trying to make them as manageable as possible. We've looked at an international study. They are very comparable in relation to other, similar, functional skills qualifications in England, in key skills qualifications. But they're often longer in the assessment, so we want to try and reduce that.

I think there's a real opportunity here, talking about AI, to look at digital assessment more widely, contextualising the qualifications into different domains, using things like AI and digital assessment. It may be quite cutting edge as we start to look at it, but I think this is an area where we may be able to make big inroads into manageability by looking to be more innovative in the way that things are being assessed.

Can I just add quickly, to open up the conversation, when you look at essential skills Wales and you look at the issues around literacy, numeracy, Cymraeg and English, there's a broader piece here around the associated GCSEs as well, which is a bit of a concern for colleges at the moment, which we're aware of in terms of progression? I think there really needs to be a look at the requirements within apprenticeship programmes and maybe within conditions of funding that ensures that we're not forcing young people who go to college to have to resit their maths and English forever and ever, when it's really not something that inspires them, they're not that good at it, when they're actually really good at being a hairdresser or a plumber, or a carer, and you've got the right literacy and numeracy built into that role to take them on a life-cycle of learning. But I think, sometimes, we end up with problems there because some young people are put off working or continuing to work as apprentices, or in their trades, because associated with it is, 'You've got to get your maths GCSE', and it's really not their thing, and it actually doesn't make any difference to them being a good person in their trade. That's outside of our remit, by the way; I think it's more of a thing for the Government and Medr, I would say. But, equally, our qualifications are part of that.

Okay. Thank you. There are quite a few more questions, but I think we've covered most of them. If there are any that we've missed out, would it be okay if we write to you and we can get written responses?

Absolutely.

So, as I said earlier, we will send a transcript for checking, in due course, and I'd like to thank you both for appearing today. I'm sorry we've gone over, but thank you for staying. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay. If we just move on to item 4 now, which is papers to note, is there anything here, or are you happy for us to discuss it afterwards?

No, fine.

Okay, thank you very much. So, we'll just note them all together.

Could we move on, under Standing Orders, and resolve to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting? Are we happy to do so? Yes. Thank you.