Examinations of Witnesses (Questions 275-279)
11 JANUARY 2005
MS SUSAN
LEWIS AND
MR GARETH
WYN JONES
Q275 Chairman: Good afternoon Ms Lewis
and Mr Jones. Can I extend a warm welcome to you and thank you
for taking the trouble to come along. We were particularly keen
to have some evidence from Wales and to have some comparable approach
towards our current sub-committee.
Ms Lewis: We are very pleased
to be asked.
Q276 Chairman: Before I ask Mr Thomas
if he would like to kick off with our questions, if there is anything
that you would like to flag up with the sub-committee because
I think clearly Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Education and Training
in Wales has a slightly different perspective than some of the
agencies and bodies in the rest of the UK?
Ms Lewis: Would it be helpful
if I gave a quick overview of who we are and what we do?
Q277 Chairman: Just very briefly, thank
you.
Ms Lewis: I will be very quick.
We are a body independent of but funded by the National Assembly
for Wales and we inspect virtually everything that there is to
inspect in education and training—it is almost easier to
tell you which bits we do not inspect. We do not inspect higher
education other than teacher training, but everything else from
nursery education through to adult and community education, taking
in various things like youth offending teams, which we do in conjunction
with other inspectorates along the way. We virtually inspect everything
there is. As an inspectorate you have this dual responsibility
to take on some of the issues that you are inspecting others over
in your own organisation and the running of your own organisation,
and in Wales, as you know, Sustainable Development, along with
three other big aspects of work, are statutory duties of the Assembly
to ensure that things that they do are informed by sustainability.
As a body funded by the Assembly we take that quite seriously.
So there are two strands to our work, which we can probably help
you with, and that is the work that we do outwards facing and
perhaps some of the things that we do as an organisation.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Thomas.
Q278 Mr Thomas: Let us start with what
you do with the community at large in Wales. As you have just
restated, and from your evidence as well, of course, there is
the statutory duty to promote Sustainable Development, which makes
your work materially different to that in England. Could you say
a little more about how that has developed both the Curriculum
in Wales as a formal aspect, but also the informal aspect of learning,
which you also mentioned in your introduction?
Ms Lewis: In 2001 we reviewed
all of our inspection arrangements across the board. We gained
a lot of work throughout the late 90s done to various frameworks
and so on, and we reviewed all our work and we now do it to a
common inspection framework. Sustainable Development is one strand
of one of the key questions that we ask of any place that we are
inspecting in our inspection work. So we very much place that
centrally in our work and we find, as I am sure you understand,
that if we inspect it it tends to get done more than if we do
not inspect it in terms of things in education and training. So
I think the fact that we inspect Sustainable Development and sustainability
and what organisations are doing on those issues tends to get
them more attention. In addition to our statutory inspection work
we provide advice to the National Assembly for Wales and particularly
to the Welsh Assembly Government on anything it would like to
ask us in a remit that is issued annually. So as part of that
remit we might find ourselves sitting on various steering groups
or working parties and so on, and my colleague, Gareth Wyn Jones,
has quite an operational involvement in some of those things as
a geographer to do with sustainability. So those are the broad
strands of our work.
Q279 Mr Thomas: As part of the wider
inspection throughout the United Kingdom, I wonder if you could
give us an idea of how different that is to what happens particularly
in England, where there is not this statutory duty? We heard from
the Defra officials earlier that if there was a statutory duty
it would change their task quite considerably. Are you able to
compare and contrast in that way?
Ms Lewis: To some extent I would
think that it is easier for us in Wales because there is a statutory
duty. It can also have its difficulties as well because the framework
that we use to inspect against can get very packed with things
that are statutory duties, requirements and so on. But I certainly
think it helps. It helps to raise awareness; it helps us as an
inspectorate to make sure that we have trained our inspectors
in various areas that they need to be familiar with. For instance,
I have something here. These are notes that we send out.
If I could just say, as an aside, that we have a similar system
for inspection to Ofsted in that our school inspections are all
contracted out. All other aspects of our inspection work are done
by HMI staff in Estyn. But we produce these Inspection Matters
for the wider inspectorate, that is of the order of 700 inspectors
across Wales who can at any one time be working for us. So we
inform them and we make sure that they are up to date on issues
and this one, that has gone out this month, does have a section
in it on guidance on Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship.
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