Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:30.
The meeting began at 09:30.
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Cyflwyniad, Ymddiheuriadau, Dirprwyon a Datgan
Buddiannau
Introductions, Apologies, Substitutions and Declarations of
Interest
|
[1]
Lynne Neagle: Good morning, everyone. Can I welcome you all
to today’s meeting of the Children, Young People and
Education Committee? There have been no apologies for absence. Can
I ask if there are any declarations of interest, please? No.
Okay.
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Ymchwiliad i Ddarpariaeth Eiriolaeth
Statudol: Sesiwn Dystiolaeth 4
Inquiry into Statutory Advocacy Provision: Evidence Session 4
|
[2]
Lynne Neagle: Item 2 this morning is our final evidence
session on our inquiry into statutory advocacy provision. I’m
very pleased to welcome the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and
Children, Carl Sargeant, to our meeting today. Thank you for
providing a paper in advance, Minister. Can I just ask you to
introduce your officials?
|
[3]
The Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children (Carl
Sargeant): Yes. Good morning, Chair; morning, committee.
I’ll ask the team to introduce themselves.
|
[4]
Mr Davey: Alistair Davey, deputy director, Enabling People,
social services and integration director at Welsh Government.
|
[5]
Mr Heaney: Albert Heaney, director of social services and
integration.
|
[6]
Lynne Neagle: Lovely. Thank you all for coming, anyway. If
you’re happy, we’ll go straight into questions.
|
[7]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, Chair. That’s fine.
|
[8]
Lynne Neagle: If I can just start by asking for the update
that you referred to in your paper on the meeting that you held
with the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru on 24
November.
|
[9]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, Chair. I received a letter yesterday,
which is very helpful, from the Welsh Local Government Association,
in regards to the meeting we had. Maybe if I read that through to
you, if possible:
|
[10]
‘Dear Cabinet Secretary, I write following our very helpful
recent meeting with the Children’s Commissioner, Sally
Holland, on the roll out of the National Advocacy Service across
Wales. I know you are keen to see significant progress being made
and to ensure that all local authorities are signed up to
implementing the national approach.
|
[11]
‘WLGA promised at that meeting to raise the matter nationally
with elected leaders. In this respect Councillor Huw David our lead
spokesperson on Social Care took the matter to the WLGA
Coordinating Committee on the 25th November and gained national
support from the 22 leaders present for the approach to date and
the future development of the service. They also restated their
commitment to the implementation plan developed by the Local
Government Technical Group which is led by ADSS Cymru.
|
[12]
‘The key point is to ensure that the service is established
as quickly as possible and it is the view of the Technical Group
that this will be achieved across Wales by June 2017. The National
Approach is to be delivered through lead authorities within the
partnership framework underpinned by Part 9 of the Social Services
and Well-being (Wales) Act…In this setting it is anticipated
that that some areas will come on stream before the June 2017 date.
WLGA has written to all the Regional boards for them to formally
confirm the timescales for adopting the new approach’.
|
[13]
And they’ll let me know the detail, and I will let committee
know following those letters, but a very positive letter showing
their commitment to what Sally Holland and I—. When we met
with them, that’s what they said to us, and they’ve
confirmed that by writing.
|
[14]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. Thank you. So, all local authorities
will have actively—. They’ve basically all actively
signed up now then.
|
[15]
Carl Sargeant: They have. They have, but, in terms of
delivery, the expectation—. Because of the commissioning
process, they expect that all regions will have delivered on this
by June of 2017, and some might come on stream before then. We
expect north Wales, actually, to come on before June of next year,
just because of the way their commissioning is at the moment.
|
[16]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. Thank you. Michelle.
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[17]
Michelle Brown: Well, I think most of my questions have
already been covered in the last bit.
|
[18]
Carl Sargeant: That’s helpful. [Laughter.]
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[19]
Michelle Brown: Yes, it saves time, doesn’t it? Have
local authorities experienced any particular difficulties with
this? What are the practical issues?
|
[20]
Carl Sargeant: With local government, the issue about
delivery of services is generally finance. We’ve had some
protracted discussions with local authorities about the amount of
funding that they have received in the past and where that it is
now. Some local authorities, as I think you’ve heard through
your evidence sessions, will be better placed than others, because
they’ve already started delivery on some services, and some
are building up to that, despite the money being in the revenue
support grant. Previously, some authorities have used it well and
some not so well.
|
[21]
Michelle Brown: Just one more thing: who’s going to
monitor the effectiveness of the national strategy?
|
[22]
Carl Sargeant: The children’s commissioner will have a
view on that, in terms of her annual report.
|
[23]
Michelle Brown: Okay. Thank you.
|
[24]
Lynne Neagle: Darren.
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[25]
Darren Millar: Yes. I just wanted to ask you, Minister, you
mentioned the fact that you’ve got political sign-up now,
which is obviously very welcome, and there was similar evidence
from the WLGA last week. But we’ve got elections to come.
What happens if the political landscape has an impact, if you like,
on the subscription that those local authorities have made to this
national approach?
|
[26]
Carl Sargeant:
It’s a fair question, but
it’s a policy delivery process now. It has been signed up to
by all authorities. It’s gone into a regional process now. An
authority would have to actively opt out, which I would find
unlikely, on the basis that there are statutory provisions to be
delivered now. Therefore, this probably is the easiest way for them
to do that. I can’t see a reason why they would want to do
that, but I don’t underestimate the fact that they
could.
|
[27]
Darren Millar:
What sort of back-up plan do you
have in place, as it were, if a local authority decides to opt out
or fails to deliver by the June 2017 date? Have you got sanctions
up your sleeve?
|
[28]
Carl Sargeant:
Yes, there are, and the local
government Minister has been very keen in terms of his discussions
with local authorities on saying how there is an expectation for
some services to be delivered on a statutory basis. This could be
one of those services. In fact, to be fair to the local government
association, while it’s been a challenging process to get to
where we are, they are all very positive about delivering
this.
|
[29]
Darren Millar:
Okay. And just one final question on
the finances. We understand that there’s been a pot of about
£0.5 million, or just over—I think up to
£550,000—that you’ve made available in order to
get this new advocacy programme rolled out across the country. What
are you going to do to make sure that that’s not rewarding
people for failing to provide decent advocacy services at the
moment, because, obviously, you’ve made it quite clear that
some local authorities are already effectively delivering a service
that is very similar to the one that is envisaged?
|
[30]
Carl Sargeant:
There is an expectation of delivery
of service, and, as we move into implementation, we’ll learn
from the experiences of people. Again, I’ve been very clear
to my team about real life experiences, so, people using the
services, and so children’s voices are going to be an
important part of that as to what’s their experience of using
the service. If we see system failure, then we will certainly
intervene in that process.
|
[31]
Darren Millar:
But how are you going to distribute
that cash in a fair and equitable way in order to prime the pump
ready to deliver the service?
|
[32]
Carl Sargeant:
The funding will be distributed on a
regional basis, so there will be a regional approach to the
delivery of this. So, it won’t be individual local
authorities—it will be a regional plan that will be rolled
out. It’s not unusual for us to do funding streams or
delivery of services like that.
|
[33]
Lynne Neagle:
Albert.
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[34]
Mr Heaney:
In terms of the funding, the Cabinet
Secretary has committed to the active offer in full, because,
again, for all authorities that is a major responsibility that is
much welcomed and takes the relationship of advocacy directly to
the children and young people. In terms of the remainder of the
money, there is some contribution the Cabinet Secretary is
assisting with but, again, each local authority and the Welsh Local
Government Association will be committing to scaling up to the new
service model.
|
[35]
Darren Millar:
But I assume that the spend is
currently very different from one local authority to the
next.
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[36]
Carl Sargeant:
Yes, it is, but this is not an
optional approach—this is a statutory process, where we are
saying it’s going to be a 100 per cent offer. We don’t
expect that all young people will want to take the offer up, but
the offer will be there. We shouldn’t underestimate the fact
that it’s not as if we haven’t been doing anything in
the past. We’ve invested a significant amount of money in
advocacy services and looked-after children over the previous years
within the RSG, and that’s why some authorities are better
placed than others, because they’ve used it specifically for
that. As to the issue around when you roll grants into the RSG,
sometimes they get distributed by the political will of the lead
authority. That’s why ring-fencing can be advantageous
sometimes.
|
[37]
Darren Millar:
Are you going to ring-fence
this?
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[38]
Carl Sargeant:
No, that’s not my intention on
this.
|
[39]
Lynne
Neagle: Llyr,
you wanted to ask about finance.
|
[40]
Llyr
Gruffydd: Yes. Clearly, there’s been a
rise in demand for services. How is that reflected in your funding
commitment going forward because, obviously, if there’s a
rise in demand there’s a rise in cost? Is that something that
will be reflected in the Government’s contribution in years
to come?
|
[41]
Carl
Sargeant: Well, our contribution has been
consistent with local authorities’. No matter what portfolio
I’ve been in, I’ve always had a discussion with local
authorities, and their starting point is generally, ‘How much
money are we going to have?’ or ‘How much more money
can we have?’ I don’t blame them in that respect but,
actually, we’re in a different place in time now, where we
have to look at the funds that are available and how we can deliver
the best services. As I said, the amount of funding for this
specifically is not in isolation; a significant
amount—millions of pounds—has been put into the RSG
over the previous years in
terms of shaping local authorities to get ready for this process.
So, we don’t anticipate that there’ll be a pull on any
further Government funding, but there may be some internal
pressures for local authorities. But that’s not to say they
haven’t had that money.
|
[42]
Llyr
Gruffydd: But
you’re making it clear that this funding that you’re
putting on the table is recurrent funding—
|
[43]
Carl
Sargeant: Yes.
|
[44]
Llyr
Gruffydd: —and is going to be there as
far as you can foresee, which isn’t easy, I know, but your
intention is to fund this year on year until you feel that
that’s no longer needed.
|
[45]
Carl
Sargeant: That’s
correct, yes.
|
[46]
Llyr
Gruffydd: But when, of
course, we asked last week local authorities about their money
being put on the table, there was a bit of an uncomfortable silence
for a few seconds. Clearly, they’re under pressure. Are you
confident that they are—? You’ve had the letter, of
course, giving you the political buy-in, but are you confident
that, on a practical level, the money is there for them to step up
to the plate?
|
[47]
Carl
Sargeant: I
can’t have any more confidence on this. I was very clear in
the meeting with the Welsh Local Government Association that there
are sanctions if there’s failure to deliver. I don’t
want to be in that place, actually; I want to understand if there
are issues and how we get over those things. There’s a common
argument to have about finance, we always have that, but actually,
underneath this, the WLGA and the leadership of the WLGA were
saying actually they want to do this, and this makes sense. And it
works in the principles as well of the issue around prevention and
early intervention, because when you get in early around advocacy,
sometimes it’s cost-saving, longer term. So, there is clearly
a reason why they’d want to do this. I’m confident that
they can do this because they’ve told me they can do
this.
|
[48]
Llyr
Gruffydd: But
your message is that there won’t be any more money coming
from the Government. This £0.5 million, or £550,000,
however much it’ll be, that’s it.
|
[49]
Carl
Sargeant: That’s correct.
|
[50]
Llyr
Gruffydd: On
a recurrent basis.
|
[51]
Carl
Sargeant: Yes.
|
[52]
Llyr
Gruffydd: Okay, thanks.
|
[53]
Lynne
Neagle: Thanks. Oscar.
|
[54]
Mohammad
Asghar: Thank
you very much, Chair, and thank you, Cabinet Secretary. In July
2014, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales said, and I
quote,
|
[55]
‘The current
prominence of historic child abuse scandals demonstrates the
immediate need to get advocacy right for children and young
people’.
|
[56]
Despite the urgency
stressed two and a half years ago, what has the Welsh Government
identified as the major hurdle to implementing a national approach?
That’s one.
|
[57]
Carl
Sargeant: I
think the issue around the children’s commissioner’s
report is absolutely right, and we are learning more, and there are
more disclosures week in, week out. And this does pressurise the
system. What’s important for me is making sure that I can get
implementation of the advocacy plan. I’ve been in post for
just over six months now, and it’s a very wide-ranging
department, and the children’s aspect of this was new to me
in my role. I was very keen early on to understand what pressures
were in the system, and this was one of them. And I think,
actually, while it’s taken quite a long time to deliver,
I’m very pleased that, actually, within six months of being
in post, that I’ve got a commitment from the associations to
deliver this. So, my ambition is to make sure that I can get an
advocacy service up and running by June of next year, and
I’ve been very clear that I actually wanted it before then,
but they were honest with me and said, ‘Look, we can’t
do this because of the commissioning process. Some of the areas are
going to be a little bit longer.’ So, I can accept that, but,
for me, it’s making sure that we’ve got a service to be
active.
|
[58]
Mohammad
Asghar: Thank
you. And the second is: the children, actually, who are
looked-after children and under care, they normally speak to their
own colleagues, young children, not to elders, and they’re
more vulnerable to abuse and
other things. What steps are there to make sure that children are
no longer vulnerable and they are protected? Their safety is
paramount now, and lessons should be learned from past historic
affairs in north Wales and other areas. That should not happen in
this country ever again.
|
[59]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, of course. And, as I said earlier, we’re
learning every day of new incidents and actions that have taken
place. I think what we’ve got to be able to do is give young
people and abused people confidence to come forward, and
that’s why the helplines that we have set
up—particularly, we’ve got Meic, which is one of the
helplines and is a national helpline, which has open access for
individuals; making sure that we’ve got support for it with
social workers and advocacy services. I think what’s
important for me as well, and I mentioned it earlier on, is
gleaning information from people who have been in the system. So,
I’ve got an advisory group that David Melding chairs for me
on looked-after children, and I’m seeking whether we should
be using more looked-after children as advisers for us, because I
think, actually, a lived experience is an important one. I do that
already with domestic violence survivors; I’ve got an
advisory group where I’ve got survivors supporting us.
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09:45
|
[60]
I think there should be a credible approach to embedding the WFG
Act to make sure that we listen to real people and engage real
people who’ve had an experience. I think we can learn a lot,
rather than professionals saying, ‘This is what
happens’, when actually it’s not, all the time. Young
people who have experienced this do understand that.
|
[61]
Mohammad Asghar:
Finally, Cabinet Secretary, on schools
and the health service, the doctors and nurses—are they
involved with your approach to this?
|
[62]
Carl Sargeant: We’re changing the way that we operate across
all of Government. I’m really pleased that the communities
division is, as I said, very wide-ranging in where we engage with
people. I’ve been clear with my department and all of my
partners that I work with that the lived experience is an important
one that should feed back into policy. That’s what
we’re doing. All the people that I work with, I expect them
to do that too. So, any advice I receive, we do a little—.
There’s a test in there for me about who’s given me
this advice, where’s it come from, is it from my
team—I’ve got a great team around me—and where
they are gleaning their information from. So, all of the areas that
we’re doing, we operate like that, or we’re starting on
that journey of operating like that.
|
[63]
The other important factor is around not
trying to fix a problem after it’s happened. We’re
absolutely into early intervention and prevention. That’s
where we need to be. Hopefully, we can reduce the numbers of
looked-after children if we get into that space early on with
family intervention and parenting support. That’s where we
need to be. But, we’re sort of firefighting—we’ve
got the day job to do here, but actually we’ve got prevention
at the other end as well that we need to start concentrating on.
So, I’ve got a really interesting project that we’re
starting with Public Health Wales and several organisations, called
Cymru Well Wales. It’s a programme, not Government-run;
it’s a collective of organisations that want to start doing
some very specific work on tackling issues in communities and
we’re part of that programme, which operates on the principle
of early intervention and prevention.
|
[64]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Julie and then John.
|
[65]
Julie Morgan: Yes, thanks very much. You refer to the fact that
children’s voices are not heard. I’ve been very aware
of that recently, as I’m sure the Cabinet Secretary is, with
my constituent, Cedric Moon MBE, who has made revelations about
alleged abuse at Llandrindod school for the deaf. This was 50 years
ago, and those children’s voices weren’t heard. I
don’t expect the Minister to comment necessarily on this
situation, but doesn’t he think that this reveals, if
we’d had advocacy then, how important that would have been?
It’s a real example of something being quiet for 50 years
because nobody knew about it.
|
[66]
Carl Sargeant: I won’t comment on the specific case, but we
are shocked and surprised at the daily events that are in the media
around historic abuse. The Member talked about people not realising
about it—there were people that did know about it and
didn’t do anything about it, and that’s even worse. I
think what we’re trying to do, by learning from these cases
and saying what safeguards are in place—. Even in the safest
places that we have for children and young people, we’ve got
to be very cautious about who’s employed, how they interact,
what the advocacy process is for them and giving people the
opportunity to speak freely and in confidence. That’s why the
helplines are important and the activity of engagement is
important. There’s still much more to do, and I think the
issue around historic abuse will continue to roll for some time
yet.
|
[67]
Julie Morgan: And, in terms of leadership on this issue, what do
you plan to do to show that it has taken some time to bring this
plan to fruition? Hopefully, we are there now, but what can we do
to show that the Welsh Government is committed and leading this
with great determination?
|
[68]
Carl Sargeant: I can give my personal commitment. I’m very
serious about making sure this happens because I realise actually
there are two areas: this is morally right to do, but also fiscally
right. The moral reasons are well rehearsed, about why you should
do this and why they should be available. But actually, for
Governments and public bodies, there are long-term fiscal savings
if we get this right early on. It makes sense to do it. So,
I’m absolutely committed to doing that and actually,
the legislation surrounding this—the well-being of future
generations Act and the social services Act—embed this
principle of making sure that we do these things. It’s about
making sure that our partner agencies are also in the same place.
I’ve got to make sure that the leadership approach to
this—I and my team have to make sure that we bear down on the
authorities that aren’t in the space where we expect them to
be.
|
[69]
Lynne Neagle: Thanks. John.
|
[70]
John Griffiths:
Could I firstly, Chair, just pick up on
historic events? Because obviously, in the news recently
we’ve heard a lot of appalling stories about abuse in the
world of football, for example. I think there’s a strong
feeling amongst many that there’s probably quite a lot that
hasn’t yet come to public attention that may do so. There are
lots of other sports and similar relationships between coaches and
trusted adults and young people who are very keen to succeed and
develop their talents. I just wonder, in the light of the recent
revelations, whether that’s required any new
thinking—any fresh thinking for these areas of advocacy that
we’re discussing today?
|
[71]
Carl Sargeant: We don’t think so, but new challenges will
purely be based on the numbers of people approaching now. I think
we’ll have to deal with that, because we should—the
fact that more people are presenting. We’ve got to be able to
be in that space of—. Once somebody presents, the
worst situation is not being able to support them. That goes for
various cases, whether that’s domestic violence or historical
sex abuse—you’ve got to be in that space. It’s a
bit of an unknown quantum, so we’re just finding our way with
that. If there’s more pressure in the system, then
we’ll have to deliver more advocacy services and counselling
around that. Again, it depends what people are seeking from
disclosure.
|
[72]
In terms of the principle of what’s
happening, I asked my team to have discussions with the Football
Association of Wales and the community football group—I
can’t remember their title—asking to see whether there
is anything more we need to do in terms of support for those
organisations and for individuals who present as well. But it is
something that I know Cabinet colleagues are very aware of,
wherever their jurisdiction is, with regards to sporting events and
other relationships in close-contact sport.
|
[73]
John Griffiths:
Okay, thank you very much, Cabinet
Secretary. In terms of the national framework for advocacy, could
you tell us when that will be issued for consultation and when the
final version will be published?
|
[74]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, I can. In terms of the standards and the
framework, we’re working with regards to—. I’ll
give you a bit of a potted history on where we were and where
we’re heading. In 2010, it was decided that the national
standards for the provision of children’s advocacy services
should be reviewed with regard to publishing statutory guidance,
‘Delivering Advocacy Services for Children and Young People
in Wales’. That happened in 2012. The commissioner then
raised a number of issues in the ‘Missing Voices’
report and I think that’s been quoted by Members this morning
with regard to that. As part of the Welsh Government’s
response to the report, the then Deputy Minister for Children and
Social Services committed to issuing a draft advocacy standards and
outcome framework for the consultation. The consultation ran for 12
weeks, from the 28 February 2013 and 60 responses were received
then.
|
[75]
Overall, there was broad support for the
principles behind the development of the standards and the outcomes
then and the national standards and outcomes were clearly welcomed.
In line with the agreed work plan that we have to support a
national approach to advocacy, a review of the standards and
outcome framework was undertaken at that point. We expect the draft
national outcome framework for social services to set out the
well-being outcomes for people who need care and support and carers
who need support for advocacy. The framework states that people
must speak for themselves and contribute to the decisions affecting
their lives and that’s the whole principle of the advocacy
service. But we expect from March 2017 for the standards to be
issued in that space. That was a very potted history on where we
came from to where we are today.
|
[76]
John Griffiths: So, March next year is the date for actual
publication.
|
[77]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, that’s correct. For the
consultation.
|
[78]
John Griffiths: For the consultation. And the
publication?
|
[79]
Carl Sargeant: Same time.
|
[80]
Mr Heaney: It will be following on from the consultation
process.
|
[81]
John Griffiths: Right, okay.
|
[82]
Lynne Neagle: So, will they be actually ready to implement
from June 2017?
|
[83]
Carl Sargeant: Yes.
|
[84]
Lynne Neagle: Right.
|
[85]
John Griffiths: Okay. Just one other matter from me, Cabinet
Secretary, and that is: will you be updating the code of practice
on advocacy that goes with the social services and well-being Act,
which, I think, the children’s commissioner is quite keen
on?
|
[86]
Carl Sargeant: Yes, we will. When we issue that paper,
that’s when we’ll do that.
|
[87]
John Griffiths: Okay, fine.
|
[88]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Are there any other questions from
Members?
|
[89]
Mohammad Asghar: Yes. Thank you, Chair. Cabinet Secretary,
just looking through the papers here, in 2015, there were nearly
24,000 children who would potentially be eligible for the statutory
professional advocacy they needed. And earlier, it was mentioned
the money set aside was just £0.5 million. So, if
that’s the case—and the children may be more in number
now than last year—it comes down to £25 per head. So,
do you think that money is good enough for people, for children in
need, to cover their needs at the moment, or will you probably need
more after?
|
[90]
Carl Sargeant: As I said earlier, our commitment in terms of
finance provision is around £0.5 million, but we’ve put
additional money into the system. I’ll have to write to the
committee in terms of specific numbers, but I think I
recall—I think from 2005—we had about £13 million
in terms of services for looked-after children, including advocacy.
So, these aren’t small amounts of money. I mean, £0.5
million doesn’t sound a lot, but, actually, there’s a
lot of money in the system already. That’s why I’m
saying to authorities, ‘You’ve already had some of the
money; you need to reprofile that.’ Some are in that space
already and some will have to move a little bit.
|
[91]
Mohammad Asghar: Thank you.
|
[92]
Lynne Neagle: Okay. Any other questions? Can I just end,
then, by asking you to confirm that, as far as you’re
concerned, this will all be operational by June 2017—that
this isn’t an aspiration, this is something that we’re
going to see in force?
|
[93]
Carl Sargeant: The information I have been given by the
providers—by the commissioners from local
authorities—would indicate that is correct, Chair. I expect
this to be fully implemented by June 2017. I’ve asked, if
there are any problems arising up to that date, by the WLGA, for
them to inform me immediately. I will keep the committee informed
if there is a problem with that as well.
|
[94]
Lynne Neagle: Okay, thank you. If there are no other
questions from Members, can I thank the Cabinet Secretary and his
officials for their attendance this morning? As usual, you will be
sent a transcript of the discussion, to check for accuracy. But,
thank you very much for your time.
|
[95]
Carl Sargeant: Thank you, Chair. Thank you, committee.
|
[96]
Lynne Neagle: Our next witnesses aren’t here yet, so
the committee will take a short break, if that’s okay.
|
Gohiriwyd y cyfarfod rhwng 09:58 a
10:14. The meeting
adjourned between 09:58 and 10:14.
|
Craffu ar Adroddiad
Blynyddol Cymwysterau Cymru
Scrutiny of Qualifications Wales Annual Report
|
[97]
Lynne Neagle: Can I welcome everybody back for item 3, which is the
scrutiny of the Qualifications Wales annual report? This is the
first annual report that’s been published and, indeed, the
first time that we’ve had this session in our committee. So,
I’m delighted to welcome Philip Blaker, the chief executive
of Qualifications Wales, and Ann Evans, the Chair of the
Qualifications Wales board. Thank you very much for coming this
morning. We’re really pleased that you could come to our
session. Can I just ask whether you’d like to make some
opening remarks?
|
10:15
|
[98]
Ms Evans: Yes. Thank you very much indeed.
|
[99]
Diolch am ein gwahodd ni yma heddiw i
drafod adroddiad blynyddol cyntaf Cymwysterau Cymru.
|
Thank you for
inviting us today to discuss the first annual report of
Qualifications Wales.
|
[100] Thank you very
much for inviting us here today to discuss Qualifications
Wales’ very first annual report. Our report covers the period
from September 2015 till August 2016 and sets out our aims and
activities in our first year. As you will be aware, we were set up
following the review of qualifications and the Welsh
Government’s acceptance that the regulation of qualifications
should be undertaken by an independent body. It sets out our role
as a regulator, but also our principal aims. Those principal aims
are very important to us because they are at the heart of
everything that we do. They are in the legislation that set us up,
but I think they are worth repeating because they guide us, and
that is to ensure that qualifications and the Welsh qualification
system are effective for meeting the needs of learners in Wales.
The second principal aim is to ensure that there is public
confidence in the Welsh qualifications system.
|
[101] We are the
independent regulator of qualifications in Wales, and we regulate
around 117 bodies. They’re often called awarding
bodies—people such as City and Guilds, Pearson, WJEC and
Agored Cymru. We protect the value of qualifications and ensure
that standards are met. If the system’s not working, we can
take action ourselves or we can actually instruct or advise others
to take action.
|
[102] Our first year
has been very challenging, but very rewarding. The development of a
brand-new organisation required us to design and implement all the
processes and procedures to run efficiently, alongside establishing
ourselves as a credible qualifications regulator and taking over
the very large reform programme for GCSEs and A-levels that had
been started within Welsh Government. Our board has been very
active in this area and has taken forward driving our agenda. But
even more important for a new organisation, the board has been
setting our tone. Our tone is about openness, transparency and
being evidence based. I think that organisations are led by their
boards’ culture, and I think that that’s a very
important aspect.
|
[103] We are an
independent organisation that’s funded by the Welsh
Government. That said, a smooth, efficient and effective working
relationship with the Welsh Government and with others is
absolutely essential to create a qualifications system for Wales
that serves the needs of our learners, and is deliverable by our
workforce. We’re still very new, and we have begun to
establish ourselves as part of the wider education community. We
had three main goals this year, and that was to establish
ourselves, to undertake and continue with the GCSE and A-level
reform programmes, and also to start work on vocational
qualifications.
|
[104] I’m going
to hand over to Philip very, very briefly for him to say just a few
words about our key achievements, but before I do so, can I just
reiterate that I’m very pleased to be here? We look forward
to answering your questions and to discuss our work in more detail.
Philip.
|
[105] Mr
Blaker: Thank you. So, as Ann said, we’re a new
organisation and we’ve recruited nearly all of our staff
completely new to this area of work. We’re very glad that we
recruited a knowledgeable and skilful group of people to be on the
staff. We’ve used this first year to gather a lot of
experience of the role of being an independent regulator, and in
that year we’ve developed our expertise, and we’re very
pleased with the progress we’ve made. We always set out to
have an equal focus on vocational and general qualifications. With
general qualifications, the focus last year was on taking over the
baton from the Welsh Government with the reform of GCSEs and
A-levels. We think that we’ve made very good progress in
those areas. Clearly, that’s an area of work that is ongoing,
and there are still subjects that are being reformed ready for
first teaching in September 2017. We also saw through the first
summer exam, so, for the regulator, summer exams of GCSEs and
A-levels are very important. We’ve seen the first round of
new Wales-only AS-levels last summer. A key focus for us was on
maintaining standards there and making sure that those new
AS-levels carried the standard forward and were credible.
|
[106] With vocational
qualifications, we’ve developed our approach. Vocational
qualifications have not always been the focus of regulators, but
we’ve developed what we believe is a very effective approach
in sector reviews and we’ve completed our first sector review
of health and social care. So, generally, I feel that, one year in,
we’ve developed as an organisation, we’ve started to
build some confidence and I feel that we’re well placed for
our work in the year ahead.
|
[107] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you very much. We’ll go to questions now
from Members. Michelle.
|
[108] Michelle
Brown: Thank you, Chair. Nice to see you again. You’re
working at the moment on restricting the qualifications in the
health and social sector. Can you explain the rationale behind that
decision to restrict the number of qualifications available?
|
[109] Mr
Blaker: Yes. I think it’s probably important, to begin
with, just to say a couple of words about the sector review
approach. It’s very heavily evidence based. The sector review
for health and social care involved more than 120 meetings and
interviews with stakeholders, employers, providers—colleges
and schools—and the sector bodies. We had more than 200
responses to an online questionnaire about the qualifications in
health and social care. We did some direct learner engagement and
heard the voices of more than 800 learners directly to understand
their views of those qualifications. We’ve completed a
consultation on the proposal to restrict and had more than 160
responses from those. So, there’s an awful lot of evidence
that underpins our rationale for going ahead and making a proposal
to restrict.
|
[110] The review
itself found that, whilst there were a number of strengths in the
qualifications system, there were areas for improvement, and some
of those areas of improvement were fundamental enough for us to
think that the best approach was to commission a new suite of
qualifications. So, it’s probably worth recapping on some of
those findings.
|
[111] We found that
progression routes, the way that learners progress through the
different levels and depth of understanding, weren’t always
working very well. So, an example that we cited was that you may
have somebody who has completed level 3, the equivalent of A-level
qualifications, in college, goes on to complete a degree, then
expects, quite rightly, that they could go into employment, but
it’s found that they don’t have some of the
qualifications that they need in order to progress into employment.
So, whilst they might go into employment, they have to backtrack
slightly and take some level 2 qualifications often. We also found
that there was a gap with level 4 qualifications and people were
progressing inappropriately on to level 5 care management courses
when they weren’t quite ready in their careers to do that,
but had a desire to progress. So, we found that progression routes
weren’t working as effectively as they might do.
|
[112] We found some
issues with content. We found that some of the content related to
out-of-date legislation, so weren’t reflecting the latest
legislation here in Wales. We found that, in the assessment methods
that were being used, certainly around the competency-based models,
quite often, they were looking at very atomised elements of
evidence, rather than looking at a more holistic approach. So, they
were demonstrating a recall of facts, rather than an understanding
and a contextualisation of those facts.
|
[113] We also found
that there were inconsistencies between the different awarding
bodies in terms of their quality assurance mechanisms. We expect
awarding bodies to go and visit schools and colleges and work-based
learning providers on a regular basis, to make sure that procedures
are correct and that the quality is being maintained, and we
didn’t see that that was happening on a consistent basis.
|
[114] Finally, around
the Welsh-language provision, we found that whilst awarding bodies
may have Welsh-medium provision in place, sometimes that was
offered in such a way that it didn’t encourage take up. So,
an example might be where translation services were being offered
for assignments, and it may take two or three weeks for those to go
off, be translated, marked and come back, whereas if English medium
was being used, there’d be a much faster turnaround. All of
those things, in effect, became a bit of a discouragement to using
Welsh-medium assessment.
|
[115] So, with all of
those factors, we considered the way that we might move forward
with addressing some of those. As a regulator, we have tools in the
toolbox, so we could require that awarding bodies take actions to
address some of those things. We are requiring that they address
some of those things in the short term, but in the longer term we
felt that the best approach would be for us to look at
commissioning a suite of qualifications for Wales that could
address those issues more fundamentally. In doing that, we’ve
consulted on a proposal to restrict, because we think that that
makes the offer most appealing to awarding bodies, and also we
think it’s the better solution for addressing some of those
concerns. So, where, for example, there might be inconsistencies in
quality assurance, having one awarding body eliminates that
inconsistency. For Welsh-medium provision, we think that one
awarding body will be able to coalesce around the skills that are
in the assessor workforce at the moment much more effectively, and
be able to set up a more regional basis for assessment.
|
[116] Michelle
Brown: Is this approach something that you’re using
specifically on health and social care qualifications? Or are you
going to look at other sectors on a case-by-case basis and see
whether those qualifications in those sectors need restricting as
well? Or is it a blanket principle?
|
[117] Mr
Blaker: We’ve started sector reviews on
construction and the built environment and ICT, and we’ll be
conducting those over the next year. As an evidence-based
organisation, we’re not drawing any conclusions about what
our approach might be until such time as we’ve completed
them. We’ve been very clear to signal that to awarding
bodies: we don’t see this as a blanket approach. Health and
social care, as a devolved area of policy in itself, was
particularly attuned to the notion of commissioning something
bespoke for Wales.
|
[118] Michelle
Brown: How are you going to ensure that the public, that
employers, that both sides of the English-Welsh border, and
Scotland and elsewhere, value these qualifications and actually
know what they mean? Because there have been occasions when
qualifications have been introduced, learners have been told that
they’re equivalent to however many A-levels, but the
universities and colleges have had slightly different ideas,
sometimes. So, how will you ensure that those qualifications are
valued, and that the employers and different people actually have
faith in those qualifications and understand them?
|
[119] Mr
Blaker: So, as we move forward with the development
of those qualifications, we’re continuing with stakeholder
engagement. The needs of higher education and employers are very
important, and they’ll be taken forward in the development of
content. We started working with the Care Council for Wales on
developing content for those qualifications, and the panels do
involve universities and employers.
|
[120] I guess the
important thing is also thinking about portability across borders,
because, especially in something like health and social care, it
may well be that a worker wants to work either side of the border
and may move between the two. Because it’s a devolved area of
policy, whilst we’ve been very sensitive to the need for
portability, we have felt that, for health and social care, the
needs of Wales should be paramount in terms of making sure that the
qualifications meet the needs of legislation here in Wales. Having
said that, a lot of the content will be very similar to what would
be required in England, and we’re working with the Care
Council for Wales so that it can work with its counterparts in
England to make sure that there is recognition of the
qualifications in Wales in England.
|
[121] Michelle
Brown: Just one final question: do you have a publicity
strategy for the—? I mean, you’re doing all this
reorganisation and it does sound like a positive step, because from
what you’ve said about the qualifications in this sector, it
must be very difficult for learners to identify which courses they
need to be doing. How are you going to communicate that to the
public? Do you have a marketing or publicity strategy in place?
|
10:30
|
[122] Mr
Blaker: Yes, we’ll certainly be doing that.
It’s early days yet, in that we’re still at the very
early stages of commissioning. So, we’re planning that these
new qualifications would be introduced for first teaching in
September 2019 and, as we get closer to that point, we’ll be
communicating more and more about the changes. But it’s worth
going back to the fact that that doesn’t mean to say that we
won’t be completing activities here and now. So, for example,
we meet regularly with FE colleges and with schools. We’re
looking to have employers involved and we’ve got a very close
working relationship with the Care Council for Wales and are able
to use their networks.
|
[123] Michelle
Brown: Okay. Thank you.
|
[124]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Darren.
|
[125]
Darren Millar: Yes, just on this very same issue, in terms of the
sector review, I listened carefully to what you said about the
portability. As you know, one of the issues that we’re facing
in Wales at the moment is that we have a shortage of certain
skills, particularly in the NHS and the social care sector.
Isn’t there a risk that having Wales-specific qualifications
may put a barrier in the place of people wanting to become part of
the Welsh care and healthcare workforce?
|
[126]
Mr Blaker: We’re sensitive to that in the design of these
qualifications. What we’re looking to do is to see whether
there might be a module that could be, in effect, a top-up to
qualifications that are gained in England that provide the content
that is necessary for working in Wales. So, we’re
looking—. Portability works both ways and we recognise that.
It’s something that we’re going to look at in the
design.
|
[127]
Darren Millar: But having to take an extra module is going to be a
hurdle, isn’t it—a barrier—for people who might
want to come and take a job in Wales?
|
[128]
Mr Blaker: Indeed, and I guess it will be for the Care Council
for Wales to think about what its licence to practice might be in
terms of the qualifications it’s prepared to
accept.
|
[129]
Darren Millar: I think one of the other potential downsides of
having just one awarding body for such qualifications, if you
commission one body to deliver these—and I appreciate some of
the rationale for doing so, by the way; I’m not saying that I
can’t see that there might be problems out there,
particularly in terms of the Welsh-language side of things—is
how do you ensure that those awarding bodies don’t charge the
earth for assessment and examination fees. We’ve got problems
with WJEC examination fees at the moment, haven’t we, which
have been lifted up quite significantly and some schools and local
authorities are balking at the moment about that?
|
[130]
Mr Blaker: It’s one of the considerations we’ll have
as we procure. The idea is that, as we go into commissioning, we
will go through a fair and open procurement process to find the
best supplier for us. As part of that, we’ll want to have an
understanding of the charges that they are going to make for the
qualification. It’s important that, as we go out and design
something, we design something that is both fit for purpose and
affordable to the public purse in particular. So, we’re very
sensitive to that. Ultimately, we do have fee-capping powers within
the powers that are given to us as a regulator. So, if need be, we
have that as a final resort that we can go to.
|
[131]
Darren Millar: So, you’re able to regulate the fees that are
charged from all of the bodies that are registered with
you.
|
[132]
Mr Blaker: Indeed.
|
[133]
Darren Millar: Okay. Thank you.
|
[134]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. Julie.
|
[135]
Julie Morgan: Following on from Darren’s earlier question on
this issue of what you have to do in order to satisfy the
legislation in Wales and to have qualifications that could be
recognised or that would be recognised in England, you said that,
in terms of the social care sector, your first aim was to ensure
that you had people who would be able to work in Wales, which is
absolutely what we’d expect. But, following on from what
Darren was saying, I think it is very important that people are
able to move, and the border is very close, so what efforts are you
making in England, for example, to explain the qualifications that
you are having in Wales to make it easier for people to move, if
they want to?
|
[136]
Mr Blaker: I think that will become a more important factor over
this next stage. So, now that we’ve made the decision that we
want to commission a suite of qualifications, the next stage is in
designing those qualifications. So, it’s about specifying the
content and then looking at the assessment methods that are most
appropriate. I think there’s a stage of engagement to come
with bodies in England and using the Care Council for Wales as a
conduit for part of that. But, really, the basis for that needs to
be a little more detailed than we’re in a position to do at
the moment. It’s really for once the content has started to
be specified. And we imagine that that will be a process
that we complete over the next six months. So, we’re aiming
to have the content specified by June of next year.
|
[137]
Julie
Morgan: Right. And this issue comes up in
every sector, presumably?
|
[138]
Mr Blaker:
I’m
sorry?
|
[139]
Julie
Morgan: We’ve been talking about the
health and care sector, but this would apply to every
sector—this issue about the recognition of the
qualifications?
|
[140]
Mr Blaker:
Indeed, and it would be
a case of, as we proceed, if we decide to commission something
particularly for Wales. But I think, as we’ve already
mentioned, one of the important things is that we recognise that we
sit within an economic environment across the whole of the UK. And
therefore, if we do develop something for Wales, we have to make
sure that it’s got portability, and, to a degree, almost do
that bespoke for Wales, with a degree of caution. So, we would only
do that if we found that the market wasn’t providing
something that was suitable.
|
[141]
Julie
Morgan: Thank
you.
|
[142]
Lynne
Neagle: Oscar, on this.
|
[143]
Mohammad
Asghar: [Inaudible.] Thank you, Mr
Blaker. The thing is, my question is on the same—the social
care sector, which is the vocational qualification that’s
needed, and a lot of employees, tens of thousands, I think, we have
recognised are caring for some of the most vulnerable members of
society. So, my question to you is: what approaches have you made
to the employer in the private and public sector, you know, this
care sector, to ensure that your qualifications are fit for purpose
and drive up a professional standard that’s recognised
everywhere in the world, rather than the other side of the
border?
|
[144]
Mr Blaker:
It comes back to that
issue of strong engagement. I’ve mentioned the Care Council
for Wales, and our engagement with them, to make sure that whatever
qualifications are developed—and they’re engaged with
us in the development of content, so we’re working together
on that—meet their requirements, and their
licence-to-practice requirements. We haven’t mentioned the
fact that we’re also working with the NHS as well, because
there are core components that would be shared between
qualifications in the health sector, and in the health and social
care sector. So, we’re working with them, as a large public
employer, in effect, through the NHS.
|
[145]
The engagement with
employers more generally will continue through this process of
developing and then implementing these new qualifications, because
we’d be missing a trick if the vocational qualifications,
which are, ultimately, to lead to employment, weren’t what
employers want. So, we’re very attuned to that, and making
sure that the process, as it moves forward, both has the engagement
of employers and is very much focused on meeting the needs that
they’ve identified.
|
[146]
Lynne
Neagle: Thank
you. Hefin.
|
[147]
Hefin
David: You
say in your report, on page 31, that you support the Welsh
Government in the implementation of the Donaldson report. Can you
expand on that?
|
[148]
Ms Evans:
In terms of the
curriculum review that’s going on now, we thought it was
incredibly important that we were engaged with several of the
working groups that the Welsh Government has set up, because,
clearly, with curriculum change, there could be implications for
qualifications, and we needed to understand that, and understand
what might need to be done in the future. And so Philip and some of
his team are part of several of the working groups, as the
curriculum developments are rolled out, and begin to be more
clearly defined. At the moment, we don’t have absolute
clarity on what implications there are for qualifications. I think
it would be useful if you talked about some of your experiences
that you’ve recently had, about the work in Scotland, for
example, where they’ve had an enormous curriculum change, and
the impact that had on qualifications, which is what we’ve
been looking at as well.
|
[149]
Hefin
David: You
say ‘could have’, but it’s more likely
‘will have’, isn’t it? If a curriculum changes,
then the assessment changes. Isn’t that inevitable, or
not?
|
[150] Mr Blaker: I
think we’re anticipating there will be changes to
qualifications. For us, it’s around the magnitude of those
changes. So, one of the things that we’ve identified through
the reform process that we’re going through at the moment,
and through some of the experiences that we’ve seen in
Scotland, is that brand and brand strength is really quite
important. So, GCSEs have got a strong brand, as A-levels have got
a strong brand. Our thinking is that GCSEs would need to be
developed in some way to meet the needs of the new curriculum.
We’ve started to do some early thinking about what those
developments might be. But the next stage for us is really when the
Welsh Government’s in a position to share the design
principles around the curriculum, which we’re anticipating
early next year, so that we can then look at existing GCSEs and see
how they fit with those design principles and also where we believe
that there may be some changes necessary to see how those changes
that we’ve got in mind might fit with the design principles.
So, we are anticipating change, and that will be an important part
of our work next year. What we do want to do is one of the things
that we found through some of the research that we’ve
done—and, actually, through some of the work that was before
our time with the review of qualifications—that we need to be
cautious in the pace of change, and that we need to be in a
position where schools aren’t destabilised by constant
reform. So, what we are thinking at the moment is that we may be in
a process of evolution of GCSEs rather than a full-stage
revolution.
|
[151] Hefin
David: Is it possible that you might not have any choice, given
that the curriculum changes might actually be revolutionary?
|
[152] Mr
Blaker: They may be. What we would need to understand is what
the impact might be on content and the way that subjects are
described. We visited Scotland recently, and Scotland, with
Curriculum for Excellence, has a very similar model of curriculum
to Successful Futures.
|
[153] Hefin
David: Although Donaldson said that it wasn’t necessarily
the same as Scotland.
|
[154] Mr
Blaker: It’s not, and, actually, having been there and
become engrossed in it for a week, you can see the differences
between them. I think this is where we need to understand the
design principles more, but what we have thought is that, across
the six areas of learning and experience, you can quite quickly map
existing GCSEs into those different areas and you can see how they
might fit. We also think that there might be areas where we would
need to develop new qualifications. So, for example, in humanities,
we have a shortage of social science-type subjects at the moment.
So, we’re anticipating that there may be a need to develop a
GCSE in something like social sciences, which brings together
sociology, psychology and other elements of social sciences, which
would then give you, in relation to the curriculum, more of those
interdisciplinary learning-type techniques that we believe the
curriculum is calling for.
|
[155] Hefin
David: So, given this work that you’re implying—or
I’m certainly inferring—is likely to take place over
the next 12 months, could we expect, perhaps in next year’s
annual report, a little bit more detail on that co-ordination with
the curriculum review?
|
[156] Mr
Blaker: Absolutely. It was too early in this last annual report
to really say much on it, but we’re hoping that the starting
point for our deeper analysis will be early next year.
|
[157] Hefin
David: Okay, thank you.
|
[158] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. Llyr.
|
[159]
Llyr Gruffydd: Thank you. I just want to ask a few questions about
the resources that are available to you, and some of the processes,
clearly, that you’ve been putting in place. Are you confident
that you have now, for the coming year, the necessary resources and
processes to deliver a successful year of activity?
|
[160] Ms Evans:
‘Yes’ is the simple answer to that. Where we have been
is establishing ourselves during the year, and we now have a very
clear handle on our costs. We’ve undertaken quite a detailed
scrutiny and some forward modelling as well for our resources,
because we think it’s important—not that we’re
just looking at next year, but we’re looking at the two or
three years to come, because, clearly, there will be pressures on
our budget going forward. We’ve been very clear with the
Welsh Government about where we are. You will all have seen that
we’ve accepted a 4 per cent hit in our budget for next year,
and we’ve accommodated that by doing various
things—cutting back on certain areas of work, and not
actually recruiting some staff, because we’re very aware that
once you’ve recruited staff you have onward pressures once
they’re in place. So, we’ve done all of those kinds of
things. But we’ve also been very clear with the Welsh
Government that if, at some point, there was significant additional
work that they wished us to take on, we would need to talk to them.
So, we’re confident at the moment. We know there are more
pressures coming due to inflation and other pressures on budgets.
And if there is additional work, then we would clearly have to have
ongoing discussions with Welsh Government about it. But currently
‘yes’.
|
10:45
|
[161] Llyr Gruffydd: Okay. Well, I was going to
ask about the 4 per cent, but clearly you’ve pre-empted that.
So, you’ve mentioned that you’ve reflected that
reduction in your work going forward. Could you maybe tell us where
or which priorities are maybe not going to be delivering as much as
you would have hoped, and also in relation to recruitment, because
you did mention in the report that the majority of recruitment is
complete? Notwithstanding those posts that you will now not be
recruiting to, could you maybe give us an idea of where remainder
of the recruitment needs to happen?
|
[162]
Mr Blaker: Sure. So, we made a decision to freeze the
recruitment of two posts, as Ann said, thinking about the
sustainability of workforce if we are in a position where there are
cuts. The main area for next year where we’ve made some
changes is we’ve reduced some of our research budget. Now, in
that, we’ve made the decision to recruit quite a large
internal research structure within the organisation because we want
to conduct as much of the research ourselves as possible, because
we think we can get the best benefit out of that. What we will
always need to do is go out and do some research exercises where
we’re looking for very niche skills. What we’ve done is
we’ve reduced our external research budget on the basis that,
now that we have our internal team in place, we’ll be doing
less external research because we’ll be taking more on
ourselves.
|
[163]
The key thing is that for next year
we’re in a reasonable position and we don’t think that
it will impact on any of our work at all. Moving forward, because
we’re a new organisation, we’re recruiting staff at the
bottom of pay spines more generally. Over the next couple of years,
those staff will progress through the pay spines, which are the
same as Welsh Government pay spines. So, we see an increased
pressure on our budget in a couple of years’ time, and
that’s where resourcing will become tighter.
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[164]
What we’ve done, though, is
we’ve been clear to Welsh Government that what we’re
doing when we’re accepting the budget that’s been
offered to us, and looking at that 4 per cent cut, is that any
additional work that is outside of our scope of work at the moment
would need to be funded additionally. Now, the area that
we’re particularly unsighted on is on curriculum reforms, and
what might be the impact on qualifications, so going back to
Hefin’s point. What we believe there is that, for next year,
our external research budget will be sufficient. But we’ll be
able to check that early next year when we see the design
principles and we can check our early thinking. We do imagine that
we will need to be making more of a claim for the year after in
terms of some research that we think that we would need to do to
prepare for the curriculum.
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[165]
Llyr Gruffydd: So, the danger is that that additional workload will
be coming around at the very time when maybe you will be getting to
a point where you can’t function as effectively as
you’d like without additional resources.
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[166]
Mr Blaker: Indeed.
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[167]
Llyr Gruffydd: Okay. Could I ask a couple of questions about the
qualifications in Wales database as well? How confident are you of
the accuracy of its contents? How do you monitor it?
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[168]
Ms Evans: That’s for you, definitely.
[Laughter.]
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[169]
Mr Blaker: So, data were migrated across from the database of
qualifications in Wales, DAQW, which was the former database, so it
may be worth saying a few words about QiW, qualifications in Wales,
the new database. So, we developed that from scratch. It was one of
the first things that we needed to do in September/October of last
year, because the existing commercial relationships around DAQW
would end at 31 March. Also, we made the decision that we wanted to
have operational independence from Ofqual. DAQW was reliant on
Ofqual’s data feed and was therefore reliant on awarding
bodies to go in and input their data. So, we developed QiW very
rapidly, and we’re very pleased with it. We actually got
nominated for UK IT Industry Awards, and we were finalists in that.
We didn’t win it, I’m afraid, but we were very pleased
to be nominated for it. It was a very successful
project.
|
[170]
As part of that, we did undertake quite
an extensive data cleansing exercise as the data came across from
DAQW. We’ve invited awarding bodies to check their own data.
We’ve also undertaken a cleansing exercise in terms of
trying to reduce the number of qualifications that were on there.
So, there were around 20,000 qualifications that were on DAQW, many
of which hadn’t been awarded in Wales for a number of years,
and, actually, the number of qualifications is one of the driving
factors in those perceptions of complexity in the qualifications
system. So, as an early win, we engaged with awarding bodies to try
and remove all of the moribund and redundant qualifications that
haven’t been awarded in Wales for some time, and we’ve
managed to reduce that down to 7,000 qualifications now that are in
QiW.
|
[171] Data cleansing
is something that is constantly going on. One of the changes that
is being introduced at the moment is that awarding bodies have
until the end of this month to make sure that the guided learning
hours that are associated with their qualifications, which are used
in the sizing of qualifications, are accurate, and we’re
seeing some changes in guided learning hours.
|
[172] I think the
other area that it’s worth saying about QiW is that we felt
it was important that it offered a national resource in Wales, so
one place for schools to go and get information on qualifications.
There are some data in there that are not our data. So, Welsh
Government use QiW to be able to portray performance points and
equivalencies: so, looking at those guided learning hours and
asking, ‘Is a qualification roughly the size of a whole GCSE,
half a GCSE, a quarter of a GCSE?’, and those data are
updated by and managed by Welsh Government directly. We provided
them with an interface on to QiW, so that they can do that.
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[173] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. Julie.
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[174] Julie
Morgan: Yes, thank you very much. I wanted to ask a bit more
about public confidence in the qualifications, to go back to that.
I know that you have this study, longitudinal study. Have you got
any information from that?
|
[175] Ms Evans:
I think it would be sensible to say that the purpose of the
longitudinal study—that first, initial piece of
work—was to set a baseline. It is very difficult to measure
public confidence, because, as you probably know, if you ask people
something on one day and something has happened in the press on
that day, it influences the way in which they respond. So, we are
very careful that it is only one measure, our study that
we’re doing, but we will repeat it in two years and then
repeat it again in another two years. Philip, you have got some
initial findings from it, which maybe you can explain.
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[176] Mr
Blaker: We’re planning on publishing the research early
in the new year. It’s something that’s planned for
January, so you’ll be able to see it in full there. The study
had two main approaches. One was in-depth interviews with
stakeholders, and there were 46 stakeholders who were engaged, and
those would be teachers within schools, colleges, work-based
learning providers and the like, and then part of the study also
used an omnibus survey going out to adults in Wales and there were
just over 1,000 responses from that.
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[177] Julie
Morgan: So, that’s random.
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[178] Mr
Blaker: Indeed, yes. Essentially, understanding and confidence
are two very closely related things. So, the closer somebody was to
the qualifications system, the greater understanding they had and
therefore the more relevant the response was. So, we’ve been
weighting a lot more towards the 46 in-depth interviews to get a
baseline. The key findings are that the majority of people do have
confidence in qualifications and the qualifications system,
particularly around the GCSE and A-level reforms, and this goes
back to the point I raised earlier about the strength of those
brands. There were concerns raised about the pace of change and
there were also concerns, especially from schools, around
vocational qualifications that are used in the school environment.
Clearly, that’s an area that we’re paying close
attention to in our sector reviews, as we look at qualifications
that are used throughout the whole of the system.
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[179] It’s
probably worth going back to sector reviews as an approach for a
moment. One of the reasons why we’ve chosen sector reviews,
or the way of dividing the vocational qualification market up by
sector rather than by age, is so that you can actually have a
really strong view of what the progression routes are. So, do
qualifications that are offered in schools—initial vocational
qualifications—provide the basis of knowledge to be able to
then engage with deeper learning, whether that be knowledge-based
learning, academic learning, or whether it be practice and
competency-based learning? So, one of the main reasons for sectoral
users is that we can start with school qualifications and go right
the way through to the end of our remit, which finishes at
non-degree. So, we don’t go beyond degree.
|
[180] Julie
Morgan: Right. Can I ask what the 1,000 random responses
were?
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[181] Mr
Blaker: Again, generally quite strong in terms of an
understanding of, or confidence in, the system. And, again,
stronger with GCSEs and A-levels, where the brand is such an
important component of people’s thinking. I think I’d
go back to what Ann said. We’re always concerned that these
sorts of surveys will be one measure of what we’re doing.
They will never be entirely comprehensive. Ann’s mentioned
the fact that, from a public confidence perspective, public
confidence will always be influenced by the last thing
somebody’s heard. And, of course, in that, a lot of media is
focused around the system in England. So, quite often, things that
get into the general media will be related to changes, reforms,
issues that may occur in England, but may not be affecting us here
in Wales.
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[182] Julie
Morgan: Were they aware of you as a body?
|
[183] Mr
Blaker: So, this was before we became established. It was a
baseline. We will be, in future studies, looking to see whether
people understand our role and the impact that we’re
having.
|
[184] Julie
Morgan: Yes. And how often will this be surveyed?
|
[185] Mr
Blaker: Every two years.
|
[186] Julie
Morgan: Every two years. Right. So, you’re encouraged,
really, in terms of confidence in the system.
|
[187] Mr
Blaker: Yes. And, clearly, there’s work to be done, and
one of the key things is improving understanding of the system,
especially where there are reforms in key qualifications like GCSEs
and A-levels, letting people understand what the differences are,
why the differences are there, and also the confidence that one can
have from the fact that the system is prepared for those changes.
So, an example of that is we’ve recently agreed a
three-regulator joint statement on reforms in GCSEs and A-levels,
which are describing the differences between Northern Ireland,
England and Wales, and restating the value of those qualifications
and the commitment of the three regulators to maintain standards
independently in each jurisdiction.
|
[188] Julie
Morgan: Thank you.
|
[189] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. Hefin.
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[190] Hefin
David: Although it’s not specifically in the chapter on
public confidence, on page 48, you’ve got the incidents that
may affect learners. If I was an educator or a parent picking it
up, I might be a little bit alarmed. Although the numbers are
relatively low—107 notifications—some of the categories
are maladministration, malpractice, assessment questionnaires and
assessment material security breaches. There’s not then a lot
of detail behind that, which doesn’t help reduce the alarm.
Can you just give a little bit more explanation?
|
[191] Mr
Blaker: Sure. So, it’s a requirement through our
conditions of recognition that awarding bodies alert us to any
incidents that may have a negative impact on learners. The most
common things that get reported to us might be security breaches,
where—. That can often be that a school has gone and opened
paper 2 rather than paper 1, and issued it to some candidates, or a
timetabling issue where a candidate has taken a paper earlier than
they should have done.
|
[192] Hefin
David: But, according to your graph, the most commonly reported
was maladministration.
|
[193] Mr
Blaker: So, those can often be those sorts of issues. So, that
can be described as maladministration. So, basically, it’s an
administrative error that’s occurred within the schools. In
those situations, the schools can take local arrangements to make
sure that security is maintained. Often, they’ll be seeking
undertakings from the learners that they won’t be sharing
anything that they have found. The awarding bodies can also put
those schools under particular scrutiny, so they’ll
scrutinise results within the school to see if there’s any
patterns that may not be what one would expect. So, those are the
sorts of things.
|
[194] The other area
that was in there was around—
|
[195] Hefin
David: Just before you move on, that’s where my concern
might be, because you’ve described two things. You’ve
described an assessment material security breach, and you’ve
described maladministration, as appearing, from the evidence
you’ve given, to be the same thing, whereas, in the graph,
they’re distinct. I think it was a little bit of a weak point
of your report, to be frank, in that you’ve got that
information there without any depth to it.
|
11:00
|
[196] Mr
Blaker: The texture behind it.
|
[197] Hefin
David: Yes.
|
[198] Mr
Blaker: Well, certainly, that’s something we can look at
in the report, moving forward, to provide more information on
there.
|
[199] Ms Evans:
I think, Hefin, what you’re asking there is something that
the board has actually asked questions about as well, which is a
contextualisation of those kinds of data, because, as raw data,
they actually feel potentially more worrying than they are, whereas
all of the explanations that we then received at board level gave
us reassurance that these were—
|
[200] Hefin
David: Which is what Philip is delivering now, but there still
remains in Philip’s explanation a lack of clarity on what
those specific things are, and I think that’s quite
important. Even if the incidents are low, and even if they led to
limited impact, I think still you need an explanation of that in
order to engender confidence in your report.
|
[201] Mr
Blaker: We can certainly look at that for the future.
|
[202] Ms Evans:
We’ll take that on board.
|
[203]
Lynne Neagle: Thank you. John.
|
[204]
John Griffiths:
Yes, I wanted to ask about national
relationships and whether you’ve had any difficulties in
engaging with stakeholders, and whether you think there are any
particular relationships that you need to further
develop?
|
[205] Ms Evans:
I think it would be fair to say that everyone we’ve
approached has been very welcoming and willing to talk to us and
willing to engage with us. We’ve seen that as a very
important aspect of our first year of existence, because people
need to know who we are and what we do. And so we’ve not met
with barriers. People haven’t turned around to us and said,
‘Why do you want to bother to come and talk to us?’,
and so it’s been very positive up until now. Where we are
very clear is that that’s something we need to develop as
well; good working relationships with stakeholders don’t
happen overnight. There has to be a development of a level of trust
between different organisations and it’s an aspect that we
will be taking forward even more next year, particularly looking at
the way in which we engage with employers, the way in which we
ensure that we’ve got good links with higher education
institutions, et cetera. So, it is something that’s on our
agenda. I think we’ve made a good start. We’ve
certainly not met any barriers, but it’s something that we
want to develop and probably spend a bit more time on next
year—or this current year, I should say. Did you want to add
anything to that?
|
[206] Mr
Blaker: No, I think just to reiterate it’s something that
has gone well, but we know that there’s always more one can
do in terms of engagement. We’ve introduced a couple
of—. I guess we’re trying to move from informal
engagement to more formal engagement, and more of a regular pattern
of engagement. We’ve had two first events, I suppose is the
best way of describing them, over the last couple of weeks. So,
we’ve had a first meeting with teaching associations and
other associated bodies that have got a representative nature in
terms of schools in Wales. And, yesterday, we had our first big
awarding body forum where we had more than 100 attendees from
awarding bodies, which has given us an opportunity to set out our
stall in more detail to them.
|
[207] Lynne
Neagle: Thank you. Darren.
|
[208] Darren
Millar: Yes. Sorry, I just wanted to go back to this issue of
the regulation of examination fees. So, there’s been an
increase in the past three years of over 23 per cent in the charge
for GCSEs made by WJEC. I assume they have to notify you of the
increases in the fees, or do you have to wait for somebody to
complain about them before you take a look and see whether those
things can be justified?
|
[209] Mr
Blaker: So, they don’t need to notify us of changes. We
are tracking changes. One of the things that we’re planning
on doing as one of our research studies over the next year is to
look at baselining fees, not only from WJEC, but from all of the
other awarding bodies, and not just the headline fees for GCSE
entry, but also all of the things like continuous professional
development events that schools go on. One of the reasons there is,
whilst there might be increases in Wales, we see that there are
increases in England and, actually, what we’re looking for is
making sure that those fees are both reasonable and that there
isn’t any exploitation of a single supplier situation that
could occur.
|
[210] So, one of the
things that we also want to do is recognise that there’s a
degree of baselining over the costs that schools will see. We also
want to do some baselining over perceptions of customer service and
customer experience, so, as we move into more of a single supplier
situation, with WJEC being the only awarding body that has decided
to offer reformed A-levels and GCSEs in Wales, we want to make sure
that we’ve got a good understanding that the service that
they’re offering is a good service and is at least comparable
with the service that’s being offered in England through a
market environment.
|
[211]
Darren Millar:
So what have you done to investigate
why they feel they can justify a 23 per cent increase in their
examination fees for a typical GCSE?
|
[212]
Mr Blaker:
We haven’t done any specific
investigations on that particular issue. We have done some work on
looking at training events, which is something that had come to our
attention—an increase in fees in training events. It seemed
that, whilst there had been an increase in WJEC’s fees, they
were still offering a lower cost to schools than the awarding
bodies in England were charging.
|
[213]
Darren Millar:
But isn’t that a silly thing
to compare, if you like? Because you’re looking at an
organisation that was able to offer a GCSE for a certain price a
couple of years ago, which has increased that price dramatically,
regardless of what the fee levels are elsewhere with other
examination bodies that might be doing very different things. Here,
this is a cost that is borne by the Welsh taxpayer, which is coming
out of schools’ pots, as it were, which is having a direct
impact on school budgets at a time when we’ve got pressure,
if you like, in the public finances. So, schools will be looking to
you as the regulator to ensure that that’s delivering value
for money and, if it’s not, you’re working with the
WJEC to get that price down and using your teeth, which
you’ve got as a regulator, to cap those fees.
|
[214]
Mr Blaker:
Indeed, and as I said, it’s an
area that we’ll be looking at in more detail over the next
year. I think one of the things that’s worth noting is that
WJEC fund all of the reforms that they’ve been going through
for GCSEs and A-levels, so there isn’t a central pot of money
to support the changes that they’ve needed to make. Now,
there may be some element of cost recovery in pricing that they
have, but we can certainly investigate that.
|
[215]
Darren Millar:
It’s a commercial decision for
them, I suppose, isn’t it, in terms of them getting a return
on any investment that they may have made. But it is a matter of
concern; it’s been brought to my attention, certainly. Can I
ask—? Is this something that you’re going to report on
in the future? There’s no reference to the regulation of fees
at all in the report this year.
|
[216]
Mr Blaker:
It would certainly be
something—once we’ve undertaken some of this work in
terms of perceptions of customer service and baselining of fees and
costs—that we’d be looking to report on next
year.
|
[217]
Darren Millar:
But certainly, with the
single-supplier status, the risk of exploitation of examination
fees is much higher than in a more competitive
marketplace.
|
[218]
Mr Blaker:
And I think it’s that change
in the market dynamics that is making us more alert to that
particular dimension.
|
[219]
Darren Millar:
Thanks.
|
[220]
Lynne
Neagle: Thank you.
Oscar.
|
[221]
Mohammad
Asghar: Thank
you very much, Chair. I’m a great believer in vocational
qualifications, because I know, 20-odd years ago, Chair, there was
a free education, even for flying training, and a lot of pilots are
probably flying, now, jumbos in this country. My question to you
is: you mentioned earlier, Philip, that you’ve got all the
tools in your toolkit—you said those words clearly—and
you said there are some niche skills, so I need to know, in that
context, are there any—? In the old days, there were some tax
incentives. I’m talking about older people, who aren’t
young—the senior people, not young children—and
vocational qualifications; people of senior age, or over 25. What
sort of assistance is available to them for
qualifications—tax incentives or any sort of thing where
people can learn an extra qualification while they’re in jobs
or work? Have you got anything like that at the moment? Because
you’re very new in this field.
|
[222]
Ms Evans:
It’s a very
interesting concept and idea, but it’s outside of our remit
in terms of supporting learners directly. We don’t have any
remit in that area; we’re very clearly focused on the
regulation of qualifications. That kind of debate and discussion, I
think, is one for the Welsh Government, and probably other
organisations as well, but unfortunately not for us. But I
absolutely understand what you’re saying and how important it
is for the Welsh economy.
|
[223]
Lynne
Neagle: Okay;
thank you. Are there any other questions
from—?
Go on,
then.
|
[224]
Mohammad
Asghar: Thank
you very much indeed. What do you think that the biggest
development in your day-to-day practice will be over the next year?
So, how are you going to develop yourselves next year?
|
[225]
Ms Evans:
The year we’re in
now?
|
[226]
Mohammad
Asghar: Yes.
|
[227] Ms Evans: I
think there are several things. I’d start with: last year was
our first year, so we were doing everything for the first
time. This year, we’re embedding good practice and
honing everything that we’re doing. So, one of our challenges
for this year is to actually sharpen up everything that we’re
doing and make sure that we’re doing it in the best possible
way. In terms of the challenges going forward for us, clearly we
will have a summer exams series for GCSEs and A-levels, which will
be the culmination of two years’ work for lots of our young
people and we want to make sure that that goes smoothly and is
handled appropriately.
|
[228] We are
undertaking this major reform programme in vocational
qualifications. So, by the end of the next year, we will be looking
at the health and social care qualifications that will hopefully be
delivered for 2019. We’re also clearly going to need to
articulate all of the issues that Hefin was raising, which were
around the impact of the curriculum, potentially, on our
qualifications and what that means for our work plan going forward.
So, I think that’s quite a lot of challenges for us for this
coming year.
|
[229] We also keep a
weather eye on what’s happening England, because there can
often be developments and changes that happen across the border
that have a washback effect on us. So, we do keep a very close eye
on developments and changes that are going on in England, for
example the skills plan and things like that. Is there anything you
want to add?
|
[230] Mr
Blaker: Just to reiterate that, in the first year, we were
doing everything for the first time. We made a commitment to be a
learning organisation and to develop our practice as we develop as
an organisation. An example is we spent quite a bit of time looking
at the sector review method for vocational qualifications on the
basis that it was novel. Nobody had done something like that
before, so we spent a lot of time looking at the method,
understanding where we could strengthen it, and we’ve already
implemented some slightly different mechanisms as we move forward
for the two that we’re starting for next year. So,
we’ll always be looking to improve our practice.
|
[231]
Lynne Neagle: Are there any other questions from Members? No. Okay,
well, can I thank you both for attending today and answering our
questions? We will follow your progress with interest in the coming
year. You will be sent a transcript of the meeting to check for
accuracy. Thank you very much.
|
11:12
|
Papur i’w Nodi
Paper to Note
|
[232]
Lynne Neagle: Item 4 is a paper to note. Paper to note 3: a letter
from the Cabinet Secretary for Education, which is a follow-up to
action following the budget scrutiny session. Are Members happy to
note that?
|