Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

How well are schools preparing for the Digital Competence Framework? Kirsty Williams, Education Secretary, asked Estyn to report and highlight good practice that schools could learn from.

Their insightful findings look at leadership, the role of digital leads, and professional learning. Recommendations are offered to schools, consortia and Welsh Government.

The ‘Effective approaches to preparing’ section digs into the detail and gives useful pointers on topics from vision and planning through to resources and curriculum mapping. ‘Common characteristics of successful realisation of the DCF’ gives a checklist and even a tabulated chart for moving from ‘starting the journey’ to ‘sustaining progress’.

The report is clear that different schools may well take different approaches, but offers a wealth of good practice for all schools, showcased by multiple case studies.

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

While Pioneers are designing and developing the new curriculum and identifying the professional support the workforce needs, primary and secondary heads have been working with Government, experts and partners on co-constructing a new model of schools accountability.

In the new model every learner will count, which presents significant opportunities in terms of focussing on the progress of our vulnerable learners. However reducing the attainment gap between groups of learners is important right now, so action is underway to improve life chances for our pupils in many of our schools today; that work will be supported by our programme of education reform in Wales. Continue reading →

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

Your update on Education in Wales: our national mission – issue 3 – the latest on Wales’ education reforms.

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

It’s an exciting time for us in Wales in terms of the future of the Welsh language. Our Welsh language strategy Cymraeg 2050: A million Welsh speakers, sets the ambition clearly. The aim is to:

1. increase the number of speakers
2. increase the use of Welsh; and
3. create favourable conditions for the language

We’re all aware that our education system has a significant contribution to make to achieve the long-term vision to reach a million speakers by 2050. Continue reading →

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

The journey to digital transformation is not an easy one and doesn’t happen overnight. Here’s the approach we’re taking at Cardiff and Vale College (CAVC).

We are driving digital transformation in a number of ways, firstly through staff training and secondly through cultural change and change management.

Training is crucial, so we are using INSET days, workshops, one to one sessions, and departmental Digital Leaders providing bespoke training to support the teachers with Technology Enhanced learning (TEL) experiments, via the Microsoft Educator Community (MEC) website and the Microsoft Imagine Academy. Continue reading →

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

“When I announced our national mission for education last September I said that to achieve our ambitions we must keep moving forward. That’s why the past year has been all about momentum – a drive for self-improvement that reaches right across our education system.

We still have much work to do but I’m proud of the reforms that we have introduced in a relatively short space of time. I am also genuinely impressed by how everyone in the education system has responded. Continue reading →

Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg

Josh Pickett: “I think all pupils need to learn how to solve problems because it will help them with lots of things, not just ICT”.

St Christopher’s is the largest special school in Wales. One year after the launch of ‘cracking the code’, a drive to give teachers and learners coding skills, it has a popular coding club and great examples of how pupils benefit.

All pupils have additional learning needs and traditionally would not be pupils who would participate in computer science. We were one of the first schools to participate cracking the code initiative with GWE in September. As a result of this training we set up a code club every Monday at lunch times which has been attended well throughout the year. We started our code club off in the September using the Redfern electronics crumble board. We created a booklet which was completely independent and the pupils could follow it step by step. Continue reading →