National Assembly for Wales

Welcome to today's meeting of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. The public items of this meeting are being broadcast live on Senedd.tv. A record of proceedings will be published as usual. The meeting is bilingual, and simultaneous translation from Welsh to English is available. Are there any declarations of interest from Members? I can see there are not.

We move on now to agenda item 2, which is the fourth evidence session for this inquiry. I'm very pleased to welcome—. Would the panel like to introduce themselves, please? If we start with Laura, please. 

Yes, I'm Laura Doel. I'm the national secretary for NAHT Cymru, the school leaders' union.

Hi, I'm Claire Armitstead. I'm the director of ASCL Cymru, which is the Association of School and College Leaders.

I'm Neil Foley, headteacher of Prestatyn High School, recently appointed executive headteacher of Christ the Word through school, and I'm vice-president of ASCL Cymru, and I'll be president in September.

You're very welcome this morning, and thank you for joining us. Members have a series of questions for you, and I'll hand over, firstly, please, to Cefin. Thank you. 

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Bore da. So, thank you for the papers. It's been really useful to have an overview of where you think problems lie in terms of recruiting teachers in particular, because we want to start with that issue. So, given the range of issues that you've outlined, in terms of factors and barriers to better recruitment of teachers, what do you think is the single most important factor? 

I'm happy to start. Good morning. I would say the most single important factor is creating the conditions of service where teachers and leaders can thrive. We've all given significant evidence to various independent Welsh pay review bodies on the concerns that we have, particularly around pay, workload, protected leave, for example, for headteachers. And if we can create those conditions where teachers and leaders can do well, then we are going to tackle some of the barriers that we have in place that prevent people from coming into the teaching profession.

I agree, totally. But, just to add on to that as well, it's no longer seen as a profession that people necessarily want to join, whether that's through perceptions of workload and pay or the reality of workload and pay. But it's how teachers are held in the press, how they're villainised in the press, and how, particularly through the pandemic, they were seen as the problem, not the solution, and that really changed community opinion of teachers. So, they know how teachers are held in the community, they know now how teachers are spoken to by parents, which would never have happened before, and I don't think it's attracting them in because of that. 

Yes, I would concur. I think pay and the prospect of future earnings is a massive and significant factor for graduates taking or embarking upon a teaching profession. Just getting them through the door, getting them onto teacher training, is a significant challenge at the moment, and we're seeing that when we put applications out for any jobs, and it's particularly acute in schools that are in special measures or schools that are in really challenging circumstances. We've gone from a situation where we would have multiple applicants to maybe one or two, and very few are appointable at times.

Okay. If I can just add a quick supplementary to that, I fully understand why you're highlighting the challenges, the barriers, this morning, and in your papers as well. But, if you were responsible for marketing teaching as a profession, turn it on its head: how would you sell the profession to young people who want to come into teaching, those who are thinking of changing careers? What are the positives? What can you say? 'Come on, come and teach.' 

If I can come in there, I think, as headteachers, we are already responsible for marketing a career in education, just by educating our young people and opening up opportunities, and giving them a future, and a future that they can believe in, and giving them the necessary tools to advance through any career, but especially through education by being a positive role model towards them. I think we do that, but there are obviously those challenges, which—. When a graduate finishes a degree, or even when they're choosing universities and courses, I don't think teaching is at the top of their list, because there are other options. 

You feel it; you don't necessarily see it. I was lucky enough to be an educator for over 30 years and, when you walk in, they give you energy, they give you life, they make you laugh. It is a joyous experience to be in a classroom with children. Even if they don't want to be there, you feel like you're doing something right, you feel like you're making a difference. And I completely agree with what you're saying—we need to show people what the reality is. Because the workload is enormous, if you don't love it, you can't do it. But, once they've experienced once, we've got them, they're hooked—the right people are hooked—and they stay.

The only thing I would add is that I think the best advocates for the profession are the teachers and leaders themselves. We all remember specific teachers from school, and they will be the people that will stick in your mind and they will be the reason why you did well at school, or they will be the thing that inspired you to go on and do other things. That's there; those teachers and leaders are still there.

I think, picking up on the point that Claire made earlier to the previous question, about how education and teaching specifically are perceived, there is a huge amount of work for us all to be doing to make sure that we promote the profession. I think what I would say is that teachers and leaders go out every day promoting how great it is to be a teacher—they love their schools, they love their communities, and it is a great role. But we need to make sure that they have the conditions of service where they thrive in those roles, and are seen to be thriving. At the moment, NAHT feels that that's what's holding it back.

Cefin, could I come in quickly here, just quickly? Something that you said at the beginning, when you said about the way teachers are perceived now, especially after the pandemic: how much do you think social media has an impact on that? 

Huge, an absolutely huge amount. Fake accounts are set up. For example, I was a headteacher of a secondary school in north Wales. You can get groups of people who will use social media to mock you, attack you, and it's like hatred breeds hatred. So, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I do believe, actually, that the amount it has increased in recent years is almost exponential. It's something that's really got out of hand.

And is that having a negative impact, then, you believe, on your well-being, as well as the students'? 

Yes, definitely. But also it's not just social media, it's the face-to-face relationships as well. I believe, pre pandemic, teachers and school leaders were seen as having positive intent. Whether we agreed or not, our intent was never questioned, but now our intent is questioned, and publicly.

That's interesting. Thank you. Cefin. 

Yes. So, my second question is: does the way that initial teacher education is currently being delivered impact on the attractiveness of teaching as a profession? And are there other routes into teaching as well and, if there are, what would they be?

Do you want to go first?

I don't think ITE at the moment is maximising what it could be. Currently, we are not attracting graduates into teaching and, when they go into ITE, it can be varied in quality. Because we're getting smaller numbers for recruitment, the quality of the recruitment, again, is very varied. There's a number of ways that we used to do it that we don't anymore. So Teach First, particularly for schools in challenging situations, like Neil was talking about, was a wonderful route into teaching; you got the best graduates coming in, with the right energy to do that job, and the graduate teacher programme as well, because they learnt—. You grew your own. You got the people who'd already bought into education; you grew your own to be teachers.

At the moment, the Open University isn't filling that gap. It can't get enough people into it for it to fill the ones that we've lost. And I think we're also missing a trick. The recruitment and retention is significantly more challenging at secondary than it is at primary. So, we have people with qualified teacher status who want to teach, but maybe don't think they can teach in secondary, because they're trained in primary. And there's work that could be done there to get the right people into secondary as well.

I would just add to what Claire has just said that we've got examples across Wales where we've got some great further education and higher education teachers who would like to teach in primary and secondary schools. They can't, because of the qualification they have. So, if they want to, they come in as non-qualified or unqualified teachers. That's a huge barrier for people who want to come in and work in those sectors. Surely, there must be more we can do to make that transition easier, because some of those teachers add huge value to schools.

Just to come in there, on multiple occasions, we used the GTP programme, over several years, to develop our own teachers within the school. They still remain in Prestatyn High to this day. Removing that ability for a headteacher to select some members of staff and train them over two years to become QTS is something that we miss. I would like to see, for one, that scheme brought back. It helped me fulfil my curriculum with specialist teachers.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Cefin. Now, we have some questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, everyone. I wanted to ask you something specifically, Claire, because you said something that really hit me hard. I've met with hundreds of teachers—primary, secondary, college level and beyond. What you said in your initial introduction about the relationship between teachers and parents being broken is a message that every single one of them, across the board, have been continuously saying. So, from our perspective, I'd really love to hear your view on what can be done to build those bridges once again.

I think there has to be a conscious plan to do that, and it has to be a plan that attacks the perception out there. When we were at our last conference, Neil was talking on the train as we were going back, and you know how you used to have those drink-driving ads? It's almost those types of ads that you need, that constant replay again. But, rather than trying to make it about just education, it needs to be made about, 'We care. We love your kids like you love your kids', and get that trust in our positive intent back in. It has to start with the press, and we have to challenge what the press are putting in, because they're fuelling the fire.

Okay. Fine. Did you want to add anything, Neil?

So, one way that I assisted the relationship with parents was that we bombarded social media with positive messages. So, if a child did some good work in a class, we'd take a picture of it, it was on social media; it was multiple posts, every single day. By getting that positive message out there, all of a sudden, there is a tipping point, whereby the parents who want to cause harm are marginalised, and the vast majority of parents—. But that takes time. It is much more difficult with the school I've just taken over, which is in special measures. It's much more difficult to get to that point because of the negativity in the press, multiple posts, teachers being named online by parents who just want to cause trouble or want to get a point across. So, it is very difficult and it takes a long time and it takes resources—I had to appoint a marketing manager just to get those messages out. And what mustn't be forgotten as well is that many, many parents are amazing, and they're very supportive, and they want the best for the children and the school. So, we are talking about a minority, but it can impact a teacher's, it can impact a headteacher's, mental health significantly. That is the biggest—. Since being a headteacher for 10 years, that is the single most pressure I've ever felt, when there's a negative social media campaign about something around the school.

I appreciate that, obviously, you've mentioned the press is heavily involved in creating a negative stance on teaching and, obviously, creating that bad relationship; COVID hasn't helped. I can totally take that on board. This is asking you to look into a crystal ball now. Building up any relationship that's broken does take time, and I appreciate it's a minority of parents, but, unfortunately, it does fuel a bigger fire. So, if everything was pumped into the marketing element, if we were to support as politicians, parties, all the teachers out there, to be able to try and build that relationship, how long do you think it would take?

It's the swing that it will be—. So, like Neil said, it is a smaller group, but they're a sizeable minority. So, I think over a couple of years of proper directed planning to address it, you'd start—. You'd never get rid of the hard-line ones, but you would swing that minority back to the others.

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll come back to my area of questioning now. So, what do you feel are the main factors resulting in teachers leaving the profession early on in their careers?

I'm happy to start. I think, from evidence that we've gathered from our own members—and, of course, we represent predominantly school leaders in the primary sector—is that it's, first and foremost, the conditions that they work in in relation to the workload. So, they have reported, and continue to report, significant pressure when it comes to workload. We have seen some improvements, following industrial action by NAHT in 2023, on those workload challenges, but yet we see improvements in one area and then we see workload increase in others. For example, there have been a number of pieces of legislation and guidance that have come out through the Welsh Government in those last two years that don't have workload impact assessments, for example, on the workforce. So, we don't know what the workload impact is going to be. We've been promised a workload impact assessment tool from this Government; two years on, we still haven't had it. So, we are not able to accurately look at workload created from Government policy, because there is no mechanism by which to do it. When we talk to members, that is a huge barrier. The challenges with parents and communities that they work in, some people have simply had enough, they can't take the daily grind of being a school leader. That is a huge tragedy, especially when we're only talking about a minority of parents. But those situations can make working in a school completely and utterly unbearable.

And I think we have to talk about the issue of pay. It'll be a consistent theme from unions, I'm sure, on teachers' and leaders' pay, but when we look at comparisons to other graduate professions, we know, from initial teacher education figures, that the people coming into initial teacher training are not as many as we need, and we know, through our discussions with people who are leaving, that that is certainly a factor.

I think it's the reality of the number of hours school leaders work every day. The Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service says 48 hours should be a maximum, and it should be a maximum for no more than 16 weeks. And that's doing a job without emotional impact. So, I would suggest, I've never worked, as a school leader, less than a 60-hour week, and neither did my colleagues. It's almost toxic how we—. Because we know we're impacting on children's lives, we feel that we've got to do more and more and more, and that's a normal way that school leaders and teachers work. They're working hours that just can't be maintained, and then they burn out.

I think, as well, we're missing a trick with newly qualified teachers. NQTs come into the system, and if you think of a 50-hour working fortnight, they will have 10 hours, and in those 10 hours they can plan, prepare, they can watch other teachers, they can get the support they need. But then, year 2, five hours a fortnight to do everything that they need to do to be a good teacher. So, that's why they're working after school, that's why they're working more, because the planning, preparation and assessment that we're allocating, they cannot do the job that they need to do in it, so they have to find the hours from elsewhere.

I think single most important thing is the PPA that is allocated to teachers. Giving them five periods over a 50-period fortnight, whereby sometimes they won't have a free period for three or four days to do the planning, preparation and assessment, significantly impacts people, especially when they have five lessons every single day they've got to plan, prepare, mark, assess, and then do the next day. And we put demands on staff, because we have to achieve our goals, and the young people have to have the best experience possible. So, definitely the PPA.

Multiple members of staff leave the profession not to actually leave teaching; they go abroad and teach and get 50 per cent PPA. They go off and use those skills and all that training that we've delivered to them over many years. They then go somewhere else and they get significantly more PPA. And then you speak to them later and they say, 'Yes, I can't believe I ever managed to do it when I worked in the UK'.

Okay. How important is early career support and professional development in retaining classroom teachers?

Massively, because you don't know what you're getting into until you get there. And you never feel good enough. Well, the best teachers never feel good enough; they always want to improve. So, having that person who you can get support from, to tell you, 'No, this is normal. This is how it is. This is just November, it'll be okay'. But, I think, if we could think about the NQT structure, and rather than it being a one year, maybe consider moving it to a two-year programme. That would mean that they could not only survive year 1, they could start to develop and thrive in year 2, before they lost that additional support.

Okay. Through the evidence we've received, through things that we've heard—and I believe the unions have provided us with a response—the impact of a good, strong head plays a massive role in not only having teachers who are solid with the work that they do, but also in making sure that they're able to cope with their workloads. So, in respect of that, how and what can we do—or what can you do—in order to ensure that the heads are fully equipped to be able to provide the teachers with that support, because many don't feel that they are getting it?

I think the first thing we need to do is make sure that we have a workload that works for a headteacher. We need to make sure that headteachers are focusing on the issues that are vitally important to deliver an education, and those are teaching and learning. So many headteachers we speak to spend so much time doing things that are nothing to do with the delivery of education, and I think we need a refocus on what exactly we're asking of our headteachers. That's what they're there for. We have seen a significant mission creep between what headteachers are supposed to do and the additional responsibilities headteachers take on, some through necessity. We have a huge amount of headteachers that are acting as caretakers, for example, because they simply can't recruit and they don't have the money to be able to recruit those vital members of staff that you can't open the school without. We need to re-address the balance, shift the focus on making sure that they know what they can do and they can deliver what they're supposed to do. That would allow them the time and the capacity to support those newly qualified teachers coming in and also the professional development of everybody else.

Claire's already said that a good teacher continues to learn. We want to make sure that all teachers in schools have the ability to be able to do that. To do that, though, we need to make sure that there is time in the curriculum to allow them to do that, but also there is the financial support for schools to release those teachers on that training. We know, obviously, we need teachers in front of children. If we are to release those teachers to do that training, which we should do—we should invest in the profession—we need to make sure that we've got a good quality of supply teachers that are paid for to come in and backfill.

I think what's really interesting, though, when we talk about how headteachers can control the workload, they can't, because they don't actually make the workload. The workload is driven by reform. So, you know, the new curriculum, which I'm completely in favour of, but it's workload. And then it's driven by inspectorate. So, if the inspectors expect to see books marked in a certain way and, as a school leader, you cannot protect your staff from going into special measures or into a category, then you can't control that workload. So, I really think we need to look—. I know we're doing a workload plan, aren't we, across the year, but I think we need to look at what is being pushed from other places, at what the inspectorate's pushing, what the examination system's pushing, particularly at secondary—we've had reform in almost all the GCSEs—and what's coming in Government reform as well.

Okay. So, my final question is: have the Welsh Government's education reforms had any identifiable impact on the situation when it comes to teaching, retention and recruitment?

I think the additional learning needs reforms have had a massive impact on schools.

Good or bad?

Pardon?

Good or bad?

Negative. It is an increased workload for all teachers within the classroom, obviously, from the changing of the ways students are identified as having an ALN or not and what then needs to be delivered in the classroom. Also, all teachers have to be aware of children who aren't on the ALN register, but still have significant ALNs. You know, that all plays into a very, very difficult situation, whereby teachers have to plan various ways of delivering a lesson for a multitude of different needs. So, that has had an impact and it's had a significant impact on leaders as well. Obviously, the change has been significant. It's very worrying—everyone's worried about tribunals now because, obviously, what is set out in the Bill, and the reform is unmanageable by schools with the current financial situation.

I think, as well, we've got to consider the key performance indicators that are used in schools because they drive behaviours as well. The best way to never be in special measures is to have less than 8 per cent free school meals. So, if your choice is, 'I can be successful doing the same job here, but I can't be successful there,' we actually drive the profession from where, maybe, the children need it the most into schools that, maybe, don't have the same challenges.

Okay. Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Natasha. We now have questions from Carolyn, please.

Thank you, Chair. Does the workforce—both teaching staff and the leadership group—reflect the diversity of Wales regarding gender, race and ethnicity, and disability?

Quick answer: no.

Okay. And to what extent does the gender pay gap in leadership roles impact on women's choice to apply for such roles? So, there's an independent Welsh pay review body report that states that while the gender pay gap is relatively small in early career teaching, it becomes more pronounced at senior leadership levels.  

It's particularly at deputy to head.

Deputy to head, yes.

So, it was the Education Workforce Council, wasn't it, that said that it's a female-heavy industry, but it pretty much plays out up until deputy headship, and then, when they go from deputy headship to headship, that's where there isn't the translation. You've got to think about the pension poverty that that can cause as well, with women not getting the same salary. I don't actually know why. I think there needs to be some research done here, because is it that they're not applying, or is it if they're not being appointed, because they're both different ways that we could address the problem. But I would say that there's definitely a gender pay gap, and it's deputy to headship.

I'd just add to that that NAHT, indeed, in collaboration with ASCL in England, have done a significant piece of work around the gender pay gap, and EWC figures support exactly the point that Claire has just made. There have been some recommendations put forward to the UK Government around how you address the gender pay gap, particularly in leadership in education, and they are things like, first of all, making sure that we accurately know the members of staff and we speak to them, we find out what the barriers are. We've touched on things anecdotally, but we know, of course, in a workforce that is predominantly women—75 per cent of our members in Wales are women—from talking to them, that going into a leadership role is a challenge, given family commitments and the very things that we've just talked about, when we're talking about workload, the hours, et cetera, et cetera. We would call for the Welsh Government to do a specific piece of work around the gender pay gap, look at the barriers and how we can work with them to break down those barriers.

If I can come in there, as a headteacher over two schools, the vast majority of my middle leaders and senior leaders were all female. Obviously, I'm a headteacher over two schools, but I know, at the school that I've just taken over as executive head, they went out three or four times and were not able to appoint at any point. And a local—

They weren't able to shortlist at any point.

They weren't able to shortlist. And a local high school only five miles down the road went out four times for a headteacher and weren't able to appoint. So, there does need to be a lot of work to look at why people aren't appointing, and especially why females don't tend to be appointed as headteachers.

Can I just ask a little supplementary, Chair?

Yes. Can I just quickly come in here and ask what you think can be done to increase diversity in the profession?

There need to be promoted routes. So, when we're talking about GTP—the graduate teacher programme—that was a route where you were supported and grown in your organisation into being a teacher. So, that safe route in, I think, is a massive part.

Absolutely. I agree.

I think, for many of the staff I talk to, it's that work-life balance as well. Although they would like to make that move up, they also want a good work-life balance for their mental health and those reasons. That's why some people don't make the transition up the career ladder.

I think, as well, we're showing them that it might not be—the heads actually show them—the right place to be, because there are a lot of people now who will say, 'I'm stopping at deputy, because I don't want your job.' And I suppose that's when we have to look at the whole conditions that headteachers are working in, because, for a headteacher to be told, 'You're not entitled to weekends. You're not entitled to any holiday', no profession does that. So, it's about making sure that we show that there are the good bits as well as the difficult bits.

Absolutely. I love my job, but I've never done a job before where people openly say to you, 'I would not do your job.'

I don't know. We have that quite a lot. Just saying. [Laughter.] If I bring Vaughan in quickly, and then back to Carolyn, please.

Just be clear, when we talk about gender pay gaps, there's more than one reason. Sometimes, it's that women are paid less for the same job, and that doesn't appear to be what you're saying, but it is, actually—and it's not that it's work of a different type that's undervalued—about the career progression part of it. So, there's a pool of women at the deputy head level who are either not applying or not being appointed to headship roles. And you're right—they are really different issues. There is something about remembering that, in being a head, you can make a really big difference in encouraging and motivating lots of people. There is something about how the role is described, because I don't think you could even say that it's really about the fact that women have babies and men don't, because, over the course of a career, that can't be an explanation as to why there's such a disparity in headship levels. Moving that to one side, it's still about the progression part of it.

Yes, and I think we have to ask the right people, so asking me why women don't become headteachers, I don't know, because that's what I wanted to do. But I really think we need to work, like Laura was saying, with deputy head female leaders, and find out why. Why don't they want to translate to leadership? Because what you said is really true: you can make such a difference. And many of them are working the same hours, have the same level of accountability, but they just don't make that final step.

[Inaudible.]

I think sometimes women need to be asked, and this would be really good for you to do as well.

It's been mentioned to me that some women might go into teaching because of the holiday time with flexibility around children. But then, because they've got to be in school during term time, and then they see friends, since the pandemic, being able to work from home, that's more attractive, especially if there are issues with childcare. Both parents, I suppose, as well. So, if they were able to have more PPA, and do it from home as well, is that flexibility there? Is that possible, if they were given more time, more hours?

I think it would depend on the context of the school, so there are wider factors at play. I don't think there's any school leader that wouldn't want to bake in that flexibility and support their staff. I think, again, it would come down to the specific context. So, if you were in a small primary school, for example, you need boots on the ground, you need people in the building. That is one of the challenges that you have. In a secondary school, and I won't talk for Neil, as I'm sure he will explain the differences, but, of course, when you are trying to schedule a curriculum of multiple subjects, and again you have those challenges around scheduling, it'll be those practicalities that will be more of the challenge, not the willingness of headteachers to make it work, because we know of some headteachers who do that already, who already offer that level of flexibility, and I'm sure they would continue to do so. But when you have schools that are having to make cuts on staffing because of the financial pressures, and it is staffing that they're having to cut, because that's the only thing left to cut, then that makes that flexibility much more challenging.

I think, just to build on what Laura said, if you're timetabling—. So, my old school was a nine-form-entry timetable, so you have to have 45 slots, all through. And you used to timetable, and you used to give, maybe, 50 hours over to get a really strong timetable in, and those 50 hours would then be used in other ways. Financially now, schools are getting in timetables with 10 hours over. That means the timetable is significantly worse and there is significantly less flexibility. So, you can touch lucky, and you can have a free last in the day where people can say, 'Yes, go home', but when you've only got five of those over two weeks, the likelihood that they're going to be at the start or the end of the day is reducing. If we wanted to make the difference and add in that flexibility, we need to double PPA as a minimum, but that will cost.

Thank you.

One way that flexibility has manifested itself is by the massive increase in asking for part-time working. So, 35 per cent of my staff are part-time teachers. That may be that they only teach nine of the 10 days per fortnight, or it might be that they have two days off a week, whatever it is. And where possible—obviously, it's got to work for our curriculum—we say 'yes' to staff if they request it and try and build in that flexibility. But with that, obviously, they sacrifice some pay as well, and obviously pension and all the impacts of that. So, yes, it would be nice to be able to attract graduates and other staff into teaching, but because we can't offer working from home, how do we make it more attractive? We do that through pay and conditions, and we do that through making teaching look and be perceived as a good career option once again.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Carolyn. We now go back to Vaughan, please.

Thank you. Bore da. We talked a bit about the two sort of question areas that I've got, but I'm interested in some of the comments you've made earlier. You talked a bit about recruitment, and you talked quite a lot about—. I think you mentioned special measures, and a formula that, you know, 8 per cent or less free-school-meal-entitled children means you're less likely to go into special measures and a drift in the profession. You also talked about the challenge—and we've seen the figures—of not getting the numbers of people though initial teacher training in the subjects where there's a real need for them.

So, one of the things we've been trying to explore is: to what extent do you see, or do you think that is affecting the quality of the teaching workforce? Is it that we have not enough numbers coming through, and are you then also concerned about the quality of those teachers who are coming through, or is it simply about not having enough staff, but you're broadly content with the quality of the staff who do come through? And that’s before you get into issues of potential burn-out and whether people are overworked. But, you know, we're trying to genuinely explore whether you think that's an issue.

Yes, it is an issue. We've seen over the last maybe five years that we're getting smaller pools and the quality of those pools is less when we're looking at appointments. So, for example, when I left Rhyl, they went out four times to replace me and they didn't shortlist on three of those times. And it gets to a point, as a governing body, where you're thinking, 'I need leaders in this school', or 'I need teachers in this school', so you start to lower your expectations, and then you start to accept what you wouldn't have accepted five years ago. But it's not just teaching: TAs—teaching assistants—are almost impossible to get and to keep, and for other auxiliary staff around schools, it's the same.

I'll just add to that. I think, you know, when—. I anticipated this question coming up and we spoke to our executive of NAHT about the quality of teachers coming in and it's exactly what Claire has said: there are fewer applicants, so whether or not it is that the criteria has been eroded to allow more people to come through the system, we are certainly seeing the quality of applicants decreasing significantly. And, obviously, that has an impact in certain areas, particularly in more rural areas, where they traditionally have struggled to recruit anyway. That is definitely going to have an impact on the delivery of education, and that's something that school leaders flag up consistently when it comes to those discussions that we have with those providers about the quality.

And that brings me back to my earlier answer to Cefin's question about the transition between further education, higher education, primary and secondary. We need to make it easy for those people to come into primary and secondary, if that's what they want. Because they are good teachers, they bring different experiences. It seems ludicrous that we've got qualified teachers in FE, for example, who want to come and fill the gaps that we desperately need filling in secondary, but can't because of the way the transition arrangements are and they have to be employed as a non-qualified teacher.

When we go through lots of our areas of discussion, it's been interesting in some of the earlier evidence, the fact that there is more competition in the rest of the economy. I mean, I was at the KLA Corporation last week, and it's a fantastic place to go, but people with a range of qualifications around science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects, who might otherwise have chosen to come into much-needed areas in the teaching profession, but there's an alternative that's—. You know, it's a demanding job, but it's well paid as well. So, there's something about how far that competition for the same group of people goes, but also if there are non-pay barriers. And that's with respect, because I think it's fair to say that there has been erosion in pay right across public services over a period of time, and I understand that trade unions may well argue to put that right as quickly as possible, and Ministers in any Government will say, 'I can't do all that in one year', so there's a challenge there about what happens with pay over a longer period of time. But I'm interested in whether you think there are other non-pay barriers that could be resolved, in the way you talked about the potential for changing the barriers to teachers moving into different parts of the education sphere. Are there other things you'd say we could do now that could make a difference? And then I guess it goes to points from Natasha and Cefin in previous evidence sessions about the broader impression of the teaching workforce, because there's a lot of negativity around it, and if the voice of that profession says, 'This is a terrible job', that's not a great recruiting tool.

No, I think as well—. You know, I know we moan. I know, as teachers, we do have a moan—

And I know that as trade unions it's your job to point out to me what needs to be put right; I do get that. I've been a steward myself, I understand.

You know. So, it's because we're defending them. So, you know, we need to switch it on its head. We always feel that we're fighting for our children. We want to say, 'There's not enough money, they haven't got this, they haven't got that. The workload isn't letting them be the best versions of themselves.' And we need to find a way to switch that to say, 'Come and join us because it's the best job in the world.' 

But I also think flexibility is the massive thing that you're talking about. If you're going into another career, you have that option of flexibility in how you're going to work and where you're going to work. We can't fill a bus with year 9 and take it to someone's living room so that they can teach them. There isn't that flexibility, so that's why we have to look at workload, because that is a way, very quickly, that we can change the perception of what teachers do. Because it feels sometimes, especially when they're new into the profession, that it's overwhelming and undoable.

Just to come back on the point of quality, I have multiple members of staff—. I run a very large, 1,600 pupil school, with 90-odd teachers, and I have multiple members of staff teaching out of specialism. They are good teachers rather than good mathematicians, so you retain them so that they can deliver a lesson. But, they may be a history teacher. In my Welsh department, which gets good results, only one of the five members of staff is actually a trained Welsh teacher; the others are teachers who speak Welsh. There is a difference. But, over the years, they have retrained and delivered excellent results. So, quality is inevitably going to drop if you don't have specialists in. So, if we take an advert out for a mathematician, we're likely to get maybe one applicant. But we know that we've got an ITT student coming through who will be a good teacher, so we'll retain them and then they will deliver maths until there's a position in history or whichever subject. So, it is a difficult one.

One of the things I would like to see change is the reintroduction of the graduate teacher programme. When we've got good TAs in and we've got members of the community coming in who are degree educated, then we could grow our own members of staff and then they could deliver within the school. We've put multiple members of staff through from further education, because they didn't have the postgraduate certificate of education in order to deliver at secondary level. 

Okay. That's interesting. I want to come on to the second area, and that is about the impact of reform. Education is always a pretty reform-heavy area. Whether it's the same Government being returned, broadly, or whether it's a change in Government, you can guarantee that education will be part of the manifesto and there'll almost always be a prescription to change something. The current Cabinet Secretary took a choice about saying, 'The curriculum is a big reform in itself, together with attendance, ALN and achievement, I don't want to do any more.' And she chose, and at the time I supported her choice, to not proceed with the school-year reforms. Now, obviously a former First Minister didn't agree with that, but I'm genuinely interested in your perspective on the amount of reform that is in the system already. The school-year reform would have been more of it, but it's something about how much reform can the system cope with and still deliver, and would the school-year reform have been achievable in that sense, at this point. It's how much more is needed to keep on successfully delivering the reform that is in there around curriculum, ALN, achievement and attendance, which we all know are issues across the country.

There's something here about the perspective and the length of time. This isn't just about the successful delivery of reform, but it's the impact on recruitment and retention, because there is something about, if you think that your job is constantly changing, that can be motivating for some people, it can be really disconcerting for others, but to understand the job that you're being asked to do and to regularly expect to be able to improve in a way that you see as positive. I'm trying to understand from your perspective whether we're going to have the tools needed to deliver the reforms in a way that recruits and retains teachers, and what that then means for us as politicians in all parties around future reforms that we potentially ask the system to deliver. Is the message, 'Be successful with what we've got and do this properly, and that will take time'? Because I think it's important to understand what your take is and, again, how that relates to the recruitment and retention subject that we're looking at.

I'm happy to start. I think, first and foremost, NAHT's position is that we are fully supportive of the new curriculum and the new ALN legislation, and indeed the new Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill, but we are deeply concerned about the profession's capacity to be able to deliver the current reforms. We know that there are challenges in ALN, and there have been dozens of reports and discussions, and evidence given, from various unions and parts of the sector, on the challenges of the new legislation. We need to allow the profession to bed those in. We need to make sure that they have the time and space to deliver on the new curriculum. We need to make sure that there is the professional support, the professional learning offer to develop and support those teachers that we currently have within the system to be able to do that.

NAHT has been really clear in our election manifesto that we do not want to see any more education reform, because we do not believe that the profession can cope with anything else. And when you think about it, pretty much everything in the last five years has been reformed: qualifications, the curriculum, inspection arrangements, ALN, exams. These are just the high-level things—these are without the reforms that you have consistently within local authorities and, of course, the changes to school improvement structures within Wales. We made the case to the Cabinet Secretary not to pursue school year reform and we are delighted that she made that decision, and we would ask any future Government to hang fire on any decisions on reforming the school year when we still have so much work to do with what we have on the table already.

I think you made completely the right decision, because it wouldn't have impacted on children in a positive way. I think what we need to remember about reform in education is that it happens at the end of your working day; you don't do it in your working day. In your working day, those children, that organisation, is where your focus is. So, every time reform happens, it happens after a working day and there isn't any capacity in the system. Maybe 10 years ago, you could say to your head of science and your head of English, 'I'm giving you a day to go and work and do this'. We can't get supply teachers and we haven't got the money to pay them. So, we can't create capacity like we used to. In Iceland, they do eight-hour days: four hours in front of children, four hours doing everything else. If you think about places like China, 50 per cent of their time is about development. Our staff could be teaching 45 hours out of 50. They've still got to plan, prepare, assess and then change and develop and grow, and that has to all be done in five INSET days. It's not feasible, but the curriculum mattered, so we made it happen; ALN mattered, so we made it happen. We've got to now say get them in place and keep them in place and keep them working.

On this point about achievement and the changes to the school improvement arrangements, there was a lot of angst about whether the previous structure worked, frankly, and whether it actually delivered the increase in achievement that we'd all want to see generally and specifically in our most in-need communities, where a good education is even more important. I'm trying to understand about the support that exists for those reforms. It's about, 'We need time to do these properly', and politicians and the public will then say, 'Well, if we're doing this and we're providing more resource to go in, are we going to see better outcomes for children and young people?' In this area, could we then expect to see—if the narrative is about the fact that we're doing this successfully—that we'll retain but also recruit more teachers as well? Because that's what we're trying to understand: what can we do in the evidence we take to understand proper recommendations that aren't simply about saying, 'Find more money', without saying where to get it from, but about what things could we recommend that would help this Government or a future one—because we're not very far from the end of the term—and that say, 'You've got a better chance now of delivering the reforms already in place and recruiting and retaining the high-quality teaching workforce that we all want to see.'

Could I come in there? It is clear that it's more difficult to recruit in challenging areas, so schools in difficult circumstances, high levels of deprivation—those schools more often find themselves in a category or in special measures. So, I think an easy thing to do is obviously to have a very careful think about what the performance indicators are, because we need to attract the best staff into the most challenging areas. And what happens is that schools go into special measures and then they bleed those staff away because they're told that, obviously, 'You haven't got this percentage of A* to C in English or maths or Welsh or science, therefore you go into a category'. So, we need to think carefully around the performance indicators and how we judge our schools, because we need more amazing teachers in challenging areas.

And as for the school day, my worry in changing it is if we deviate too far away from the English model. I have many staff, and other schools along the border have many staff, who come across the border each day, and if those holidays do diverge too much, obviously, teachers with young children will not be off at the same time as their children who are in schools in England, or vice versa in Wales, would be. So, I think that would be an additional pressure on recruitment.

The actual model of changing the school year I wasn't opposed to, except for in a selfish way; the perception of six weeks off in the summer is a myth for headteachers. Obviously, we're back early, we have GCSE results day, A-level results day, and obviously we're preparing for the new year. So, in reality, it's three weeks, and then you're back in school. So, changing it to a four-week summer with A-level results day and GCSE results day in there would then maybe make a week for the headteacher before you're back in school.

I was interested when you talked about the school improvement service and that change and how that was another reform that was brought in. I lived through the change from local authority to the regions, and then the change again. What I really believe is the expertise is in the system. It's not in a group out here who can show you how to do it, whatever that is. I love the way that the new school improvement system is about school to school, but there is a massive risk there. The risk is that there isn't the capacity in the system to deliver it, because no funding that went to the regions has been made available to schools to make that happen. So, if we want to make improvements whilst recruiting more and retaining more people, we need to remember that by giving capacity in the schools, they become a self-improving system. I genuinely believe that can happen.

Just going back to the specific of your question, which is what can we do, and what can we do to make it attractive for recruitment and retention as well as delivering the current reforms, I think we've all said in this session, and we all know, that teachers and leaders are the best advocates for their schools. We've got great teachers and great leaders and when they're doing well and when they're happy in their roles, they will shout it from the rooftops. We need to make sure that those teachers and leaders feel like that in work. How we can do that without putting any additional money—and we won't talk about the challenges around school funding—but we need to make sure that what's being asked of them is a reasonable ask and they have the time to be able to deliver it. That will create a happy workforce that will be then the advocates that we need to recruit and retain teachers into the profession. I think if we plough on with additional reforms, we are layering on the pressure, which means that our teachers and leaders are unhappy. They are leaving, so we have a retention issue, and we are not recruiting people because they are looking at what they're doing and saying, 'I don't want to be in that job.'

Can I ask one thing that you may want to reflect on as opposed to answering now? In one other evidence session, there was a suggestion made that there should be a deliberate pay increase for teachers, and not just subjects, but in our most in-need communities, schools in those communities. I'm interested in whether from a trade union side that's something that you would support, because this is about recruiting and retention, the point around how you recruit and then retain the best teachers in the areas where they're needed most. You may not have a full answer now because you've got to have a pay scale and what that means, but I'd be interested in whether you think that would be something you would be prepared to support and look at, because it obviously means you're putting money in one part of the system, but that doesn't mean you can necessarily use that money to improve the overall volume of teaching in the system, but potentially trying to keep teachers in an area where we know the need is greater.

Something has to change to recruit to the most challenging areas. Whether that be pay, whether that be conditions, something has to change, because they're where we need the strongest practitioners because of the challenges they face. If you're working in a school with 50 per cent free school meals and you are hanging on by your fingertips, you know there's a school down the road that's got 8 per cent free school meals where your life will be different and your challenges will be different. So, we need to do something, pay or conditions, to make sure every child has access to high-quality education.

I would agree. Whether it's pay, we need to celebrate the staff who choose to work in schools in very challenging circumstances, and my experience of being a headteacher for many years is that that's not the case. What happens is these schools get vilified because they are in challenging circumstances, and they are taking children in from some of the most challenging communities. And quite rightly, some NQTs or members of staff wish to move out or get a school in a more leafy suburb.

I think the one thing that we would say is that, as a union, we would be cautious, or we would err on the side of caution, when we're talking about differentiated pay. I think we need to be careful that we then don't end up moving a problem. We don't have enough teachers coming in to the system, we put in some incentive for teachers to go to specific communities to work, because they're challenging to recruit to, and then we've created a problem elsewhere. We need to do something, I agree with that, but I think we need to look at the whole approach towards recruitment, to make sure that we are getting enough people in the pipeline, because, otherwise, we're just in danger of moving the problem around.

I think Teach First we need to highlight there as well, because Teach First was all about getting the best graduates and putting them in the most challenging schools to make a difference. And they did. It was something that changed your perception—you've got to be the best you can be to be in these schools. When that went, that did have an impact.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Joel James, please.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks ever so much for coming in this morning. I've just got a couple of quick questions. We talked about the impact Welsh Government reforms have had on teacher recruitment and retention, and I just want to get an idea of specific policies that they've done to address that. What impact has that had on the teacher incentives that the Welsh Government run? What sort of impact is that having, or has had?

In terms of incentives, do you mean train and get £16,000, that kind of thing?

Yes.

If it attracts in, it doesn't retain in, because there's something in our system at the moment that isn't working. We've had that funding to entice people into education, but it hasn't fixed the problem. So, I think we need to look wider than just those incentives, and we need to look at the status of the profession and the perceived status of the profession. Every person who is a teacher is a graduate with a higher qualification on top, but it doesn't always feel like that. So, maybe it's about saying, 'Come into teaching, see how your career can progress, and see the status your profession has that you want to be involved in.'

I would agree. I think, from the discussions I've had with headteachers about those people who have been brought in through incentive schemes, yes, we might see an uptick in people coming into the profession, but, going back to Claire's point, we still have this issue with retention. So, something when they get here is not working.

Has the Welsh Government done anything to try and address retention that you think has been quite successful, or has had no impact whatsoever'?

I don't think they could have, if that makes sense. Our reality today is very different to what it was 10 years ago, and we almost became a perfect storm, where we were haemorrhaging people out of the profession and not bringing them in. So, it hasn't impacted, it hasn't changed, because we wouldn't be here if it had. But I don't know whether it could have, with just what's happened in the last few years.

We've talked about workload and pay that have had an impact on teacher retention. What about pupil behaviour? One of the things that gets brought up with us is there's a growing concern about mobile phones in schools, the prevalence of vaping. I just wanted to get some ideas from you. Is that something that the Welsh Government needs to really get their hands on?

Yes, definitely. Behaviour has significantly changed in all categories. The higher your FSM, usually, the more challenging your children are. But every school's context has changed. Post pandemic—and I'm not blaming it, saying it's just the pandemic—it's like we did a 10-year jolt overnight. We did those 10 years where everything just got a little bit more challenging. Things like wandering, school wanderers. If you were going to not be in school, you didn't come in and just walk around the corridors. That is a significant challenge that happens across schools. We see challenging behaviour happening with younger children. We see behaviour becoming more aggressive. We saw more aggressive behaviour than we'd ever seen in the last few years. 

But when you challenge behaviour, that is part of your workload. If you choose to ignore it, you're not doing your job very well. So, it increases workload, it increases stress, it increases anxiety, and it creates conditions where people no longer want to stay in the profession.

So, with that in mind, then, what can the Welsh Government be doing to address that? I know you mentioned—

Can I just mention money once, and then I'll stop?

Yes.

Right. So, when you build a school, you build it with the people who allow your children to thrive. The more challenging your school, the higher weighting of non-teaching staff you tend to have. None of that is statutory. So, heads of year, behaviour intervention workers, emotional support, mental health intervention—all of those things schools did, because when wider agencies step back, we step forward, and we mitigate for our children. School funding now means we're at a point where we're nearly at just statutory provision. So, those people who help those children change the way they behave and give them a life chance that they probably would never have without them, they won't be in schools anymore unless we do something now. So, money, I understand—. Money is the only thing that will change that.

Thank you.

Can I just come in on Claire's point, because I think it's a really important point to make? It will come as no shock that we're talking about school finances, but this is the very real impact of the desperate situation that schools find themselves in. They cut the pastoral staff because they're non-statutory. We have challenges in ALN where we have learners in mainstream, which, for some children, just isn't suitable for them—we can't cater for their needs in mainstream. There's nowhere else for them to go, so the pressure is on schools for them to retain them in mainstream. That has a huge impact on those individual learners, but also the classes that they're in. Then we have challenging behaviour.

We have a significant problem with schools, as Claire said, stepping into the space of where, perhaps, other services have fallen by the wayside, again, due to wider public sector financial pressures. So, for example, educational psychologists—the numbers that we have across Wales are wholly inadequate for the support that we need; the waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services—wholly inadequate for the needs of learners; social services are incredibly stretched—more pressure being put on schools, then, to step into that space. We can't continue to do that. That will undoubtedly have an impact on the retention of teachers, because they're being asked more and more of the things that they didn't go into the profession for. Of course they're going to be responsible for learner behaviour in the classroom; nobody is saying that they wouldn't be. But we need to make sure that the support is around those schools to be able to deliver on that, and at the moment, we're not seeing any significant move from this Government to challenge those behavioural issues that we've got.

We had a behaviour summit—it was a really positive discussion with a whole range of stakeholders—but what we really need are those people on the ground to be able to build those relationships with those learners that are struggling, to get them into school and to keep them in school. And to build those relationships, we need the people in schools, and to get the people in schools, we need the money to pay them.

I think—

Can I just add in about mental health as well? I'll be two seconds. So, for a child with a plan for suicide and who is very unwell, it takes 28 days for intervention by CAMHS. Now, the mental health of our cohorts is significantly worsened. The time for them to get the help they need have significantly increased, and that—. Behaviour is a symptom, it's not a cause. We haven't got the multi-agency working to actually address the cause. I'm sorry if anybody's going to shout at me now—health have pulled back so much for education. They're not playing their role in this community where we work together, and we need this multi-agency working, or schools need to be funded to actually deliver what those multi-agency services should be delivering. Sorry, Neil.

No, you're absolutely right. The expectations on schools now, compared to 10, 15 years ago, are enormous, and we have stepped in to fill the gap. I think one key point around all of the things that you've raised, and I think everything we've talked about today around doing our best for our pupils, is that the parents have a massive role in all of this. The link between home and school has been severed. So, when a child misbehaves, or they have their phone out in class, or they're caught with a vape, we are met with challenge from home as well. Now, that is a very generalistic statement; I'm talking about those cohorts of students that give you the most anxiety and push back the most. And the responsibility and the focus needs to go back to parents as well, because we can do everything we can, but if we don't get support from home, then a lot of the behaviour initiatives and everything that we've put in place—the longevity is not there, because the parents aren't supportive.

And the final question from Cefin Campbell, please.

Sorry, I just want to go back to a response you gave to Joel's question about Government support, and I think you were kind of suggesting that it couldn't have made a difference anyway. I just want to tease a little bit out of that. Are you saying it's kind of a lost cause, then?

No, not in any way.

Or are you saying that it's the wrong kind of support?

No, I'm not saying either, actually. What I was saying was the world completely changed overnight. So, when we had the pandemic—I don't know, because I'm not a politician—but you couldn't predict that we would be on a country lockdown that would change children's behaviours and sever the ties from community to school. You couldn't predict then what would happen when they came back. I'd been a headteacher for 15 years, and I remember coming back after the pandemic and not recognising what was in front of me. It was so different. The children were so different. The relationships were so different. And whatever was happening in Government to address recruitment and retention, it no longer fitted the needs of the system, because the system had changed so much. So, that's what I was trying to say. I don't know whether you could have predicted the pace that things would have changed at and addressed it. But now we can, because now we've lived that experience, so we can do it now.

Okay, so your response was in the context of the pandemic, not where we are today.

Yes, but the pandemic escalated where we are today, because it changed schools massively. It went quicker than it would have done without it.

Sorry, can I come in? So, the change that took place didn't just happen, but it wasn't temporary. It's been like a permanent change in expectation and behaviour—

Yes, it was a permanent change.

Because you've got all those other cohorts—

Exactly.

My son was a lot younger, but, actually, you see cohorts going through and a shift. And so you're saying that's a permanent shift and it's about getting used to the fact that that change has happened. And it's addressing that, not the world before the pandemic.

It took us 10, 15 years to get attendance to where it was, and attendance was good. I'm talking about my school. Because it was that constant message every day, 'Your child must be in school, your child must be in school.' And it was the most important thing. And then one day we said, 'It's not very important, you need to stay at home.' And now, in Prestatyn High School, our attendance is 5 per cent lower than it was. And that is with doing all of the same things over the last few years, we are still 5 per cent lower.

Five per cent in a school of 1,600 pupils. That's quite a number of extra people who aren't in school.

Exactly.

Absolutely. But a year ago, it was 6 per cent, and the year before it was 7 per cent. So, we need to go back on that journey and win hearts and minds again, over time. Because there has been a cultural shift towards schools.

I think it's the relationships that broke, or that became more distant. So, when Neil was talking about that parental support, I can't stress that enough. You’d ring up a parent 10 years ago and say, 'Your child's just said something they really shouldn't have said to such and such.' 'Oh, I'm so sorry, I'll speak to him tonight.' You can make phone calls today—'Why, what did they do to them?' 'They did something.' So, the relationships are the things that we could address, and then maybe it isn't permanent, but we have to consciously address the relationships that have been lost.

Thank you. That brings us to the end of this session. Thank you so much for your time this morning. We really do appreciate it. You'll be sent a transcript for checking in due course. Thank you again.

We will now take a short break.

Welcome back. We'll move on now to agenda item 3, which is the fifth evidence session for this inquiry. I'm very pleased to welcome our panel this morning. Could you introduce yourselves, please?

I'm Eluned Parrott. I'm head of Wales for the Institute of Physics.

Hello. I'm Annette Farrell. I'm programme manager for education policy at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Hi. I'm Shabana Brightley. I'm the senior education policy officer for the Royal Society of Biology.

Thank you, and you're very welcome this morning. We'll now start with some questions from Members, and we'll go to Cefin first.

Bore da. Good morning. I'm going to ask my first question in Welsh.

I would say that it isn't a single issue. There isn't going to be one main issue and a magic bullet that fixes it. I'm really sorry, there isn't. What we have is a systemic challenge. We have a challenge where we don't have enough STEM graduates. So, in physics, for example, we're training around 200 physics graduates a year in the three physics departments in Wales; your target for teacher ITE recruitment is 74. So, you need more than a third of your Welsh physics graduates to go into teacher training. But the other industries in Wales that are really important to us, like compound semiconductors, photonics, energy all require physics graduates and could take all of them.

So, at this point in time, you don't have enough graduates, which means that you don't have enough people going into teaching as a route, which means that there isn't enough specialism within the teaching profession, which means that young people are not getting the passion and enthusiasm from their teachers for the subjects that they love, which means that more young people don't take it at A-level, they don't go into doing it as undergraduates, and therefore there isn't a pool of people to draw from at that ITE stage. So, it's this whole system that is a challenge, unfortunately.

I can add to that, if that's okay. So, with chemistry, in 2023-24, there were only seven people who passed their PGCE in Wales, and the target allocation intake was 67. So, we're way off the mark there. As you said, it's a really complicated factor. So, the perception of teaching as a career is also an important thing. The safety and the status of teaching is being degraded because of the issues that the sector is facing because of the shortages. The high workload and behaviour issues mean that teachers who are in post don't feel able to advocate for the career to their students, or to other people they meet in their lives, so that's a worry.

The financial barriers to training are a big issue. If you compare the English bursary system to Wales, once you've taken account of, taken out, the paying of fees and everything, Welsh students next year will only take home £2,465. If you compare that with England—people taking the bursary—that's £19,465. So, it's not a financially viable option for people who do need to rely on those finances to get them into the profession.

And in terms of the geographical issues, then that obviously plays out where you are very close to the border. The biggest STEM departments are in Cardiff and south Wales. It's very easy to go to Bristol, and you have to worry about the math skills of a physics graduate who's going to stay for a couple of grand, rather than go to Bristol for £20,000. So, I think that we need to look at that as part of the issue.

The other thing in terms of the geographical challenges is that we have cold spots around Wales about where teacher training is possible, but also where science training is possible. So, with only three physics departments in Wales, you have big cold spots. It's even worse in chemistry. And so, if people want to stay in their own community, it is increasingly difficult to do so, particularly since the closure of Aberystwyth's ITE department. And that will give you additional challenges around Welsh-medium education, because it's a strong centre for Welsh-medium.

As Cefin previously said, there are only two—[Interruption.] Sorry. There are only two centres, which are Cardiff and Swansea now, where you can study chemistry in Wales. Bangor has closed recently, and that's a real issue because of the Welsh-language provision that was there for studying chemistry. So, you've got a massive cold spot in the north of the country.

And I'll just add, from a biology perspective, I think that has a knock-on effect on biology trainees. If they know that they are then going to go on and be teaching out of specialism—so, physics and chemistry, which they're not trained in—they're not likely to then sign up to biology teacher training either. So, it's a knock-on effect to the other sciences as well.

Okay, if I can follow on with another question then: do you think that ITE, as it's currently delivered, is the most appropriate way of attracting students into the science subjects? 

I could start off, if that's okay. I think, when I've spoken to some ITE providers, I think they said that the university routes could be more flexible. So, I think we do welcome the OU flexibility, with the part-time and the salaried route—that's great. But a slightly worrying unintended consequence is that they might make the traditional PGCE routes less attractive. So, if we want to have enough choice in the system, we perhaps need to make sure that those routes are invested in as well, so that they can still be sustainable.

And I think we also need to make sure that there's subject-specific content in those courses as well. When we've spoken to ITE providers, there's just not enough subject-specific content in those courses, and that's really important as well.

Yes, I would very much agree with that. There is a real challenge with Welsh ITE not really having the level of funding and investment that other ITE centres have in other parts of the UK. And I'm particularly concerned to hear that some ITE centres struggle to recruit even a part-time tutor for their STEM ITE provision. We don't have any gaps at the moment, but we're looking at that you could go to study in an ITE centre that has a full-time professional and professorial level of ITE tuition, or you could go to somewhere else where they're struggling to recruit part-time tutors to help you. There is a problem with that investment, and that's one of the reasons why we're suggesting creating this idea of a STEM centre of excellence. So, rather than trying to spread out the expertise across all of the ITE centres—it is important to have ITE centres spread out across the country, but—rather than spreading that expertise, maybe create something that is robust, is academically respected, is driving improvements across ITE, like a hub-and-spoke model.

Okay, diolch.

Thank you. To what extent do you believe teaching is seen as an attractive profession for science graduates to enter and then remain? And what barriers, do you think—? If you think they're not wanting to remain, what are the barriers for them to leave?

Yes, I think we've kind of touched on it, haven't we? The barriers are the financial incentives, mainly, to attract graduates to come into the training. That kind of area is not about retaining them, but it's about attracting them into the profession, and I think, based on the bursaries in England and all the incentives they get in England, they would rather go across the border to go and get trained. There's a little bit more incentive there as well.

I think there's also an equity issue here with the bursaries and what that means, because you cannot realistically live on the bursary that you would get in Wales, so, if you come from a less wealthy background, it is a major financial choice to take on another year of study and take on another year of student debt and another year of living a hand-to-mouth existence, particularly when you're in ITE and you have to travel to teaching placements. That's an expensive thing to do; it's not an easy thing to do. So, we need to be mindful of that.

And as I say, in terms of the demand issues, there's supply and demand in a workforce market, which is not in teaching's favour at the moment, because there are so many other options for highly qualified STEM teachers. We need to make ITE just a really exciting prospect for good graduates to say, 'Do you know what? I'm really excited by this. I can go and train with some of the best. I can go and change the world. I can do amazing things.' And at the moment that's not how it comes across, and I would encourage the committee to maybe look at visiting some of our ITE providers and talking to them in person about what are the challenges they're facing with funding, with facilities and with partnerships with schools. Because, even when it's putting placements into schools, we have English universities now placing students in Welsh schools, and the Welsh schools like to take them from England because they get more money for it. So, it's little things like that that have knock-on consequences.

And I think it's really important that we get those passionate graduates coming through, because that really makes a difference to learning outcomes for students later on. If they're passionate about their subject, they will be able to tell them about the subject knowledge, about key concepts, about practical work and field study. So, we really need those graduates to be really passionate about wanting to come in and teaching their subject, rather than just not feeling—and having that burden of financial outlook as well.

So, I think my colleagues have talked about the financial side of things and the system as a whole. Particularly with the system as a whole, we need to be thinking about addressing the financial sustainability of HE in general. So, obviously the committee knows about this, but, if we don't have the graduates coming through in chemistry in Wales, then there's not going to be enough of them to become teachers in Wales, and that's vitally important. I think another key thing is addressing the workload issues for teachers in Wales so that they can really advocate for the profession and that they've got time to really deliver a high-quality education for students.

Thank you. So, thinking about the Welsh Government's education reforms, what, if any, impact do you think that has had on science teacher recruitment and retention?

I think we'd say it's really too early to say, and in particular in the context that the GCSE specification for the sciences hasn't been set yet. So, when we see how teachers deliver their work in practice, particularly if they're under time pressures, the content of that curriculum will very much determine what they choose to teach. In more broad terms, the idea of having more freedom to teach what you believe is important, to teach around the science capital teaching approach, that's a really positive step. It ought to be something that's attractive to high-quality teachers and to graduates who want to go into the profession, but it's a little bit early to say what that impact is going to be.

I think we're a little bit concerned about possible unintended consequences of whatever the new GCSEs will end up being, and that's something that we really need to consider. So, for example, it's great if biology, chemistry and physics are seen and taught as distinct subjects, which, hopefully, they will be in the new double award. But then, a potential unintentional consequence would be that schools perhaps in the most disadvantaged areas that don't have the specialists will then actually choose to do the single-award integrated science approach. The inequalities that can result from that will be quite similar to the system that we have at the moment with triple science and double. So, we're worried about those unintended consequences that we need to be mindful of.

Agreed.

I think also that there's a concern about the resources needed with the curriculum reform as well, especially as science is quite heavy on the knowledge and the practical skills—so, the resources needed for that, and especially in Welsh medium as well, for Welsh-medium schools. So, there's something that RSB has started; we've translated our Evolving 5-19 Biology framework into Welsh, and we'd like to do more. But then there's the question about funding and resources again, and staff to do that.

So, why do you think that some teachers are leaving the profession early on in their career? How important is early career support and professional learning for retaining science teachers?

I think it's really, really important. Early career support is very important, especially having subject-specific mentors in schools that can guide the teachers in their specific subject. I was a primary school teacher, and I did secondary science teaching as well, and I had a specific science teacher and he helped me immensely—like with the way you teach practicals, the way you can disseminate subject knowledge to them. So, it's really, really important to early career teachers that they have that support and also have that continuous professional development as they're going as well, because, if we don't give them that, the workload is huge for them and they've only just started in their careers. That workload and the well-being are two of the reasons why they decide to leave, because it is a lot of work to take on board and especially if they're being deployed to teach out of their subject as well. So, if, let's say, a biology teacher is then having to teach physics and chemistry, which they've maybe not done since GCSE, that is a huge burden, because they've got to then go away and research and plan, and that's a lot to do for them.

I completely agree, and I think it's absolutely critical. You will be aware, perhaps, that the Welsh Government has funded the IOP and the RSC recently to help provide some of this early career mentoring for newly qualified teachers. But we've got a situation where we have 174 physics teachers, according to the Education Workforce Council. We have 204 secondary schools—205 secondary schools. So, there are at least 30 schools that don't have a single physicist to be able to provide subject-specific mentoring to a newly qualified teacher coming in, and that's disastrous.

So, is the current quality of early career support, is that adequate, would you say?

It's extremely patchy, because it's very reliant on what the schools can provide. As I say, that's part of the reason why we've been funded to try and bridge some of those gaps and try and support some of those early career teachers to make a success of their first steps into the profession.

Thank you.

I think it depends on what area you're in as well. So, if you're in a rural area, you may not get that support that you need, whereas if you're in, let's say, Cardiff, you might get better support.

Thank you.

Like, obviously, my colleagues have said, we've talked a lot about the workload, but it is kind of staggering. In our annual science teaching survey, we asked, 'If you're thinking of leaving the profession, what's making you leave?' Both in our 2023 survey, when we last asked this, and in our recent 2025 one, workload was by far the highest reason that's cited.

Interestingly, I think workload associated with behaviour is becoming more of an issue, and that is something that needs to be addressed with strong behaviour policies at a school level. Because, if you're the new teacher, you're always going to get the worst behaviour, so those teachers really need to be supported in that, with schoolwide policies, which, of course, a lot of schools do. But any support that can be added for that is really, really important.

Joel, did you want to come in?

Thank you, Chair. Thanks ever so much for coming in this morning. It was just a quick question, and I'm prepared to be corrected if I'm wrong, actually, because I'm not 100 per cent. But I read somewhere that, in Scotland, teachers, by law, can only teach what they're trained to teach. Do you think something like that should be brought into Wales, then, or would that just worsen the situation, or would that be used to spur on recruitment, if that makes sense?

I'm happy to—

I'm—

Oh, I think we're all happy to talk on that. We'll take it in turns.

I just wanted to say that, although it's a lovely idea, the Scotland system is very different from Wales in the way they teach. So, they have single science qualifications, whereas Wales has combined. So, you'd have to change the whole structure of your qualifications in order to do that. So, it's a massive job to do, and speaking to our stakeholders at RSB, it's not something that anybody is inclined to do at the moment, and that would be a huge task to take on board. So, although it sounds great, you'd have to overhaul the whole system to do that.

Because young people in Scotland aren't required to study all three subjects beyond the age of 14, I think it is. So, that's an issue.

At the Royal Society of Chemistry, we advocate for our—. Our message is an unbroken chain of subject experts teaching students throughout their career [correction: education]. But we also acknowledge that that expertise can come in different ways. Teachers do need to have that subject knowledge and expertise for the classes they're required to teach, but you can get that through your ITE, or through your undergraduate degree, postgraduate studies, through tailored CPD or retraining whilst in post. And for some teachers who have been teaching for 20 or 30 years, they have just developed on their own that adequate expertise. 

And I think we just need to acknowledge that when teachers come into the profession, they come with a whole wealth of experience. And it varies so much; some might have, for example, done one of the sciences at A-level, some of them might have done all three. And the degree that they did might—you know, the amount of chemistry in your degree will differ from another chemistry degree. So, there's all that variation. I think the important thing, from my point of view, is that school leaders acknowledge that individuals have individual strength, individual knowledge, and they need to be confident that the people they're putting in front of their classes have adequate and appropriate knowledge for the classes they're required to teach.

So, I would like to be in a system where we could go to a school leader and say, 'Tell me about teacher X. Why should they be teaching chemistry?' And they might be able to say, 'Oh, well, it's because they've got a degree in it', or they might be able to say, 'Oh, they've done this very intensive CPD course and I put them through that before they started teaching the class.' So, I'd like the onus to be—sorry, not the 'onus'—I'd like school leaders to acknowledge that, just because you've studied one of the science subjects, you're not automatically adequately prepared, without further training, to teach another one or two. You might be, but you might not be.

And I think it's really important, instead of going down the Scotland route, I think RSB would recommend that the Welsh Government really honed in on the expertise, the subject-specific expertise, and really embedded that throughout recruitment, retention and training, to have a bit more of an impact in that area, rather than just changing the whole system. I think it's really important that we invest in that subject-specific expertise within schools.

It's a really beguiling idea, isn't it, that you've got this—? And when I first came into looking at this subject, you've got this coincidence that Scottish teachers only teach in their one subject, and they are the part of the UK that has the least problem recruiting and retaining teachers. So, that's an interesting coincidence, shall we say. But, as my colleagues have said, it's a different system, and we're not in a position to move to that system; we're nowhere near a position with the workforce numbers to be able to get there, even in the medium term. So, rather than looking at that, what I would encourage the committee to look at is what we can do to help teachers to teach across the spectrum. Remembering, of course, that the new GCSE and the new curriculum encourages interdisciplinarity of study as well. So, actually having a spread of subject expertise is not a bad thing at all.

We do, of course, want teachers to be passionate advocates for the subjects that they love and not to be just trying to fight to stay one step ahead of the kids—that's, of course, the truth. But there are some interesting retraining opportunities here as well. So, for example, in England, there's the Ogden Trust. They run an accredited physics conversion course, if you like, for other subjects. We could also do something a little bit less intensive here in Wales, maybe do summer schools before the start of an ITE course, and say, 'Okay, on these two weeks, we're going to do the physics; on these two weeks, we're going to do the biology; on these two weeks, we're going to do the chemistry', so that the graduates can come in and do four or six weeks to build up their confidence across the subject disciplines.

I think a thing they used to do were subject enhancement, knowledge enhancement courses, which biology and chemistry have lost their funding for, but they really helped. They were like six weeks or eight weeks or 12 weeks, depending on how much knowledge the candidate had. Those, we found, were really, really helpful in getting that subject knowledge up to speed. So, that could work. So, I think it goes along with what you were just saying.

I think you still have the funding for the chemistry one, but there aren't many of them.

There's a college in Dublin that does this really well, and we can provide you with some details, maybe, if you want to look into that.

That would be interesting, yes, please. Thank you. We now have some questions from Carolyn Thomas, please.

Does the current and future workforce, particularly in the science subjects, reflect the diversity of Wales, including gender, race, ethnicity and disability?

The short answer, 'no'. So, the overall teaching workforce is around about 75 per cent female. Only 41 per cent of those are delivering physics education in Wales, and we've done a lot of work looking at some of the stereotypes that contribute to this continuation of perpetuation of stereotypes. So, one of the things that we are doing with the relationships and sexuality education, with the Welsh Government funding that we've received, is to work more with primary schools, because the stereotypes happen really, really early. We have primary schools where the female year 6 teacher will say, 'Well, I'm going to get one of my colleagues in to do the year 6 maths, because it's hard.' No, it's not so hard that you can't do it. We want to look at that science capital teaching approach. We want to look at improving and breaking down the stereotypes. 

There are things that Welsh Government can do to help. I have complained previously about the Careers Wales website. Here we have the physics page: a lovely picture of an elderly white dude in front of a blackboard full of equations as the example of what a physicist looks like, not to mention that the number of jobs—job openings for physicists—next year is 65, it says. Well, your target for teacher training recruitment is 74. So, there are things like that that are fundamental that need to change. We need to have different attitudes to what a scientist looks like. And, as I say, that starts really, really early on in a child's learning and development. And that's why this science capital teaching approach that we'll be working on and building is so important, because it's about showing young people, wherever they are, that there is science in their local community, that it's part of their life, that it's something that everybody does, and that it is something that anybody can go on to pursue. It's a long-term and societal challenge, it's not something that will happen overnight. 

Yes, I agree. I think, while I was doing this response, I was really shocked to see, through the education Wales data, that 92 per cent of teachers in Wales identify as white, and there's 0.2 per cent as black and 0.8 per cent as Asian, and that has a knock-on effect in front of students as well. So, if they don't see somebody like them in that kind of subject, they are less likely to then go ahead and choose subjects, for example, biology, later on, because they've not had that role. It's like, if they've just seen a certain person teaching them the whole way through, they're less likely to go and choose that subject later on.

There's been a National Foundation for Educational Research report on, I think it was, ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce. And it was in England, but I think it's quite relevant in Wales as well, where they didn't have the role models, and they found that it's not just a recruitment issue where you're recruiting ethnic minorities, it's the whole pipeline. It's like when they're teaching, it's  their career progression as well into leadership roles. So, as you go up that pipeline, it gets even less that you will see those kind of ethnic minorities up there. So, it's a pipeline issue rather than just a trainee issue. 

I was just going to say, the forgotten demographic here is about poverty and the inaccessibility of the teaching profession to people who've come from less well-off backgrounds. I would like to see the Education Workforce Council perhaps collecting more data around that, and also collecting data around which individual schools are struggling to recruit. Because while I can say that I know that Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent have fewer physics teachers than they have schools, I can't say in Cardiff that the wealthy middle-class schools have more physics teachers than others, because they haven't collected that data. There is a tendency towards our teaching profession being middle-class white people, and that isn't helpful.

I think, to really get into this problem and to solve the problem, we need to have better data—obviously, what you said, but also data at a subject level. I haven't been able to find—I don't think it's published—any data on the ethnic diversity of teachers by the subjects they teach. Just knowing that would help us solve the problem, hopefully. We're very invested in really addressing this problem, but you need the data to help identify it better.

And what about science through the medium of Welsh?

Again, the data isn't robust enough for us to be able to say categorically on this, so I'm relying now on the conversations we have with our teachers when we're working in our coaching programmes with them. We believe that the shortages are far worse through the medium of Welsh. We know that there are challenges with Welsh-medium schools finding the people with as much of a qualification in the subjects they're teaching as others. There are concerns around resources, as Shabana mentioned previously. In rural areas, teaching through the medium of Welsh, the Welsh-speaking, physics-trained, physics teachers are unicorns, frankly. You're going to struggle to find too many of them.

It's a very similar issue with chemistry. With the closure of the chemistry undergraduate course this year, there were no chemistry ITE people studying at Bangor. That's a real worry and I can only see that problem increasing. The teachers we've talked to from Welsh-medium schools say it's very, very hard to recruit new chemistry Welsh-medium teachers. When somebody leaves, you're not likely to get many applicants, if any at all.

Another issue is, obviously, a lot of Welsh students do their undergraduate study in England. We need to be attracting them back, because they've got, potentially, a Welsh language skill that they are therefore not using.

I just want to add that although there isn't such a problem with biology courses in Wales, there will be a knock-on effect. As you get more biology teachers coming through, they will be expected to teach physics and chemistry, because there's such a lack of chemistry and physics teachers in that pipeline. So, that would be a knock-on effect for those biology teachers. Again, that goes on to adding workload to those teachers, and then, do they stay in the job because of the workload? Then, that's a problem for retention as well. So, I agree with Eluned that we need more data as well.

Do you think having that data will help? Because we've been doing a piece on career pathways as well, and people very often talk about needing to grow business organisations, but they don't very often talk about needing more teachers and needing more doctors and nurses. There are huge gaps now in those professions and public services. So, do you think now is the time we need to be looking at, where the students are showing they're doing very well in certain subjects, saying, 'Why don't you think about teaching?', and say that at an earlier level?

I think opening up the routes for career changes to go back into teaching is—. Obviously, it's being started now with the Open University, but I think that can be expanded with the other HEIs.

And through Careers Wales, because we've had them in as well, and getting them to look back at those sorts of things. But I think having that data would be really helpful, wouldn't it?

I think career guidance is really important, and making it attractive to students, because teaching is made to look like it's—. It hasn't got the best PR, really, at the moment. Also, thinking about career changes, as well, would help. There are older people that have such a wealth of knowledge, and that's really worth looking into as well.

Can I just say, teaching is fundamentally for our society? It is the career that underpins everything we want to achieve, isn't it, because without teachers inspiring, encouraging and guiding the next generation, we don't have any teachers for the future, but we don't have anyone going into business, we don't have any doctors, nurses. We don't have anything if we don't have a teaching profession that's alive and passionate about what they do. So, that's the level of emotional, as well as financial, investment we need to be putting into a profession that really transforms lives for us.

I'm going to bring Joel in here, but can we keep our contributions really concise, because I'm really conscious of time? I hate saying that. Joel.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks ever so much for letting me come back in. It was just a quick question. You talked there about the lack of data and everything, and I just wanted to know, out of curiosity, really, those students who go on to study a science degree at university, do you have, then, what their route is after that, where they go then? Do they stay within the field, or do they change to something else? Do you have that sort of data?

So, graduate destination statistics is collected by HESA, the Higher Education Statistics Authority, and you can get that information relatively easily. So, I'd suggest, perhaps, looking there.

Thank you for that. We now have some questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you, Chair, and good morning, ladies. It's really nice to meet you all and have you here today. We've spoken a few times, and you've mentioned a few times that there are a lot of teachers who aren't teaching in their particular subject; they're having to be a jack of all trades, per se. So, I wanted to know, from you, what do you feel is going to be the impact of this on both the teacher himself or herself, and the learners, by doing this?

I think, as you say, that understaffing and teaching out of specialism is a key thing. In our teaching survey, the most recent one, 71 per cent of respondents from mainstream secondary schools in Wales reported that learning was significantly impacted by understaffing of teachers in the sciences. That's a key factor. It's definitely happening. I think about half of people teaching in chemistry in Wales haven't done their training in chemistry. So, I think that having that subject expertise is really important, vitally important, and, without it, just the quality of education isn't as good.

The impact on teachers—we touched on it earlier—especially new teachers, that extra workload associated with having to prepare to teach in a subject that you don't know enough about is considerable. And I think that that is a worry when we're thinking about retention of early career teachers.

The things you lose when you're overstretching your teachers to subjects they're not confident in: you lose the passion, you lose the ability to talk around the subject and explain the context of the subject, but the biggest one you lose is the practicals. And that's the bit that the students love. We all love doing practical stuff. We all love breaking things in physics, making horrendous smells in chemistry and the dissection and the actual engagement with the subject. You lose that when you've got teachers who are teaching outside of their subjects. They're overworked and they're stressed.

I think that the impact on learners is that they're less likely to learn the core concepts and the knowledge, because the passion is missing, and the knowledge is missing from the teacher as well. So, that's a huge impact for learners.

Taking on board everything all three of you have just said in relation to that, when it comes to retention and recruitment, how much do you feel that all of the factors that you've just discussed, as well as what you've mentioned to my colleagues, actually lowers the quality of the science teaching workforce as a whole then, going forward? And what is the impact on learners' potential outcomes and behaviours as well?

I would say we've got to be cautious how we phrase this a little bit, because it's not a workforce quality issue. It is the fact that we're spreading them too thin, and that they then have challenges in delivering the kind of teaching that they would love to be teaching. We've got to be really, really cautious about saying that. In terms of the impact on the workforce, actually, teacher retention in Wales is not in the same level of crisis as teacher recruitment. Our retention is relatively stable, particularly by comparison to other places. So, that is something that’s to be celebrated, but it does mean that we then have an ageing workforce challenge.

Like Eluned said, it's not about the teachers, the workforce, it's also how they're being deployed within their schools. So, it's really for the schools to look into that as well. Where are they deploying those teachers? And I think the Government could gather more data on that. Where are these biology, physics, chemistry teachers being deployed when they get into the school? Are they actually teaching within their specialism? So, that would be an important area to collect some data on as well.

So, if you don't mind me just asking a sub-question to what you just said, let's say you're a biology teacher and you go into a school, where could you potentially be deployed that's not related to biology? 

To teach chemistry or physics, or even maths.

Any of the other sciences.

Yes. And I've heard, especially during COVID times, of teachers teaching maths to higher level students when that's not really their subject. I was a biology teacher back in the day. If I was told that I had to go and teach an A-level class in physics, I wouldn't feel confident in doing that. And I think that's the issue here. You're deployed to teach something that you haven't done since GCSE. And I hadn't done it for 10 years. So, I had to then go and look up and research, and I'm not the most passionate person about physics. Not to say that it's not important, [Laughter.] But the passion wouldn't have been there either, and that kind of reflects on the students then, and what you're teaching them. As Eluned said, the passion won't be there, and you really have to be passionate about what you're teaching. 

So, from a nitty-gritty perspective, if you were to walk into my school and I said, 'Okay, you have to teach A-level physics', for example, and you really didn't want to, as a teacher, would you have the power to say 'no'? 

Probably not, no. You're employed, sometimes, as a science teacher, not as a biology teacher, and that, I think, is a problem as well. So, if you're employed as a science teacher, you can then be deployed wherever you are [correction: wherever you are timetabled]. 

So, it blurs the lines a bit. Okay, understood. Thank you so much, Chair.

Can I just add one point? I think lots of teachers are different, and some teachers really enjoy teaching across the sciences, which is fine. But let's make sure that they are adequately prepared, and that teachers who want to do that get the support to do it. 

Of course, yes. Thank you so much, Chair.

Thank you. Now we have some questions from Vaughan, please.

Thank you. Given the discussion we just finished and the comments we heard in the previous session about effective teachers being asked to teach a different subject, being supported to do so I think is the point that you're broadly making. Look, we're interested in the number of teachers we have, and the shortage that we do recognise exists—that's a combination of recruitment and retention—and in particular how that affects the delivery of the curriculum reforms as well. So, I'm interested in your views on the delivery of the curriculum reforms, in particular around the sciences, and the science-based areas of learning as well. I'm going to start with Shabana, because you've been a classroom teacher, and so I'm interested, from your time in the classroom to now having a policy role and an overview, about how you see this delivery and its impact with the pipeline of teachers coming in, as well as the teaching staff we already have in schools in Wales. 

I think, at RSB, we have positive views from our members about reform, the curriculum reform. It's not that we're not positive about it; I think it's the way that it's delivered. So, do you have the training in place? Do you have the resources in place? That's an important factor as well. And the timeliness of it as well. Are you just throwing it at the teachers all at once? Because if that happens, that increases the workload, and then you've got teachers being stressed by that workload, the well-being, and then you've got teachers leaving. If it's done in a very slow process, and you've got the resources and the kind of the professional development along with that, and it's done in a slow process, then it's more agreeable to teachers because they're very time poor. So, if you give them time to put those reforms in place slowly, you're not going to lose teachers as much at that point.

I know, Annette, you've written lots about where are all the chemistry teachers. We've got curriculum reform as well as qualification reform that's taking place, and there's the point of, 'Is the supply of teachers coming in the bigger issue, or is it about the time and support given for teachers already in the system to successfully deliver the reforms that have been proposed?', because they're two different points, aren't they?

Yes. I think they're related, in that teachers I've spoken to recently have said that they'd like to engage in the reforms a little bit more, but they just don't have the headspace because of the workload, because of shortages and that they're currently having to pick up other classes. But also other things—more general workload and behaviour—kept on coming up when I was talking to teachers.

Behaviour and our ALN reforms are other big factors we hear from lots of stakeholders, about challenges. They're not subject specific; they're general about the ability to teach and to teach well in any subject. So, that's consistent from your point of view. I don't want to put words in your mouth.

I think so, yes. Obviously, we care because it affects the teachers that we are interested in, particularly the science teachers. So, not everything is a science-specific issue, but it will have a really big impact on science teachers, especially when there are shortages and people are being deployed, perhaps, outside their specialism, or in areas they're not comfortable with.

Okay. And I assume, Eluned, you do have something to say. [Laughter.]

Always. I think the reforms that have been introduced have the potential to be incredibly exciting, because it's about empowering teachers to excel and linking the science we learn in our classrooms to the communities that we live in. And that science capital teaching approach that it's built around is fantastic, and it's particularly good for social mobility, it's particularly good for encouraging young people to keep that questioning mind open throughout their life, rather than box themselves off into silos early on in their life. But the question now for us is: what can we do to make sure that we get absolutely maximum impact from the reforms that have been introduced, and that we can make a success of the implementation?

As I say, we're very, very fortunate to have been funded to help support this process, working with primary school teachers to help build that science capital approach because it's new, and it's because it's something that perhaps they won't have had introduced to them before. It's an opportunity to find the love of the sciences from a very early age, and then also to work with the new teachers coming in to mentor them and to support them. But I do think there's some fairly—I mean, nothing's easy, nothing's cheap—relatively low-cost solutions that can help make sure this works. I would definitely look at the introduction of subject-specific pre-ITE or post-ITE training, so that people can learn a bit more about the other subjects and build their confidence. I would also look at, as I say, the STEM centre of excellence, again, as a way of pushing out new ideas, creative ideas, reinvigorating a profession that's feeling a little bit under the cosh at the moment.

Can I just check in terms of the qualifications and knowledge to be teachers in science subjects, because my understanding is that your A-levels can be used, together with a degree, to go into the teacher training course to be a teacher? So, you don't need to be a biology graduate, for example, to teach biology, but you ideally want A-levels and a degree, and you then—. So, I'm trying to understand that it's supposed to be that the qualification you then do to become a teacher in that subject should give you not just the ability to teach, but should also deal with subject knowledge to teach to the standard you're being then asked to teach in, whether it's primary or secondary.

I think, as far as I understand it, when ITE tutors have talked to me, they say that they are looking and are required to check that the candidate has at least 50 per cent chemistry in their degree, and I think that's becoming more of a challenge now, obviously, with fewer chemistry degree courses on offer. So, I think, to do a chemistry ITE course, you are still required to have that level of chemistry, and I think there's some really—. I think there'll be some very good opportunities to do something, as you mentioned previously, before the ITE course to bring people who have perhaps got an A-level in the subject to a science enhancement course, or a similar summer school, to bring them up.

I'm trying to understand, for all the recommendations, do we need a third of our science graduates to go and be teachers, or is it actually that there's a wider supply of people who can come in, but it's still about how they get the subject knowledge as well as the teaching qualification? Reflecting back—and not just on today and your written evidence—about how and where could that happen, if we only focus on the number of undergraduates, then you are in competition with the rest of the economy, and that's going to be challenging. There are some people where teaching isn't going to be their passion, but there are other people who, actually, if we're—[Inaudible.]—would want to be teachers, because it can make a really big difference in a young person's life.

I think a degree apprenticeship, the teaching degree apprenticeship route, is something that could be considered. It's starting in England. So, I think that's something that would help with that supply in Wales as well.

I think there are opportunities to look at bringing people in from other professions into the pure sciences, so, for example, people who have trained in something like nursing or medicine. A more integrated, perhaps two-year conversion course into teacher training might be possible. For physics, it's engineers. The engineers have all of the skills, most of the knowledge; a little bit of additional subject-specific knowledge alongside ITE would be really, really helpful. I would say that ITE in Wales focuses largely on pedagogical approaches and teaching technique rather than on subject specialism, which is assumed to be known before you arrive. So, that's something for which maybe, if you want to convert, you need to have the subject specialism taught as well.

Okay. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. We'll have some questions from Joel James, please.

Thank you, Chair. I was just wondering if I could just pick up something. In the previous evidence session, we talked about the continual impact that COVID has had on schooling. I note from your written evidence that you've said that it has also had an impact on recruitment, in the sense of weaker professional habits and there's less resilience—some of the examples—and timekeeping is not great. I just want to get a better idea of that and how serious an issue that is, really, because that would impact not just STEM subjects but across the board, I'd imagine.

I think that might have been the RSC—we put that in our response. That was really, actually—. I don't have any hard facts. It was from anecdotal conversations with a number of different ITE providers, who were saying that they'd just noticed that being an issue with the new ITE students coming through. So, yes, I don't have much more to say than that, but it's worrying and a concern.

Yes, absolutely. It must be to an extent that people notice it.

Yes.

Okay. So, the other thing I wanted to have a quick chat about was the role that the Welsh Government has been doing in terms of addressing recruitment and retention. How successful do you think that is? We've talked about bursary schemes and being paid to teach and everything. I just wanted to get your idea on that. I noticed also from your written evidence you've mentioned there about the intensity of the PGCE courses and everything. Is there anything that the Welsh Government should be doing to say, 'Well, hang on, this would solve it'—if that makes sense?

So, in terms of the—. Sorry, the first part of your question was around—?

What the Welsh Government's been doing in terms of addressing that, and how successful that's been.

So, in terms of the interventions we've seen, the Welsh Government's just announced a really big package of funding, not just to us, but to a lot of organisations, to help make a success of the implementation of the curriculum, and some of that is aimed at the retention of teachers. I think that some of the interventions we've already seen have been quite successful in terms of retention, but we need to look at recruitment with a greater degree of urgency than we've previously had, because we are reaching, or we're beyond, really, crisis point with that. So, I think that some real energy there could pay quite strong dividends.

And if we look at things like bursaries, yes, it sounds like a lot of money, but we're not talking about a lot of people. If we target those bursaries at the subjects where we're really, really struggling, then, actually, it isn't a huge amount of money, in global terms. Similarly, doing things like setting up summer schools is not a huge amount of money in global terms, setting up a STEM centre of excellence is not a huge amount of money in global terms, but they could have a long-term impact. But Vaughan was quite right that we've got this situation where, the graduates we have, they compete in a market economy for different jobs, and so we need to be thinking broadly about how we make sure that teaching is one of those jobs that graduates are really excited by.

You mentioned there about some of the interventions that the Welsh Government have made to address retention. Could you just give some idea of what some of them have been?

Yes, absolutely. So, again, I'm going to talk about funding that the Institute of Physics has had over a period of years to provide mentoring and support. We have run a project called SPN, the Stimulating Physics Network Wales, for many years. A couple of things that we do specifically there is work with teachers who are teaching physics but are not physics specialists, to help them to gain the skills and to build their confidence. And that's one-to-one mentoring, that's online coaching sessions, particularly around things like maths. We've been doing some additional learning around there for teachers, just to build the confidence, and that helps retain teachers, and we've got good data that suggests that.

We've also, more recently, used that funding again to work on mentoring those newly qualified teachers who are coming into schools that don't have a teacher in their specialist area, again, to provide them with that subject-specific knowledge and that confidence, and to help them really embed themselves in their career. The new funding is working with the Royal Society of Chemistry as well to expand that out, so that we're covering more of the STEM subjects; we're working with more of the newly qualified teachers. We're helping them to grow and to be part of a professional community, even if that subject-specific knowledge doesn't yet exist in their school. We're going to try and help them become that subject-specific knowledge for the next generation of teachers coming in.

Thank you. I'm done.

Thank you. Thank you so much for joining us this morning; we do really appreciate your time. You'll be sent a transcript for checking in due course. Thank you very much.

We'll now take a short break to allow the next witness to come in.

We now move on to agenda item 4, which is the sixth evidence session for this inquiry. I'm very pleased to welcome Kerry Bevan, representing the Association for Language Learning. So, I'll now hand over to Cefin for the first set of questions. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Diolch yn fawr. I think the reasons are numerous. I'm going to start with the bursary, which is significantly higher in England. And that draws our learners, our students—and I know that directly—to go and study in Bristol rather than continue to train here in Wales. They often might return afterwards, but that £26,000 versus ours is quite significant. There is also a scholarship available via the British Council for those students who have a 2:1 or a Master's in education in—I think it's French, German and Spanish. But they offer up to £28,000. It's a competitive competition, but it is only available for England. And that, again, will attract people to go and study in England rather than Wales. So, money, it's not everything, but it is very important when they don't have very much.

I think there is an image issue around teaching, and I'm sure my other colleagues and the people who have given evidence would say the same. It's societal, it's perceptions around teachers and the value that we place on teaching in society. I think there is a lack of flexibility that might prevent some students wanting to start to teach. The fact that they can't take holidays when they might want to take holidays. They can't perhaps be as flexible as other professions are now perceived to be post COVID.

I think there is the fact that there are fewer students studying languages.  I know we're not going to see the closure, thank goodness, of the language department, the School of Modern Languages, in Cardiff, but we are going to see that being streamlined and we are going to see German disappear from Cardiff University, along with some of the other subjects. And there's the current consultation at Bangor, who also wish to close their German department. So, we just have fewer language students studying and therefore fewer students wanting to go on to be teachers.

And I think, actually, there's one more final reason, and that is around mature students; I know previous witnesses spoke about those. It's difficult. I've spoken very recently to two mothers who wanted to apply to do the postgraduate certificate of education; just very challenging. It's very difficult to accommodate the rigour and the demands of being on campus, for example, at Cardiff Metropolitan for 9 o'clock and drop off and pick up, in terms of initial teacher education with the one-year PGCE programme.

How that impacts, I think, was the second part of your question. I don't think you can say there's a direct correlation between the number of students that we recruit and the quality of teaching and the standards that the children achieve. I think there are many other factors that, again, contribute to the low numbers and the low uptake. Dr Ian Collen produces an annual 'Language Trends Wales' report, as he does for England, and as he has started to do for Scotland. And the trend is evident, that there are fewer and fewer learners studying GCSE, and fewer and fewer at A-level, but, again, those are not linked necessarily to the number of teachers. They are linked to, again, societal perceptions of languages; they're linked to little time on the curriculum, perhaps, in the lower years. And it's true that there are some schools that can only offer one hour a week for French, and then, when they get to year 9, they might think, 'Well, actually, I don't feel very confident in this subject, so I won't continue.' And there are other issues around some students, some learners in schools, see Welsh as a foreign language—and I'm not here to discuss that—but I do think that that then—. They think that, if Welsh is a language, then they don't need to do another language, and that can sometimes affect things.

And also just the number of courses being offered—. Senior leadership teams have to make very difficult choices, financial choices, budget choices, and, if they don't have enough learners who opt in year 9 to choose the subject, then they won't run the subject, and that obviously has a knock-on effect. Fewer GCSEs mean fewer A-levels, mean fewer people going to university. So, it's sort of cyclical, really.

Can I just clarify: are we talking about the current design of the programme?

The design of the ITE course— 

Yes, I think that could be an issue. I think it is quite rigid in its design. It doesn't allow necessarily the flexibility for the people I'm talking about. I think we have a workforce that we can draw upon. We're not just talking about graduates from university; I think we have a vast wealth of knowledge that we could attract into the profession. But it's very difficult. It's very difficult to give up a salary, perhaps, and retrain; it's very difficult to find childcare, and the issues around pick up and the issues around holidays, perhaps, and maybe the issues also around workload in an ITE nine-month programme, which are the same wherever we study. If we study in Belfast, London or here, there are the same issues. But, yes, I think the rigidity of the programme could prevent, perhaps, some students from entering. 

I'd go back—. I think it is around financing. I also have one comment, and that is that, currently, students in Wales can go and study the ITE, the PGCE programme, in Bristol, but still train in our schools in Wales. They can still do placements in Wales. So, I have students who I regularly speak to at Cardiff University who say, 'We're going to England because we can get a larger bursary, but we are going to do our placements in Chepstow, or on the borders', which allows them access to our curriculum, our rich Curriculum for Wales, which is wonderful, and actually they're getting the extra money, which feels a little bit unfair to my students who stay and are committed to the Welsh curriculum here in Cardiff, but don't have that access.

Do you know how many who are attracted to the bursary schemes—

I wish I had the figures, but I—

—actually come back to Wales to teach? Do you know?

No. We don't have those figures. And, again, that's lack of data. I don't have the figures around those students. I know regularly that I interview quite a significant number of students who either decline, or accept and then decline, and when I go back to them—because I often follow up just to find out if it was something I could have done and we could have offered, or I didn't explain properly—and they often have told me that it's—. Well, the question is always around the bursary, and they go to Oxford, or they go to Bristol or they go to London and just choose to train there.

Thank you. Thank you. We now have a question from Vaughan, please.

Thank you. It follows on from Cefin's question. Cefin asked about recruitment and my question is about retention, and about the factors that you think have the greatest impact on retaining foreign language teaching staff in schools in Wales when they are already here.

Yes. So, I think workload and well-being is an issue. If I speak to my students who leave me, my alumni, who then go into teaching, they talk about the significant impact of the workload, and perhaps they weren't always fully aware of what that would look like. As they train with us, the maximum they teach on their own is 10 hours a week, which, if you were actually to consider a teacher's timetable, is significantly reduced, for obvious reasons, because they're training. When they, however, get to school and they're faced with a form, and they have responsibilities—pastoral responsibilities and they have teaching responsibilities—that then becomes quite overwhelming for them. And they're not always fully prepared for that.

And that leads me into my second point around, perhaps, the continuity of mentoring. Currently, when my students leave me, that's it. And yet I have spent a year fostering relationships, I know their strengths, I know their weaknesses. And they leave me and they enter the Aspire system, which is currently being delivered by the consortia. But there is a bit of a disconnect. There isn't really that continuity of mentoring that I think is vital for young teachers. The amount of e-mails and even WhatsApp texts that I have asking for help around perhaps what one might consider basic things like 'How do you teach the imperfect tense in French?', or 'How do you'—perhaps—'plan a scheme of work?', or 'How do you deliver a GCSE oral exam?' They were things that they wouldn't have encountered whilst training, and if they enter a school where they are on their own, which they can do as NQTs—there are lots and lots of schools where they just might have one language teacher—that's quite a lot to deal with, and I find that, when we discuss later on, if they leave the profession, it's because they felt overwhelmed with the volume of knowledge and information that they had to cope with. So, well-being and workload is definitely a factor, coupled, I think, with mentoring.

And then, a final issue, I think, is around—. Again, my colleagues previously spoke about teaching outside your discipline, outside your comfort zone. So, students come to me who have 50 per cent or usually have studied the language at university. That said, many students have got a GCSE in another language. GCSE doesn't really equip you to teach another child GCSE. If you studied only GCSE, which is the equivalent of A2 in the common European framework, that's not really—. And therefore, if you go into a school, and schools need one person to deliver maybe two languages, they will be teaching outside their expertise. That adds to their workload because they're trying to learn another language. They're not the same. The subject knowledge is different. So, that also is an issue.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Carolyn, please.

To what extent are language teachers leaving their career early?

Again, I don't have the data. So, the Association for Language Learning, who I'm representing today, runs out of London and has regional groups across the UK. And we are just about to launch the ALL Cymru on 9 July. That will be, initially, a virtual group, with the hope that we will run pods of teacher groups across Cymru, because we cannot meet together. It's just not practical and it's not possible. So, we don't have—. I don't have, and I checked with ALL London—they just don't have those figures.

Thank you. Does the current teaching workforce, particularly in foreign languages, reflect the diversity of Wales, including gender, race and ethnicity and disability? 

No, to be frank. I had a quick look at just the EWC around just female teachers of languages. We are predominantly female. So, there is a lack of male representation, which has an impact, a knock on, on boy learners of languages, who might see it as a female subject. If we talk about stereotypes, that's how it's perceived, often. And there is a lack of diversity. But, again, that is reflective of perhaps not very many learners carrying on for GCSE and therefore not continuing into A-level and onto university. So, absolutely.

And then we have a lack also of international students. We do, at Cardiff Metropolitan, have a link with Canada. So, we do have Canadian students come and enrich our programme and enrich the schools they teach in. But the lack of international students from French-speaking countries or German-speaking or Spanish-speaking countries—. And that's around visas, which is another issue for the Department of Education. We don't have any international students applying, which is very different to when I trained and very different to when I started teaching, 28 years ago—a substantial number of European and beyond teachers, just to diversify and enrich the curriculum. 

That's strange. And that's probably because of the visas.

Absolutely. So, I checked with my colleague in UCL in London this morning, where they do have international students, and although the Department of Education—. International students are allowed their bursary in England, so they can receive the £26,000. That is only for the 10 months whilst they're there, and then they have to apply for a visa, and it's very difficult to get that visa to stay in order to do their early careers training. And they can't bring family members. So, it's also very, very challenging. So, they provide a scholarship, but they don't provide the opportunity to stay afterwards, which is what they'd like to do. 

Okay. Thank you.

That's okay.

Thank you. We now have some questions from Natasha, please.

Thank you very much. Good morning. So, to what extent do you feel that the issues relating to teacher recruitment and retention result in a lowering of the quality of the teaching workforce, and particularly in relation to foreign-language teaching? Would you mind sharing with us?

I don't think that you can say that there's a correlation. I don't think that I have students who have lower standards of language education than I might have done training and teaching a long time ago. I think that it is just that we have fewer applicants. So, by nature, I have less choice. I have only had maybe nine applicants for Cardiff Metropolitan for the next academic year for international languages, and I only have six who have accepted, which is well below the EWC's recommendations, well below, I think, what will be required, moving forward. 

So, based on the application numbers you just shared with the committee—and I think that all of us are slightly stunned by the figures you just gave us—what impact is that ultimately, do you feel, going to have on learners' potential and behaviours, going forward?

Again, that's hard to say, because I don't think that the current workforce shows any evidence that language teachers are not specialists in their subjects. I don't think that we're at the physics level, where we're teaching completely outside our subject. I think that, if we move forward and teachers are going to—. If there are fewer of them and they might have to accept jobs where, perhaps, there's French and Spanish and they have a very limited level of the other language, that will absolutely have an impact on learners. Learners are so perceptive from a very young age, and they know whether you have subject knowledge. They're incredible, actually. They can see it, they can hear it, they can feel it. And that subject knowledge, which first of all you'd need to have in order to be able to deliver the curriculum, but also the passion. Languages are not about the words. It really isn't. It's about all of it, that culminate—. It's about understanding the music, the art and the history, and the literature and the food, and that that you deliver to your learners you can't just pick up by doing, maybe, a subject enhancement course. That takes time, that you've probably lived and worked in those countries. So, I think, as we move on, if they are teaching outside and delivering lessons in a language that they're not comfortable in or don't have a level—. And my students are asked to do that, too. They have, sometimes, very limited second language knowledge, and they struggle. 

So, speaking of that, speaking of the struggle with a second language, then, okay, with regard to the Welsh Government's reforms, and there are many of them—

Yes.

—what impact are they having specifically on foreign languages, then?

I think that, in terms of what my students perceive and what they see as they train, there's a need for more time for teachers, the current workforce, to really embed. And I think that it is a wonderful, rich, diverse curriculum that offers teachers agency and it offers the opportunity to remove the silos of languages. Colleagues around the UK are in awe of Welsh Government's reforms around the curriculum in languages, and even the naming of international languages, they find that revolutionary, they think that it breaks down barriers, that don't exist elsewhere. That said, I think the teachers need more time to really live the new curriculum and those statements of what matters, which, again, are wonderful. And now, to add to that, they've got a new GCSE, which they have to grapple with, for teaching in September, which, again, is wonderful—I'm not here to pick holes in any of that. I think it's just about a lack of time that they need, and, therefore, my students don't feel that they are getting real quality guidance in Curriculum for Wales, and how we design the curriculum, how it could be, because teachers just haven't had the time to have those powerful conversations.328

The Welsh Government have got a great initiative in the new professional learning suite that's coming out. They have invested in some—. Literature Fires the Imagination is going to be run by a colleague of mine from Oxford, which will help and support language teachers in embedding literature in younger years, which they're very fearful of, because they feel uncomfortable—it's the unknown, it's the scariness, so we want to unpick that and support teachers. So, there are some good initiatives, but it's the time.

Okay. So, how do you propose, then, that we do get the time, because we've had so many people coming in and giving us evidence today—? I appreciate there are workloads—I do; I think we all can sympathise with workloads. We can all sympathise. You haven't mentioned pay, but we've had a lot of people drumming that into us this morning. So, I want to park that, but with regard to time and workload efficiency—because you've just mentioned your friend and the Welsh Government package, which they're going to be using—most teachers will say, 'Well, we don't have enough time in the day. We've got children with ALN, we've got this, we've got this, we've got this'. How are they even going to have the time to be able to do some of these projects and initiatives that are coming forward, then, if they don't have time as it is?

That's an excellent question. Well, I think, as teachers, we are overworked, but I think we find the time. I think we know that—. This professional learning will take place after hours. We will try and keep it as compact as we possibly can—so, in our design. So, before we even launch the professional learning, we're going to go to the teachers, we're going to create focus groups, to include them in the planning of how we might deliver these. If we can provide some asynchronous help and support that teachers can access perhaps on their own, in their own time, when they've got—. Perhaps a podcast—something that they can listen to, when they might not need to sit at that particular time when they've got other constraints. So, I think, again, it's about creating maybe a hybrid approach to professional learning and a suite of resources and a package that we can help them with.

Okay. Great. Thank you so much, Chair.

Just really quickly, just going back to one of Natasha's first questions, you speak so passionately about languages, I feel like I want to leave this room and go and learn to speak another language. [Laughter.] But that's infectious, and we all know how infectious that can be when you're in the classroom with little ones, because they're like sponges and they absorb everything. And children in Wales learn to speak Welsh from a very, very young age. So, at what age would you like to see another language being introduced in our schools—around what age, because, like I said, we all know that primary school aged children absorb everything around them? How you are now when you speak about languages, it's so infectious. I can imagine my youngest, in primary school, if she'd met you, she'd want to speak every language under the sun. 

So, the Curriculum for Wales does stipulate that they are exposed to it as part of the progression steps from progression step 1. So, international languages are mandatory. The actual teaching of it doesn't kick in maybe until years five and six. And that's interesting because that is an issue, and it was raised in Dr Collen's report in 2024 around primary practitioners and their confidence in delivering international languages. Already, primary teachers have to be masters of everything. They are absolutely phenomenal in their ability to be able to deliver literacy, numeracy, history, PE. And then you ask them, 'Can you just teach French?' And I think, as I said before, it's not just about the words. I think anyone can just—. Well, maybe we can't; not everybody can just deliver some words. I think we'd need greater upskilling of our primary students. I have very little time with my primary students because of the number of areas of learning and experience that they need to be exposed to during their training year. I'm lucky if they do have some French or German or Spanish or Italian. Actually, I think it could be any language, and that's what I love about the Curriculum for Wales, particularly in primary school. If you have a teacher that has Arabic, brilliant—let's learn Arabic. Because it's not always about—I know we could talk about it—continuity and progression and we need to learn that language in year 5 or year 4; I think it's about the skills, I think it's about creating global citizens, I think it's about empathy and understanding others. And if we can do that through a language—which we will do; that's what the purpose of it is; it's to be able to communicate and understand other people and their cultures and their history—I think if we could do that more effectively by more time in PGCE primary training, I think that would be really useful. But, ideally, I'd like them to do it from very little, and many schools do—many schools do.

But, definitely, the report that came back talked about the fear of primary practitioners in delivering to progression step 2 and 3 languages, because they just felt ill-equipped. That said, you've got organisations like e-sgol, who are doing fantastic work, working with our global representatives, so the Goethe-Institut and the Institut Français and the conserjeía, and they are providing online lessons, again, to remove the inequity, because it shouldn't just be that my school in Eglwys Newydd has got a teacher who speaks Spanish and, therefore, those children get access. Everybody in Wales should have the same access, and it shouldn't be regional. So, e-sgol are doing great work, I think, about trying to break down those barriers and therefore allowing primary pupils access via hybrid approach, which is wonderful.

That's really good. Thank you. Joel James, please. 

Thank you, Chair. I just wanted to pick up a few pieces, if I can, off topic.

Yes, fine. 

You mentioned there how a lack of students taking foreign languages impacts lack of students learning to teach it. And if I remember back to when I was in school, I learned Welsh, German, French. But the only thing that really sticks in is French, because we went on trips to France and everything, where we were told to practise it and everything. And I know there were also German exchange trips and everything. Is that being impacted, then?

Yes.

So, there are fewer opportunities for that. 

Yes. I mean, again, this is anecdotal, but I absolutely believe the reason I am the way I am is because, when I was in year 8, I went on an exchange to Lyon, and I was the only person who cried on the bus home because I wanted to stay in France, and that was life changing for me. I suddenly realised I could communicate and I could explore a whole new life through French, and then I did a German exchange later. I think, again, issues around Disclosure and Barring Service and safeguarding—. They are great, they are wonderful, but what they've done is they've prevented exchanges taking place. But you can do it—you absolutely can do it. You can get police conduct certificates from Germany—you can get all of that. It just is more workload for teachers to try and organise.

I think, post COVID, we're starting to see more trips return. There was definitely a lull in trips to France and Germany. I think, for any language teacher, that's the bit they live for—it's the bit of taking the children. I mean, I've taken so many trips and so many exchanges, and, to watch children and learners, it might not be that they make great linguistic steps—not always—but it's, again, about the little things. It's about noticing the little things—you go to a German baker's, and you just see all these amazingly different types of bread that we might not necessarily have. So, yes, I absolutely think that. 

And the thing is, it's about broadening horizons as well, because I know quite a few people for whom their only ever foreign travel has been on school trips.

The other question I have, then, is—. I remember, a couple of years back, I was speaking with a teacher, and she was a bit frustrated, as she said, 'It seems to be about English and Welsh, but I have students in my year group that speak languages from all over the world.' What's being done there in that sense? You mentioned there, 'Well, if you've got a teacher who can speak Arabic, teach Arabic.'

Yes.

But what's being done in terms of identifying those skill sets that students have, whether it's Polish or Somalian? 

Do you mean learners, or do you mean students that—?

Students that are in school that have it as, say, their main language—but it's as if they've been brought up with it, rather than they've learned it, if that makes sense—to identify it and say, 'Well, why don't you help teach others?' 

So, I think that data is tracked by schools. They keep data on any learner that has—I don't like the word 'home' or 'heritage' language; again, it has that hierarchy of languages—another language and might be bilingual or trilingual. I think the multilingualism focus in the Curriculum for Wales has actually led the way in that. I think that that is being celebrated by schools. I can take a number of schools around Cardiff and beyond who celebrate that multilingual aspect, and, within the Curriculum for Wales, drawing on learners' knowledge of other languages is vital, making those connections. When you ask a learner, 'How do you say that in Polish?', or, 'How do you say that in—?', they'll start to say, 'Oh, it's similar', 'It's not similar', 'Look at the way we do it in Welsh', 'Look at the way we do it in Arabic', 'Look at the way we do it in Russian'. The Curriculum for Wales allows that and encourages that. The first statement is 'Languages connect us'. So, multilingualism is encouraged and is celebrated within. That's not an issue.

Perfect. Chair, if we've got time, the other question, then, is we've talked about recruitment and retention, and I was just wondering if you could pinpoint any specific Welsh Government policies, either past or present, that are having either a positive or negative impact on retention and recruitment.

Generally, the introduction of any bursary has been important in ensuring that we do have students applying to be international language teachers here in Wales. I think that the establishment of Global Futures, which is the overarching policy directive for languages, is really important. It sets out how we as a country are going to move language teaching forward, so I think that's been really, really positive. My colleagues at Cardiff University are doing great work around modern languages mentoring for learners, and, in the vast amount of data that they've gathered, they say that learners actually are really, really keen to learn languages. And they are still fairly—. I mean, they're not in infancy, but it's still early days. So, maybe we will see impacts of that MFL mentoring scheme, which, again, is funded by the Welsh Government, that will have an impact on uptake, that will eventually be cyclical, and we'll end up with more students studying languages at university.

Okay. I think that's it from me, Chair.

Thank you. Thank you so much for your time this morning. We do really appreciate you attending. You'll be sent a transcript for checking in due course. Thank you.

Diolch yn fawr.

I will now move on to item 5, which is papers to note. We have five papers to note today, full details of which are set out on the agenda and in the paper pack. Are Members content to note papers together? Yes.

Moving on to item 6, I propose, in accordance with standing order 17.42(ix), that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of today's meeting. Are Members content? We now move on to private.