What steps is the Welsh Government taking to ensure that schools and local authorities have the necessary specialist capacity, such as educational psychologists and neurodevelopmental experts, to implement the additional learning needs system effectively?
The forthcoming Strategic Education Workforce Plan for Schools will set out the actions we will be taking with local authorities to ensure a sufficient and skilled specialist workforce to support our learners. This will include developing workforce planning models for the specialist education workforce employed by local authorities.
The Welsh Government continues to fund the training of educational psychologists in Wales to ensure a steady pipeline to aid workforce planning.
It is a core requirement for all programmes of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) to ensure that all student teachers are aware of and prepared to teach and support learners with ALN. The Additional Learning Needs Code and Act provide the statutory system in Wales for meeting the additional learning needs of children and young people. The reform of the ALN system is to ensure that children and young people’s additional learning needs are identified early and addressed quickly to enable them to achieve their full potential.
Student teachers should understand the principles of person-centred practice, the Additional Learning Needs Code and Act, its purpose, ethos, and the responsibility of teaching practitioners and schools including the role of the Additional Learning Needs Coordinator (ALNCo).
We are beginning work on the next iteration of the Criteria for Accreditation of ITE programmes, and we will further strengthen the requirements around ALN, neurodiversity, child development and inclusivity as part of this process.
We also offer a PGCE QTS with a specific ALN specialism in neurodiversity and this is currently being delivered by Bangor ITE Partnership. We are undertaking an evaluation of this route, and the findings will inform the feasibility of rolling this out across other partnerships.
We are working with Dysgu to ensure there is a high quality and evidence based national professional learning offer. Dysgu is developing, delivering and quality assuring a national professional learning ALN programme for local authority staff, leaders, ALNCo’s, specialist staff and all teaching staff to enable the delivery of the ALN system and inclusive education.