Wales’s new first minister, Vaughan Gething, faces a major challenge in improving the country’s schools, after the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that pupils in Wales were performing only as well as disadvantaged children in England.
The IFS study follows Wales’s weak performance in the OECD’s most recent Programme for international student assessment (Pisa) standings, in which results in Wales declined by more than in other UK nations and were well below the average across OECD countries.
Wales’s lower attainment cannot be explained by higher levels of poverty, according to the IFS, as pupils in areas of England with higher or similar levels of deprivation such as Liverpool or Gateshead achieved “significantly higher” GCSE results than their counterparts in Wales.
The IFS said the Pisa results showed the average pupil in Wales performed at the same level as the most disadvantaged children in England, despite education spending per pupil being similar.
Luke Sibieta, the author of the IFS study, said: “Faced with this gloomy picture, policymakers should have the courage to make reforms based on solid evidence, such as increasing the emphasis on specific knowledge in the curriculum and making better use of data to shine a spotlight on inequalities throughout the system. Without reform, the picture may worsen.”
The IFS urged the Welsh government to revise its recent curriculum changes, which it said emphasised general skills over knowledge, and to pause its planned GCSE changes that would increase the amount of teacher assessment in place of exams, as well as removing biology, physics and chemistry as individual subject options.
But a spokesperson for the Welsh government said its GSCE reforms would go ahead and defended its performance, saying that before the Covid pandemic Wales had been the only UK country with improving Pisa results in literacy, numeracy and science.
“We recognise that the pandemic has had a detrimental impact on this improvement and have set out clear plans on how we will address this,” the spokesperson said.
“The minister for education and welsh language [Jeremy Miles] has been very clear that there is more to do, and recently hosted an education leaders’ summit to reflect on the challenges facing education in Wales. He has also published the annual report on personalised assessments, which includes data on attainment in reading and numeracy in years 2 to 9.
“The role of knowledge is at the forefront of our new curriculum and it is wrong to claim otherwise. Having worked with teachers and experts to create a curriculum fit for the modern world, we are pleased to see evaluations showing schools confidently embracing the opportunity to raise the aspirations of all learners.”
The IFS’s report comes as Conservatives in Westminster have been targeting Wales’s performance under a Labour government in the run-up to the UK general election.
Laura Anne Jones, the shadow education minister in the Senedd Cymru, said: “The state of education in Wales is incredibly concerning and this report highlights how badly Labour have got it wrong with their reforms.”
Laura Doel, the national secretary at the National Association of Head Teachers Cymru, cautioned against exaggerating the Pisa results, saying: “Schools in Wales are working hard to deliver for their pupils, but this dedication hasn’t been matched by the investment needed, especially on the back of the pandemic and cost of living crisis.
“While we support the renewed focus from the Welsh government on numeracy and literacy, schools do not have the time or funding to deliver this in the way they would like to.”
