Session One!

The Welsh Scene. 

  

Due to Andy’s unforeseen circumstances the university has provided us with Guest Lecturers. Our first session with our Guest Lecturer was rather interesting and gave a general overview of the educational background of Wales. Useful information that is extremely beneficial for future research and assignments were evident throughout the lecture. Such as, Leighton Andrews is our current Welsh Minister of Education and his predecessor being Jane Davidson. I found it rather concerning and somewhat unfortunate to learn that only 20% of Primary Schools and 15% of Secondary Schools use Welsh as their first language. I also discovered that there was a deficiency of Welsh Headteachers that have the NPQH qualification, which was rather surprising as I believed that the Welsh Language was becoming much more of a demand in today’s times.

The lecturer then followed by telling us about the PISA 2006 Scheme. I learnt that the PISA is a form of tests that is carried over several countries to compare the success rate of Education. The National Assembly of Wales said the tests have shown that Wales have a high success rate but changes are needed as some results were uneven. We were then informed, like many others; Wales do not have a League Table of schools. The Welsh Assembly’s aims are for the Welsh Curriculum to undergo improvements to deal with issues in a bid to improve learning for children. The lecturer mentioned the PLC, which is a community which enables teachers to come together and work on a particular challenge they face whilst teaching, this inevitably would be a positive effect on the curriculum.