“This has been the best job I have ever had,” said Kirsty Williams in her farewell letter to school staff.
“All jobs are important, but being Minister for Education in Wales, supporting development of our new curriculum and the reforms that will support it, has been the job of a lifetime.”
There is a tendency amongst politicians, upon leaving a cabinet office, to heap faint praise on those responsible for putting their plans into action; to thank them with empty platitudes and hollow words about their unwavering support and commitment to the cause.
I can say with confidence that this was no such moment.
Ever since assuming the education portfolio in May 2016, Ms Williams has spoken to the teaching profession with a sincerity matched only by her dedication to do the very best by our children and young people.
A passionate advocate for teachers and leaders across the country, she brought renewed optimism to an education system that was down on its haunches.
And now, as she steps away from frontline politics after 20 years in our Welsh Parliament, she can reflect on a job well done.
But as with any ministerial appointment, it hasn’t been all plain sailing and there have been highs and lows; moments good and bad.
Extremely effective operator
The first observation I would make when reflecting upon Ms Williams’ tenure as education minister is that it can’t have been easy being a Liberal Democrat in a Welsh Labour government!
Not that you’d have really noticed, as she scored a number of notable concessions – particularly in her securing of extra resources for things like the pupil development grant (PDG) – and didn’t appear to be hampered at any stage by bipartisan arrangements.
It’s worth remembering that prior to her appointment, Ms Williams had never held a cabinet position.
An experienced campaigner and one of the few remaining Senedd Cymru ‘originals’, Ms Williams had spent her entire political career outside government, biting at the heels of rival party leaders.
To be sat around the cabinet table at the behest of Carwyn Jones, and latterly, Mark Drakeford, won’t have been in the preferred playbook.
But Ms Williams came with a reputation for being an extremely effective operator and, of all those in opposition parties in Wales, someone who was more than capable of stepping into high office.
The past five years have done nothing to contradict that, and her political and professional stock has seemingly only risen further.
Like so many Welsh education ministers, her term has coincided with yet another period of sustained change for the nation’s education system.
All roads lead to September 2022
The publication of Graham Donaldson’s ‘Successful Futures’ report in 2015 heralded the beginning of a long and laborious curriculum reform journey that remains very much ongoing to this day.
And while the report itself preceded her appointment, it fell to Ms Williams to make Donaldson’s vision a reality and the eagerly-awaited Curriculum for Wales has been the cornerstone of her ‘National Mission’ for education.
There have been other innovations, like the National Academy for Educational Leadership and a new financial support package for university students, but all roads lead to September 2022 when the new curriculum will go ‘live’ in Welsh classrooms for the first time.
Whether or not this goes ahead as planned, however, remains to be seen and I wouldn’t be at all surprised (or worried) if the roll-out is delayed a year to compensate for time lost during COVID.
A great many schools are behind the curve through no fault of their own, and I would anticipate a review of established timetables some time in the near future.
Now one might expect a minister charged with overseeing such a widespread reform agenda to play down its significance – for if continuous change is really necessary, then surely it’s an indictment on that which went before?
Indeed, that Wales needed what Ms Williams described as the ‘biggest set of education reforms anywhere in the UK for over half a century’ is, I would argue, no commendation for education policy since devolution.
Then again, Ms Williams – or her party – wasn’t in charge of the education portfolio for the first 17 years of devolution.
Depending on their political persuasion, her successor might be best advised to resist making such grandiose claims.
GCSE and A-level grading fiasco
There are some things, however, that do need to happen – and sooner, rather than later.
A detailed education recovery plan, with key deliverables and milestones charting our strategic response to COVID, must be drawn in the first few months of the new minister’s appointment.
Announcements to date have been like sticking plasters on an open wound – support for schools must be prioritised and, whilst competition for public funding will be unquestionably fierce, we must continue to invest heavily in future generations or prepare to face the consequences.
There is little doubt that Ms Williams will be remembered, at least in part, for her handling of Wales’ education system during the COVID crisis.
Broadly speaking, I think she’s done remarkably well during an intense and fast-moving situation the like of which we’ve never before seen.
We all have views on what Ms Williams and the wider Welsh Government might have done differently, but then we’re not in the unenviable position of having to make decisions that would have been unfathomable just a short while ago.
The minister has cited last year’s grading fiasco as the low point of her time in post; the stress and strain on Welsh teenagers, resulting from the reliance on algorithms to award GCSE and A-level grades, is an obvious regret.
Her contrition won’t mean a great deal to those who had to endure an unnecessarily traumatic results day, but Ms Williams should be commended at least for admitting fault and putting right what went so badly wrong last summer.
One hopes that similar controversies can be avoided this year, though the unravelling of Wales’ planned awarding process for 2021 suggests further issues lay in wait.
Never going to please everybody
It is unfortunate that this, and some of the Welsh Government’s heavy-handed distribution of COVID guidance – typically at very short notice to schools, in particular – has appeared to have dented some of the minister’s cachet among the teaching profession.
Parents, too, have turned on the minister for her cautious reopening of schools to face-to-face teaching after lengthy and disruptive closures.
Truth is, Ms Williams had a near-impossible task and she was never going to please everybody; Wales’ response to the virus has divided opinion ever since it arrived on our shores.
Whatever she did or didn’t do was going to stoke provocation, and whilst we are all entitled to our opinion, we should at least be sympathetic to the monumental challenge of leading an education system through the biggest health crisis in a century – while at the same time tending to your own children’s needs.
There are some things a minister in Ms Williams’ position can control, and others they very much can’t – and I would prefer to judge her handling of the crisis in the round.
For what it’s worth, I’m confident that she got the vast majority of decisions right and, regardless of some inevitable disagreement along the way, am grateful for her immense personal contribution to our battle against COVID in Wales.
It can’t have been easy balancing the needs of your country, with those of your family – not to mention your own mental health and wellbeing – and she has my full respect and admiration for soldiering on through these most trying of times.
Gave teachers a voice
Ultimately, Ms Williams will be remembered as a minister who sought to build bridges, not break them – and her legacy is not so much Curriculum for Wales and all it encompasses, as her engagement with the profession.
She gave those whose job it is to put policy into practice; those who will lead our education system forward through COVID and beyond – our change agents – a voice.
Ms Williams visited a lot of schools during her five-year stint as education minister, which isn’t actually as common as you might think.
But it allowed her unique access to the ‘shop floor’ and regular opportunity to tap into the lived experience of school staff and their pupils.
This first-hand intelligence informed a number of her key policies pronouncements, as well as helping to strengthen her bond with teachers and leaders across the country.
And it wasn’t just the established practitioners Ms Williams made time for – her annual visits to each of Wales’ initial teacher education (ITE) partnerships won her an army of new followers and I’m surprised no-one sought to do similar, sooner.
The student-teachers I came across really valued her enthusiasm and zest for education; Ms Williams certainly saw the value in investing in the next generation of the education workforce and hers will be a tough act to follow.
So too is her record in PISA, having been the first – and only – Welsh education minister to return what can be described as ‘positive’ results in the Programme for International Student Assessment.
Professional learning
After a decade of decline across all key performance indicators, incremental improvement in reading, maths and science was a welcome shot in the arm for an education system that has been through the mill.
The reality, of course, is that PISA 2018 was likely reflective only of a bygone system dating back several ministers and, most probably, telling interventions like the Literacy and Numeracy Framework (LNF) introduced under Leighton Andrews.
That is not to say Ms Williams had no effect whatsoever, and there is every chance her renewed focus on more able and talented (MAT) pupils and the appointment of a PISA ‘tsar’ to rally round participating schools paid dividends.
The second-longest serving Welsh education minister after Jane Davidson, Ms Williams became the first to live through two rounds of PISA (no minister has stuck around long enough to suffer the same ignominy twice) and our rise up the global rankings should ensure some semblance of policy continuity going into the next tranche, due to take place next year.
Don’t forget that the new-look, Donaldson-inspired system we are in the process of creating will not play out in PISA results for some years to come.
That said, professional learning, as I have written recently, requires more immediate attention and school staff can’t be expected to design, develop and implement their own curricula without appropriate training and space for critical reflection.
A promised ‘national network’ to facilitate curriculum roll-out needs pinning down and a framework for co-construction, and sharing, beyond early developmental activity must be made clear.
Similarly, gaps in existing documentation – and how to avoid a postcode lottery in pupils’ knowledge and understanding of key curriculum areas – should be first acknowledged, and then addressed.
There are a number of questions that remain unanswered in relation to our new curriculum, though Ms Williams should be praised for continuing on the course set by her predecessor (Huw Lewis launched curriculum reform and the promise of enhanced professional learning for teachers prior to his departure from the Senedd).
In following through a Labour politician’s plans, she put the system’s needs before her own. Whoever follows must do the same and resist the temptation to deviate significantly from the task in hand.
We have come too far and the job is not yet done – not by a long stretch.
Monumental task awaits
Every minister brings with them their own lens and view of the world, so some degree of change is inevitable.
But the core agenda must remain intact and the fundamentals, of our new Curriculum for Wales and professional support for teachers, should continue to drive education policy reform in the short-term, at least.
It would be nice to arrive at a point by which validation from the OECD and other touring international advisers is an exception rather than the rule, and as we work towards a bright new future for education in Wales, we should do so in the knowledge that many of the answers to our biggest problems come from within.
Let’s be clear, Ms Williams’ successor has a monumental task in hand… COVID fallout, Curriculum for Wales, professional learning and much, much more – all against the backdrop of shrinking budgets and increased pressure on the public purse.
In fact, I’d go so far as saying that the next ministerial appointment is the most important since devolution by quite some distance.
There are big challenges ahead, that much is certain. But for now, I would hope that our departing minister looks back with satisfaction and pride that she did her best by the children and young people of Wales.
And a great many will be forever grateful.
Diolch Kirsty – a phob lwc.
Education matters 