Posted on: Wednesday 5 July 2023
During June, Estyn inspectors visited Torfaen council to conduct a ‘pilot’ monitoring visit as a follow up to the core inspection which took place in March 2022.
The Estyn team were on site for two days to consider progress against recommendation 4, which was to ‘improve strategic leadership of learning and additional learning needs (ALN)’.
Cllr Richard Clark, Executive Member for Children, Families and Education said: “We’ve made several major organisational and personnel changes including integrating Education and Children’s Social Care Services into a new Children and Families directorate under a new strategic director. We have also restructured the leadership team within education services, appointing a new Director of Education; two new heads of service; and redefined roles and responsibilities across the directorate. It is reassuring that inspectors recognised that relationships between the local authority, our schools and partners have strengthened.”
Strategic Director for Children and Families, Jason O’Brien, said: “The frequent and robust analysis of a range of whole school data is giving us an improved picture of our schools. This informs our decisions on how and where we provide support and intervention and it’s starting to realise tangible benefits. It’s pleasing that inspectors noted a positive shift in culture with increasing openness and transparency between the council and our schools and how multiple teams within the council now work more collaboratively to support our schools.”
Torfaen’s Executive Officer, Stephen Vickers, said: “We’ve made several recent important changes to improve leadership and performance. In some areas it is still too early to confidently measure the impact of these recent changes, which is why we will not let up with our constant challenge to drive improvement. However, this latest feedback recognises the improvements made and our priority will always be to improve the lives of our pupils sat in classrooms today and to help them thrive into adulthood.”
Further monitoring visits will take place in the spring and summer terms of 2024.
View the Estyn Monitoring letter here.