Wales Makes a New Plan to Improve Reading and Math in Schools

The Welsh government has published a new plan to raise reading and math skills in schools across Wales. The plan was released just one week after international test results showed that Welsh teenagers are falling behind students in other parts of the UK. Officials say the plan will set clear goals for what students should be able to do in reading and math. It also aims to get more students attending school regularly.

Education Minister Anna Brychan said the Plaid Cymru government had taken over an education system that lacks clarity and direction. She was honest about the challenges Wales faces in education. She said teachers and schools are not to blame for the poor results. Instead, she said too many years of changing reforms had caused literacy and numeracy to get lost in the noise.

The new plan was partly a response to results from the PISA tests, which stands for Programme for International Student Assessment. These are international tests given to teenagers in maths, reading, and science. The results showed that Welsh students were performing significantly below students in other comparable countries. Minister Brychan said Wales cannot and will not carry on as it has been.

The plan sets a starting point — called a baseline — to measure each child's reading and math skills when they first begin school. It also sets a target for the level that 11-year-olds should reach by Year Six, the final year of primary school. Once baseline information is collected, the government will create specific targets for literacy and numeracy. This will give teachers and families a clearer picture of how students are progressing.

School attendance is also a big part of the new plan. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, about 94% of students attended school regularly, but that number dropped to just 90.7% last year. The plan calls for attendance to rise by 0.5% each year. It also aims to cut persistent absence — missing more than 10% of school — by 2% per year.

Some politicians pushed back on the new plan. Welsh Conservative leaders said the government should learn from what England is doing. Reform UK's Helen Jenner, a former teacher in Wales herself, said teachers need action — not more plans and reviews. She said a generation of young people had been let down and deserved an apology.

Minister Brychan said the new targets would not be used to rank schools against each other in league tables. Instead, the goal is to give parents better information about how their own child is doing in school. She said it would be easier for parents and teachers to have conversations with clearer expectations in place. One headteacher, Trystan Edwards of Ysgol Garth Olwg, welcomed the plan, saying it would bring clarity and consistency to how literacy and numeracy are taught across Wales.