Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Children, Young People and Education Committee, a meeting that is being held virtually. In accordance with Standing Order 34.19, I've determined that the public are excluded from the meeting in order to protect public health. Notice of this decision was included with the agenda for the meeting published on Monday. As usual, the meeting is being broadcast live on Senedd.tv and all participants are joining via video-conference. A Record of Proceedings will be published as usual. Aside from that procedural adaptation relating to virtual proceedings, all other Standing Order requirements remain in place. As usual, the meeting is bilingual and simultaneous translation is available. If we become aware that there's an issue with the translation, I'll ask you to pause for a moment while we reset the system. I've received apologies for absence from Hefin David and Laura Jones, and there are no substitutions. Can I ask Members if there are any declarations of interest? No. Okay. Thank you. Can I remind everybody that if I drop out for some reason, Dawn Bowden will chair while I try to rejoin?

We'll move on now, then, to item 2, which is our scrutiny of Qualifications Wales's annual report 2019-20. I'm pleased to welcome David Jones, chair of Qualifications Wales, and Philip Blaker, chief executive of Qualifications Wales. Thank you both for joining us this morning. We're looking forward to hearing what you've got to say. We're going to go straight to questions from Siân Gwenllian.

Philip, would you like to answer this question?

Yes, certainly. In March there were three principal options that were considered. The first was carrying on with exams. Through February, the regulators had come together, anticipating the pandemic growing, with awarding bodies to look at the possible contingencies if there was a decision to carry on with exams. So, those were looking at things like the number of qualifications where there were two assessments that were within a two-week period, because if people were isolating or were ill, the expectation at that point was that if there were two assessments that were within the same week, or within two weeks of each other, then they wouldn't be able to take those. It was looking at how exams could be spread. So, the first area that was being explored—and an awful lot of work was undertaken in February—was with carrying on with exams.

As March progressed—and if we cast our minds back, in March, we were looking at the horrible scenes that we could see in Italy, where people were on trolleys in corridors because there were insufficient critical care beds to accommodate the people there—I think we increasingly saw that the 'carrying on' option was very unlikely to be able to stand the test of time. So, given the fact that exams couldn't go ahead, or we felt exams couldn't go ahead, the two other options were not to award qualifications at all, which would of course mean that there would be severe problems for learners in progression to their next steps in learning or employment, or to look at what evidence might be available upon which a grade could be awarded. And in terms of looking at the evidence, the only evidence available would be the evidence that schools hold themselves. That's why the regulators came together with the awarding bodies to consider the evidence that might be available and decided that looking at centre assessment grades and rank orders would be the best available evidence upon which to consider awarding grades.

We've got to remember that centre assessment grades were described as the grade that the learner was most likely to get had they sat the exams, but we also recognised that schools and colleges don't normally get involved in this, so they wouldn't normally be involved in the awarding of grades. That means that they'll all have a slightly different view about what the national standard is. So, it was clear that there needed to be a standardisation process that was put in place as well, so that there could be a greater level of consistency in the way that grades were awarded. So, really, there were three options that were available back in March. One was carrying on with exams—but we recognised with the Minister that that was unlikely to be a sustainable option—not to award qualifications at all, or to use the evidence that was available. David, I don't know if you wanted to come in after that.

Briefly, please.

Philip, over to you on that question.

Thank you. Yes, so, vocational qualifications are clearly much more diverse in their nature, and much more diverse in the way that they're assessed. So, what we've got to do is we've got to look at those qualifications that are assessed in similar ways to general qualifications, and look at how those might be assessed, and then look at some of the practice qualifications. So, I think one of the particular areas of concern has been over qualifications that lead to a licensed practice, where it's been difficult for those learners to be assessed this year because of assessors being unable to go into the workplace, particularly for health and social care and childcare qualifications.

Clearly, we would like to be in a position where those qualifications are being completed as quickly as possible, and thinking about those learners for 2021 as well. But what we have to be mindful of is that it's not just the requirements of the qualifications and the awarding body, but it's also the requirements of the sector bodies. So, we've been working closely with Social Care Wales on the health and social care and childcare qualifications, because they do have an element of practice in them. There are some pure practice qualifications, there are some that are a blend of theory and practice, but they do lead to a licence to practice. They do lead to registration with Social Care Wales. So, Social Care Wales need to be assured that those learners, when they complete their courses, are safe in practice. So, there's been a lot of work between the awarding body, us and Social Care Wales, and talking to stakeholders like ColegauCymru and, in particular, their quality and curriculum group, to try and find a way through some of those problems. There have been some very useful conversations over the last few weeks that we think might have opened up a way of moving forward with those.

But I think with vocational qualifications, particularly those licence to practice qualifications, it's really important that the qualification isn't undermined as a consequence of the current circumstances, because if we think about health and social care and childcare qualifications, we wouldn't want the most vulnerable in society to be cared for by people who are underqualified, or who haven't had the opportunity to have the practice to be able to demonstrate their competence. So, it's really important that those qualifications aren't undermined as a consequence of trying to find the best and fairest solution for this year's learners. 

Okay, thank you. Finished, Siân?

Thank you. The next questions then are from Dawn Bowden.

Thank you, Chair. I just wondered, in light of the Minister's approach to this, what does Quals Wales and the board now consider to be its role and purpose in relation to the 2021 general education assessment? How do you think you're going to carry that out?

I'll respond to this initially. Clearly, we will have to consider the advice that comes from the Minister, and the Minister will receive advice from the design and development group that's been established. I think what is clear is that the broad approach that's being followed for 2021 closely aligns with the advice that we gave in October ourselves. We did present proposals to cancel GCSE and AS examinations for next summer. We did that in October. Clearly, the Minister's gone a step further in her direction in also including A-levels, and we've considered that and we've agreed with that approach. But it's only around 10 per cent of exams that are sat every year that are A-level exams; the other 90 per cent or so are the GCSE and AS level exams. So, in that sense, it wasn't a big change.

We had some particular reasons we did feel that some level of examination should take place for A-levels, and they were around providing that comparability between learners in Wales doing A-levels and those elsewhere in the UK, and the fact that most A-level learners do progress to university. And what we are keen to do—back to this fairness thing again—is to try and make sure that we don't disadvantage learners in Wales in any way. We're pleased to see that the independent review's report—and, indeed, the Minister has sought reassurances from the university sector—that the broad approaches that are being proposed for 2021 will not disadvantage those from Wales who want to go study at universities anywhere in the UK.

But our regulatory and statutory role has not changed. We are an independent and accountable national regulator and we've always taken the views of stakeholders on our board. Our role is to ensure that qualifications and the Welsh qualifications system are effective in meeting the reasonable needs of learners in Wales, and to promote public confidence in qualifications and the Welsh qualifications system—something we picked up earlier with Siân Gwenllian.

To achieve our principal aims, we are solely responsible for regulating qualifications in Wales, including their method of assessment, and, of course, the board is required by law to have regard to ministerial policy direction. You know, it's been a difficult time; it's tested everybody, hasn't it? But in the same way as other parts of life affected by the pandemic, education and qualifications, I'll be honest, it's been really, really difficult and it continues to be difficult. But I always believe that when things get really hard, you really see the mettle of people and their preparedness to face up to a challenge, and also to recognise where they get things right and where they get things wrong, and to always be prepared to work with others and listen, listen, listen.

Thank you—. Sorry, Philip, did you want to say something?

I was just going to add one small thing, which is that in 2021, we're really looking—the whole of the education system needs to come together to find a solution and to deliver a solution that works for learners. I very much see that, as David said, our role as the regulator will still be there, so we will be monitoring the WJEC in the way that we would normally monitor the WJEC and their operational delivery of those qualifications. And also, recognising that the design and delivery advisory group that the Minister has set up will be coming to its conclusions by Christmas, there'll be a lot of detail that will need to be worked through in how that is delivered, and we'll have to work with the WJEC to work through that detail and make sure that it's transparent.

I think one of the things that we really learnt from last year is the need for there to be good understanding of what the solutions are, and recognising that many people's perceptions of what's happening are influenced by the general UK media. So, it's making sure that there is sufficient understanding of what's happening in Wales and recognising the differences in what we're proposing in Wales to what will no doubt dominate much of the press, as it will do today with the Department for Education's announcements about exams in England.

Indeed. My next questions kind of follow on from that. I'm going to roll a couple of questions into one if I can. I just wondered how you now feel, in light of all the experience of what has happened and the advice that you've given to the Minister and her response, how you feel that you can continue to be—or, do you feel that you continue to be an effective independent regulator? And, do you think that the events show that there's some need for reform in both the role and the remit and the duties and the responsibilities of yourselves as a regulator?

Again, perhaps I'll try and respond to that one to start with, Dawn, if that's okay. The answer is 'yes', probably, to the question you've asked us. I think very much so. The Act—I have the Act in front of me here; I have it close to me at all times, the Act of 2015. I must know it inside out and I never thought I'd get to that point, but I have. [Laughter.]

We really are very clear on our obligations and I think this is well prepared and prepares us well, but that doesn't mean that somewhere down the line there won't need to be a review. I think, any time that something major happens in life, at the right point you need to stop and reflect and look at the learning, not just the short-term learning that we've got at the moment, which is, for instance, 'How do we deal with 2021 from the experience of 2020?' Hopefully, this dreaded pandemic will be sorted, probably within the next 12 months, and then there may be more time for reflection and there'll be more experience. And at that point, alongside, there'll be a new Welsh Senedd, of course, and there'll be new policies from the incumbent Government as well, alongside those that are coming through, such as the new curriculum for schools, and I think it's essential that we need to learn to help that development, and we are already. But I do think that, at some point, there absolutely needs to be some reflection, and say, 'Okay, was everything fit for purpose at that point?' I, at the moment, don't think there's anything particular that stands out as not being fit for purpose, but I just think anybody who's sensible would be wanting to do that at the appropriate point, possibly in 18 months to two years' time. 

Okay. That's a fair point. Philip.

Yes, Dawn, can I just add one thing, which is thinking about the role that we have in monitoring the delivery of the qualification system? So, thinking about our role more broadly, we also have a very strong role in the reform of qualifications, and we've been doing that through our sector reviews. So, there is a suite of health and social care qualifications now being delivered in Wales that are designed for Wales—they meet the requirements of Social Care Wales. So, that important piece of work has been completed. We've got new construction qualifications, which will cover the whole of the construction and built environment sector, which will be introduced from September of next year. We're about to start a sector review on travel, tourism, leisure, hospitality and catering, and that's the last of the big sectors in Wales that we haven't looked at yet. It's one that we're starting that work cautiously on, recognising the impact that the virus has had on those sectors. But the sector bodies tell us they want us to do this piece of work because they hold our sector reviews in high regard. And, then, the last bit of reform work we're doing at the moment is what we call 'Qualified for the Future' which is looking at the new range of qualifications for 14 to 16-year olds to accompany the Curriculum for Wales as that's introduced. So, those will be new qualifications for learners from 2025 onwards. So, for—[Inaudible.]—from 2025. 

So, I think, when you look at our role, it isn't just about seeing through the current year's qualifications. Obviously, that's very important, but we've got a very strong role in reform and looking at the range of qualifications for learners in Wales more generally. 

Thank you. I'm guessing that's a theme that we'll probably come back to as time moves on. But can I just ask one final question around the more recent announcement about the rationale for continuing exams in January? This is the new health and social care qualifications and the skills challenge certificate. You announced a couple of weeks ago that that will probably still be going ahead. What was the rationale behind that?

Yes, so if we take them individually, the qualifications that are still continuing, there are some legacy GCSEs that will be opportunities for retakes for the last time. So, those will be for learners that have completed the course of learning, and it's a retake opportunity. 

Okay. Right. 

For the skills challenge certificate, those are all internally assessed anyway, so they don't have exams that are taken in terms of timetabled exams. And, for the health and social care qualifications, we did say that there were some learners that couldn't complete their assessments in summer 2020 and we wanted to make sure that there was an opportunity over the autumn/winter period for them to be able to take those exams, and, for those health and social care qualifications, which are vocational qualifications rather than general qualifications, this is primarily an opportunity for those learners to take those exams. So, in many ways, it's rather similar to the November exam series, which has already taken place, which we positioned as primarily an opportunity for learners to retake or to take, for the first time in reality, GCSEs in maths and English. 

Okay. Just to clarify, because these are not resits that you were talking about, are they? These are scheduled exams, and you've just—. I'm trying to get to the rationale of that. So, you've cancelled all the other exams, but these were scheduled exams to take place in January that you felt should go ahead, and the rationale for that is that the students have studied for this and they could do this. 

Absolutely. The units that have been cancelled for January, they're unit assessments rather than overall qualification awards, and they're unit assessments in English literature, Welsh literature and ICT. And those, principally, contribute towards awards that would be made in summer 2021, or possibly for some learners in summer 2022. But we felt that, given the Minister's decision to cancel exams, it was at odds with that for those units to continue in January, but, for the other units, we felt it was appropriate.

Okay, that's fine. Thank you, Chair. 

Can I just ask—? Oh, Suzy, you had a supplementary. You're muted, Suzy. 

I think we were just muting rather than unmuting. Can I just check with you, Philip, then, on the unit assessments that were cancelled, what information did you have from schools about how much learning had been done in order to complete those in time? I understand what you're saying about the HSC qualifications, but would the same have been true for the general qualifications as well? I appreciate there's no final exam, but that module—

I think that the—[Inaudible.] Suzy, you were breaking up there, but perhaps I can have a go at answering that. With these unit assessments, there will have been schools that are preparing their learners to take those units. And for those schools, they would probably have been quite comfortable about those learners taking the units in January. The issue would then become consistency for those learners who aren't taking those units, because it's an optional unit that could be taken in January or could be taken in the summer as part of the whole award. The problem there is you would want all learners to progress through the qualification in a similar way, and, in effect, it would create an imbalance in the way that the qualification was being awarded if some learners took the unit and some learners didn't take the unit. So, on balance, it was the right thing to do, not to have those units continuing in January.

Whereas all the HSC students will be taking their exams.

Well, again, it's an option. They don't have to take them at this point; there are multiple opportunities to be able to take those exams. They're not GCSEs. There are some legacy GCSEs there, but those learners would have completed their qualifications. For the vocational ones within the new health and social care suite of qualifications, there are multiple opportunities. What we had heard quite strongly was that there were learners that were prepared to take those qualifications, those assessments, in the summer and wanted the opportunity to be able to take them in the winter. So, we wanted to keep that exam series alive for those qualifications, principally for those learners. But, of course, it's open to others as well.

Okay. Thank you.

And in terms of early entry, Philip, I asked you about this the last time you were in, and you said no decisions had been taken. Is there any update on, for instance, young people who would be expecting to take their maths a year early this summer?

No. I think, as far as we're concerned, it all depends on where we get to with the design and delivery advisory group and the models that are put forward. We would certainly be discouraging, I think, of—. If exams have been cancelled because teaching and learning has been so disrupted, then I think we would be discouraging of early entry because the same thing would apply to those learners—that their learning has been disrupted, and you'd want them to have as much learning as possible before they took the qualifications.

We do know from the November series—. I don't have the entry data immediately to hand, but across the whole series there would normally be about 21,000, 22,000 learners that would be taking exams in November. Off the top of my head, I think that came down to about 5,000 learners this year. Clearly, the big reduction there was in the number that were taking the qualifications early, and those were the two maths—the maths and maths numeracy—and English, primarily. For those qualifications, there were some that were entered early, but that was much, much lower than previously. I think it was roughly balanced between those learners that were retaking—so 17-year-olds—and 16-year-olds or younger. So, there were far fewer taking them early in November.

Okay. Thank you. Can I go on to ask about some performance risks and governance now, please? The latest annual accounts show that an audit of your communications activity received only limited assurance, and five high-priority recommendations were made. Given the importance of communication in the current situation we're in, can you set out some more detail on the findings of the audit and how you're intending to address the issues that were flagged?

Yes, certainly. Maybe it's worth just setting out why an organisation has internal audits to begin with. Internal audits are commissioned by the management team. So, I, as accounting officer, have responsibilities for making sure that the organisation is run correctly. Therefore, internal audit is actually a tool that I use as an accounting officer and my management team use for internal improvements—so, to make sure that we're continuously improving as an organisation.

The communications audit maybe stands out with its limited assurance, partly because all of the other audits that we've had had very strong responses. So, we've had substantial assurance around most of our audits and we have very strong internal controls. We knew that the communications area was an area that needed some work to improve and that's why we commissioned the internal audit in that area. We commissioned it so that we could use some external expertise from our auditors to identify areas and help us focus the improvements. So, the five areas—. If we're thinking about an organisation's communications, you want them to be efficient and effective, and a lot of the recommendations were around the efficiency side of things. The priority areas were around refreshing the communications strategy that needed to be refreshed. There was an internal communications strategy that needed to be developed, and that doesn't mean to say that there weren't internal communications that were under way—it's around pulling those together within a strategy. From an efficiency perspective, it was around better process tracking to make sure that communications were going through their various stages of development properly, and improved planning to make sure that the team was being as efficient as possible. And then the last thing was around the crisis communication plan and that needing to be refreshed. So, the priority areas were, in effect, identifying specific pieces of work that needed to be developed in order to get the best out of the team, and those were partly around refreshing strategies and partly around better planning and monitoring of those plans.

So, we've put in remedial actions within the team. We are working on those. There's been a lot of progress, so things like strategies have been refreshed. There is now a planning and tracking tool in place, and what we're trying to do now is just embed those practices and make them better and better, because we too recognise that communications is an important area and we want it to be as efficient and effective as possible.

Okay, thank you. And can you set out for the committee what the top three principal risks are that you think you face and how you're managing those risks?

Sure. So, 2020 developed a whole new set of risks for most organisations and some of those were corporate risks in terms of the way you operate as an organisation, and, for us, some are regulatory risks. From a corporate perspective, we responded to the pandemic very well. We were set up with modern working practices and we were able to swap into working from home seamlessly pretty much. And we've had very good feedback from staff about the way that we handled that and people are able to be productive and working from home. So, I think most of the risks that we're concerned about at the moment really relate to how things are going to progress over the next nine months or so, thinking about summer 2021 and the difficulties that we're all going to face in delivering qualifications.

So, there are some risks that we're looking at, and one is around standards. So, thinking about the big differences in results in summer 2020 and how those are managed, moving forward. At this point, it's probably worth me just mentioning that the announcement of the Department for Education in England, in Westminster, is announced today around generosity—overall generosity and the awards of general qualifications in summer 2021, so that the overall level of generosity is broadly similar to summer 2020.

Now, we need to see where the design and delivery advisory group gets to in terms of the assessment model that they're going to propose to the Minister, to see whether that can actually be managed or controlled, in terms of standards. But assuming that it does end up with a model that would allow WJEC to control for standards, then we would be looking to replicate that so that awards in Wales are similar to those in England, with similar levels of generosity. And we believe that Northern Ireland will be doing the same thing as well. So, looking at those qualifications in the same qualification titles and making sure they're awarded in similar ways.

The other risks, I think, are around public confidence. The committee's already talked about public confidence quite a bit this morning. It is confidence in us, it is confidence in the whole system, it's confidence not only in the qualification system, but in the education system as whole. Everybody wants the best thing for learners, and there needs to be confidence in the system in order to be able to deliver that. So, we know that we've got to do a lot more work in terms of engaging with stakeholders, engaging with the public, to make sure there is a good public understanding of the way forward in summer 2021. And also recognising that, once again, we're not in a situation where there's any perfect solution to summer 2021.

I think what the Minister is trying to do through establishing the design and delivery advisory group is to establish a body that gives some co-ownership of this to the education sector, by having further education principals and headteachers contributing to the proposals moving forward. We hope that that will help to give buy-in to the overall model that's developed, and that we can all have confidence in it, and there can be good public understanding because of that buy-in.

So, really, the principal risks relate to summer 2021, recognising there's no perfect solution, recognising there needs to be greater confidence in the solution that is put forward so that it can't be unpicked in the summer, and also thinking about standards and how those standards are not only put forward for 2021 for this cohort, who are going to, as David said, have significant difficulties as they're preparing for those exams, but also thinking about how we recover standards over time, because I would argue that there needs to be a recovery of standards over a period of time, otherwise qualifications won't function as stakeholders expect.

So, my favourite statistic in much of this is the big leap in A*s and A's in A-level from 27 per cent in 2019 to 43.7 per cent in 2020. Now, if that were to persist in the long term, those A-levels would cease to function as higher education expects them to function, in terms of being able to differentiate between learners for selection purposes. So, we have to, across the whole of the UK, look at how there is a recovery over time to standards that do differentiate learners in the way that stakeholders expect, so that selection process can operate as it should do.

Okay, thank you. You've already talked a bit about the areas where you feel you need to strengthen your activity. Are there any other areas that you haven't highlighted where you think performance needs to be strengthened? And are there any recommendations the committee could make that might assist you in taking those areas forward?

I can come in on that one. Can I just add? Another point, just going slightly backwards before answering, is that, certainly with the question earlier on around confidence and so on—I've just remembered a point I should have mentioned earlier, which was that we do surveys on an annual basis at least, so we will get that evidence to show the confidence in us as an organisation from a range of stakeholders.

I think, going back to what Philip has just said also, in terms of the audit side of our work, and the risk register and risk management—that's a really important part of corporate governance. We have a corporate structure, which is a board, and we have a range of sub-committees, and we have an audit and risk assurance committee, which deals with issues to do with audit and risk. So, as well as them being issues that the senior exec deal with, clearly, in terms of internal audit schedules and so on, those are annual schedules that are agreed by a board committee, which is commonplace, as you find with other public bodies.

I think, in terms of moving forward, in terms of areas for development, even though I believe—and strongly believe, and there's evidence to support it—that the organisation is working well in terms of its statutory responsibilities and so on, I think a key development on the horizon, which I'm certainly acutely aware of, is the fact that with the organisation being just over five years old, there is a big change in the board membership about to come upon us. So, between the end of this year and about May or June next year, five of our 12 board members will be leaving, and most of those are board members who have been with us—I wasn't there at the start—who have been with the organisation since the start. So, I think that's something, from a risk point of view and the development point of view, that I'm very conscious of as chair.

And just for interest for the committee, we've had, really encouragingly, a massive response to the appointments process. We've had almost 110 applicants, and really good applicants, for the new roles. So, it's been quite a task to proceed with the shortlisting process, but we will be interviewing for new members of the board, beginning next Monday and then completing it in early January, and then the processes of those recommendations to find new appointees with go through to the Minister. But what I would also say in terms of the applicants is that we've been delighted by the range of applicants as well, and more young people applying and, more broadly, finding applicants that reflect the breadth of Wales in 2020, and moving forward into 2021.

Okay, thank you. In terms of your annual accounts, it says that you didn't spend all your Welsh Government core grant in 2019-20, why was that?

So, it may be worth me just relaying the main areas of spend that we have. So, we have four main area of spend—our staff costs, which represent the majority of our costs. So, if you look at staff costs, it's around the mid 60 per cent—66 per cent—of our cost; if you take grants out, it actually comes up to 74 per cent of our overall costs. So, we have staff costs as a very significant element, we have grants that we make available to other bodies, we have our programme costs, which is the direct cost that we have in delivering the activities that we undertake, and then we have our corporate running costs—things like electricity, rent, rates et cetera. So, our costs have been increasing year on year, and over the last few years there's been a steady climb, from £7.5 million to £7.8 million and then last year to £8.3 million. And there was a slight shortfall on the overall grants, so we budgeted to spend £8.39 million, and we ended up spending £8.31 million. So, there was actually a shortfall of about £77,000, which is 1 per cent of our budget, so it's relatively small. But, within that, there was an underspend in certain areas, which is greater than that, but it did allow us to do more work on 'Qualified for the future', that otherwise we would have needed to get additional funding from Welsh Government to cover. 

The biggest area where we have shortfalls are around our staff costs, which isn't surprising, given the fact that that's the largest area of the budget anyway. And what any organisation does is it creates a number of assumptions about things like staff turnover, and also thinks about if there is staff turnover, how long does it then take to bring a new person on board? It's an area where we change our assumptions regularly to try and get the most out of the Welsh public money that we're given. But what we try and do, wherever possible, is we look at running internal and external recruitments in parallel, so giving opportunities for our own staff to apply for roles. If those staff are then successful in getting a job, it creates a vacancy that needs to be backfilled. So, actually, one vacancy can have a long tail of up to six months of it being filled. If you go through the appointments process, somebody is appointed into a role, that then creates a vacancy behind them, and that then needs to be filled. So, probably the biggest element was about £200,000 of staff costs, I understand, largely because of that natural staff turnover, and the lag that that creates.

Okay, thank you. And just finally from me: no board minutes have been published on your website since March 2020. Why is that?

They should be published. We will go and check that to make sure that they're in the right places. Certainly, all of the board minutes have been approved for publication up to the last couple of board meetings, where we've had a number of extraordinary board meetings just dealing with the current situation. But they should be published. I'll check, Chair, to make sure that they're on the website.

Thank you. We've got some questions now from Dawn Bowden.

Thanks, Chair. I'm just wondering what areas of work you've felt you've had to really prioritise due to the pandemic, and what assessment have you made of the longer term impact on general qualifications?

So, we've had to delay or postpone some of the work that we had planned. If I run through the main areas, that might be useful. So, if we think about 'Qualified for the future' and the consultation phase that we're in with 'Qualified for the future', we've actually made a couple of decisions recently. One is around the scope of the next consultation, which was going to be looking at the assessment arrangements and looking at the range of qualifications for the new curriculum. We've actually de-scoped that slightly to just look at the range of qualifications for the new curriculum, and to go on to do more engagement about the assessment regime, because we want to learn from summer 2021. So, as the design and delivery advisory group makes its proposals, as we make decisions about different ways of assessing, we'd like to learn from those before we make any firm proposals about 'Qualified for the Future'. So, that it is not only something that we've made a decision that we're going to delay because of the pandemic, but also something where a different way of operating as part of the pandemic may influence future thinking for qualifications.

We also decided that we would just delay that consultation; we had intended that it would go out around this time. We think that schools are dealing with a lot at the moment. We can't delay for too long, but we are planning to go out in the middle of January with that consultation, to respond at the beginning of the fresh term rather than the at the end of—the autumn term is always a long term for schools. We made the decision to delay the travel, tourism, hospitality, leisure and catering sector review, because we wanted to make sure that it was the right thing to do with the sector. We will still keep that under review; the plan is to start doing more engagement from January 2021, but we will need to keep that under review to make sure that it's the right thing to do and that the sector is ready to be able to respond to that review.

We've cancelled some of the audit work that we were planning to undertake with awarding bodies, and that's recognising that awarding bodies are struggling at the moment as well, and we didn't want to place an additional load on them through audit activity when they're responding to the pandemic, so we made the decision that we would stop some of those externally commissioned audits. And then, from a monitoring perspective, clearly, our monitoring activity's been very different this year, so we haven't been monitoring an exam series in the summer like we would normally monitor. And we had to think about what the model is going to look like for next year and how we would monitor that.

Last couple of things: we were going to do some work looking at standards for GCSE English language and for modern foreign languages, and those are both topics that have cropped up more widely in the past. Again, we've decided to postpone that piece of work until we're back on a firm footing with qualifications being delivered in a more normal way, but we plan to return to that piece of work, looking at building a better understanding of standards and also making sure that the standards in those qualifications are in the right place.

I guess the last thing is just the whole way of working. So, everyone has got used to now meeting like this. Actually, productivity's improved, I would say, in many ways. Instead of people travelling long distances around Wales to engage with stakeholders, they're able to engage more easily digitally. That's one of the reasons why we think the travel and tourism review can proceed, because people have got more used to being able to engage on this sort of basis, and we've found that the meetings can be very effective. So, lots of changed ways of working, and thinking as we move forward—there will be an end to this pandemic, there will be a return to probably a new normal, rather than an old normal. We see that there'll be much more of a mix between office working and home working. People have got used to working from home, they've been very effective at working from home. We'll have to look at how we respond to that as an organisation, to make sure that we get the best out of our staff and protect their well-being as well. So, there's—[Inaudible.]—over the next few months.

Can I add to that very briefly?

Yes.

You'll have to be brief, because we've got a lot of ground still left to cover.

Can I just add on that issue of remote working it clearly has—well, as we're doing now, it's worked for our board as well? I don't think it's perfect, but I think, like other organisations, and certainly boards of public bodies in Wales, there are some real lessons to be learnt here about how we can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of perhaps having blended approaches in the future that build on what we're doing here, but have some normality.

The other point I would add—yes, there are certain things we've had to defer and so on, but there's so much being achieved: our new Welsh language strategy, our response to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, the new engineering, advanced manufacturing and energy report we published last month. Business has kept on going unbelievably well under the circumstances.

Okay, Dawn.

Thank you for that. I just wanted to try and explore a little bit with you the impact of all of the things that you've talked about on the work that you need to do on the new curriculum. Philip, you touched on that a little bit earlier, particularly the exam side of that, so what assurances can you give us around your work around the new curriculum now?

Yes, so that is proceeding as we had planned, with the exception of, as I described earlier, the more limited consultation that we're proposing, or that we will be taking forward in January. Really, it hasn't got in the way of that work. A lot of thinking has been going on behind the scenes, we've been doing a lot of work recently with the board in terms of looking at how we might secure an awarding body to develop the qualifications, the GCSEs. We've been doing a lot of engagement with stakeholders. We'll need to do a lot more engagement with stakeholders over the coming months, as we move forward, because we've got a very structured plan about how we need to proceed in order to make sure that we've got those qualifications being delivered.

We've also been looking at how we might stage some of those, looking at the qualifications that need the most change first of all, so that they're early qualifications, and also making sure that there is enough time for schools to be able to prepare for those new qualifications. So, we know that there is a balance to be achieved here between schools with curriculum expectations and qualification expectations. We know that schools and colleges will want to have more transparency around what the arrangements are going to be, and what we'll need to do is we'll need to have that greater level of transparency as our plans develop, so that, over the next couple of years, they get greater insight into how those qualifications are going to be awarded, how they're going to be assessed, what they're going to look like, what they're going to feel like, so that they can prepare themselves, and then, ultimately, as those qualifications are approved, making sure they're approved in plenty of time so that schools have got absolute clarity about what they're delivering with all of the support that they need to be able to deliver them.

Thank you for that. That last point about transparency is hugely important, because I'm just wondering whether you've felt that public confidence in Quals Wales has been affected at all in terms of decisions that have had to be made. Are you going to be embarking on any kind of charm offensive to get people back on board, or do you think you're managing it okay?

I think we've responded to that a fair bit already. I think what we're trying to do is be honest about everything, and hopefully that is coming over. We're not pretending that we always get things right, we're not pretending that it's been an easy situation. It's been horrendously difficult for everyone, and the schools and colleges had the worst to deal with, and the young people. So, no, at the end of this, as I said, we're all going to look back and learn from it, but the reality is that we're not out of it yet, are we? I think that's the challenge. 

Of course. Of course, yes. 

I said in response to Siân Gwenllian's question at the start that I think one of the big lessons here is that we were always engaged with stakeholders, but I think the extent to which and how we engage with stakeholders is something we've learned a lot from. And also I think the voice of the learner has increased, and that's a really good thing. And I think our engagement with that will grow, and I think everyone will benefit from that. 

Okay. Thank you. The final questions, then, are from Suzy Davies. 

Thank you. Welcome again, everybody. We've discussed vocational qualifications a little bit already, but, before we move on from the subject of vocational exams, I recognise the situation with vocational exams, that you have to operate in a UK environment and therefore the question of whether exams will go ahead in the summer is one that needs to be agreed between four nations. I suppose what I want to say is that the learners for vocational qualifications will have lost just as much learning as those who are sitting general qualifications. Does that mean that the likely way of dealing with this will be to do what we've just seen being announced in England today for general qualifications, which is reduce the pass marks for each grade? If that's the case, many of these vocational qualifications are professional qualifications, where certain standards have to be proven, so employers of the future will expect those standards to have been met. How is this circle going to be squared, or square be circled, whichever it is?

It's certainly a difficult circle to square, as you've identified, and I've already touched on it with the sector body requirements. So, if I take the example of health and social care and the amount of time, of practice, that is needed before a practice qualification can be awarded, Social Care Wales has been prepared to reduce that amount to 70 per cent of the previous total, but isn't prepared to go any lower, and that is to protect those professional standards, which are important. So, there is an extended extraordinary regulatory framework for vocational qualifications that allows awarding bodies to look at that difficulty of squaring the circle, looking at the sector requirements, and to make adaptations to their qualifications that are appropriate to the sector that do provide that levelling of the playing field for learners, because it's not their fault, often, that their learning has been disrupted. So, it's around trying to make those accommodations. 

Now I guess the area that is of particular concern is around those qualifications that might have exams, those vocational qualifications with exams. Now, many of those will have multiple opportunities for those exams to be taken, and that might well be an accommodation that schools and colleges will want to use. And then I think the last thing here is that we need to understand what the assessment model will be for general qualifications.

So, if one of the things that we're wanting to establish is fairness between those learners that are taking general qualifications and those learners that are taking vocational qualifications, we need to look at where the design and delivery advisory group get to with their proposals for general qualifications. Qualifications Wales will need to make its decisions on the assessment model based on what we expect will be another ministerial direction. And then we need to look at how those changes play through to the vocational sector. If we think it's appropriate that there could be changes to the examination requirements, it would be a case of looking to see how those qualifications can be assessed in different ways so that there are still valid and reliable outcomes, which is, as you said, what employers are looking for.

The difficulty that we have is that we can do that quite easily for our Wales-only approved qualifications; it becomes more difficult in the three-country model, where an awarding body will have regulatory requirements placed on it by Ofqual, CCEA Regulation and by us. And the thing that we would need to explore is: would an awarding body be willing to do something different for learners in Wales to what it would do across a whole three-country model? We're prepared to have those conversations with the awarding bodies, but we can only really do that once it's been established how those general qualifications are going to be awarded. And there's no guarantee that those awarding bodies would respond to that call for a change.

I see that. Can I just check something with you? We talked about health and social care and tourism a little bit earlier on. Are those currently identified as general qualifications, then, because you're designing them, or do they fall into a vocational bracket?

No, they're still vocational qualifications. So, it's a suite of—. We look at—[Inaudible.]—vocational qualifications and general qualifications. General qualifications are, broadly, GCSEs, A-levels, AS-levels, and we do count the skills challenge certificate in there, because it's awarded in a very similar way. All of the other qualifications are vocational qualifications.

Okay. I just wanted to check that. Because, as you say, you've got some scope to amend the made-in-Wales qualifications, and they need to be comparable with the made-in-GB qualifications—well, it's not quite GB, but the three nations.

Absolutely.

Okay. Thank you. I'll just turn now to the review of the vocational qualifications; you've given us some steer on this already. But can you give us an indication of how many designated qualifications have been converted to 'approved' during the last year? We've got the figures of how many designated qualifications there are, and how many are approved, but not the ones that have converted from one to the other.

I can give you a bit of a feel for that—it is off the top of my head. But, if we look to construction as an example, we'll be introducing new construction qualifications from September of next year. And in the vocational space, we'll be introducing a foundation qualification, a progression qualification and apprenticeship qualifications. Now, they're grouped in slightly different ways, but the way that that comes out is there are fewer than 10 qualifications there, with different routes through them. And that's taking away about 400 designated qualifications. So, if we're looking at some sort of ratio, that's 400 designated qualifications being replaced by fewer than 10 approved qualifications.

Oh, right. So, the approved qualifications are brand-new ones. There aren't any previously designated qualifications that you've decided to keep and give them the approval stamp. It replaces—

It's a completely different model in construction that's being developed, and it's one that's been co-constructed with the construction sector and with further education colleges that are delivering those qualifications. So, it's a completely new suite of qualifications. And of course, one of the things that people often say is that they want to see a simpler offer. So, in going from 400 qualifications to fewer than 10, we're achieving that aim as well of having a simpler offer.

Okay. Thank you. I understand that. There are going to be some lessons learned from the monitoring work that you've done of the sector reviews, and you've touched on some of them already. But what can you tell us about what it's thrown up for teaching requirements, particularly the new approved qualifications? Anything new that we need in terms of systems and processes?

I think, as a general point, what we've identified from the health and social care qualifications, which was the first new suite of vocational qualifications to be implemented, was the need for there to be a really close focus on change management so that there was good understanding of what the requirements would be. And clearly there are changes in the requirements. When new qualifications are introduced, it takes time for teachers and lecturers to respond to the new requirements of the qualification. So, we contract with bodies to develop these new qualifications. So, for health and social care, it's a combination of City & Guilds and WJEC that have developed and deliver those qualifications. For construction qualifications, it's City & Guilds working alongside EAL, the engineering awarding body. And in those contractual requirements, we have placed a greater focus on change management so that we are in a position where the sector is better able to receive those new teaching requirements. It's also important that—

Sorry to cut across you, Philip, but can you give us any indication of the particular risks that might be emerging in the sectors that you're already operating in—are some easier to deal with than others?

We haven't picked up anything in particular as a particular concern, so there's always an element of flux when change is introduced. The sorts of things that we have done, though—some of it has been in response to COVID at the moment. So, thinking about the introduction of new level 3 qualifications in health and social care, ColegauCymru lobbied us in the summer to say that colleges may struggle to introduce the new level 3 qualifications from this September and they would like to have a choice of whether they could have one final year with the legacy qualification. So, we agreed that we would do parallel running of the old qualifications for a year, or some of those old qualifications, alongside the new qualifications. So, it gave a blended opportunity. 

I think, off the top of my head, and I may be wrong on this, but I think 10 of the colleges have chosen to go with the new qualification. I think it's only two that have gone with the old qualifications. But it's those sorts of things that we respond to on a regular basis. We want to listen to stakeholders; we want to understand, if they've got concerns about delivery, what can be done to help them. Equally, we've got to think about moving ahead with new qualifications for Wales and forging ahead with those because we believe that the range of qualifications that we're developing will be better in the long run. [Inaudible.]

We're just missing you there, Philip.

I think Philip has frozen.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you, David.

Sorry—can you hear me now?

We can hear you, Philip. You're still frozen, but we can hear you. Oh, there we are, marvellous.

You were just about to start talking about the new qualifications and the approach that you were taking to those as a result of what you might have learnt from—

We are very short of time now, just to remind everyone.

I could actually move on, Chair, if you want, because, to be fair, Philip answered a lot of what I wanted to hear right at the beginning of the session.

Okay, if that's okay.

Would you like me to do that? Okay, just briefly, then, on non-compliance and monitoring, going back to the report itself, the report shows that there are four awarding bodies that are currently not compliant with your rules—they've got plans in place, but what does that non-compliance mean for learners? Has it had a material effect on the service they've had?

Not a material effect on learners in Wales. So, these are awarding bodies that are delivering qualifications across the three nations, so the process of statements of compliance is a common process that we undertake with Ofqual, the University of Cambridge International Examinations and ourselves. So, quite often, an awarding body will report non-compliance across all three regulators, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's learners in Wales that have been affected. So, there are four awarding bodies that have reported these sort of long-term non-compliances around areas like their handling of malpractice cases and maladministration. And in those cases, the regulators—we've worked together with Ofqual to place clear requirements on those awarding bodies about what they need to do. They develop an action plan that develops their processes. Some of these things are longer term process developments. And then we monitor them as they complete those plans. And, indeed, I think one of those awarding bodies has reported to us only on 1 December that they now believe they've completed all of their actions to come back into full compliance.

So, it is one of those things where we keep a very close eye on it. We look to see if there would be any material detriment to learners in Wales and then we act accordingly. We don't think that there is anything in these that is particularly pertinent to learners in Wales.

Okay, thank you. There is another mention in your report that 12 awarding bodies have declared their award qualifications without checking a sample of results. Now, bearing in mind the environment we're in at the moment, where we're talking about possible assessments leading to external teacher-managed assessments, this question of monitoring and sampling is surely fairly critical in terms of confidence. Why are we taking the approach to non-compliance in this instance that you have when there's not going to be any monitoring, pending the outcome of the Ofqual consultation on this?

This is an area of technical non-compliance, and it relates to awarding bodies that have a thing called direct-claim status. This is where they will have a training provider—most often it's training providers—who will be able to award the qualification directly to the learner. So, these might be in areas like health and safety or food safety et cetera.

The conditions are very much geared up around the larger qualification offers and around moderation, rather than around direct-claim status. So, the conditions are being changed to be more flexible to allow for these sorts of arrangements to be continued, so for direct-claim status. I will check—. Can you still hear me, because I've frozen again?

Just about, yes.

Just about. Sorry. So, these will be areas where they have direct-claim status. Ofqual ask that they report these as non-compliances, although we don't regard them, strictly, as non-compliances, because they will come into compliance with the new conditions once they're in place, and those new conditions come into place from January of next year, with full implementation by September of next year. So, these aren't areas where we are particularly concerned, because it's a technical non-compliance related to the way that the qualifications are awarded.

Okay. I don't pretend to understand all of that, if I'm being honest, because I would have thought, even if there's a direct award, at some point somebody needs to check the standard of that. Universities have run into problems with that.

[Inaudible.] These won't be for university entrance—these will be other types of qualifications. If we think about the broad gambit of qualifications, these will not be the high-stakes qualifications that are being awarded in this way. What tends to happen is, they will be checked, but the sample isn't checked before the award of the qualification. So, there will be sampling of the awards that are made, but it's after the award has been made. So, it's a technical area that is being tidied up in the way that the new conditions are being written.

Okay. Thank you for that.

This is going to have to be a very brief question and very brief answer, sorry, Suzy.

I don't know if I really need to ask it, Chair. Unless you can do it in short order, Philip. It's just the cancellation of the 2020 summer exams changed the overall types of incidents that were notified to you. Did that come as a surprise, and how do you intend to apply the lessons to the forthcoming year?

It didn't come as a surprise, because most of the incidents would be to do with the main general qualifications exams series, and those are the sorts of things like security incidents, where a paper may leak or where an exams officer may open the wrong packet on the wrong day, or they're the sorts of incidents that would occur during the marking process. So, where in summer 2020 there were no exam papers delivered and there was no making, we anticipated that there would be far fewer incidents, and that the nature of those incidents would change. So, it's exactly as we expected.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. We've come to the end of our time, so can I thank you both for attending this morning and answering all our questions? As usual, we'll send you a transcript to check for accuracy following the meeting, but thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch yn fawr.

Item 3 is papers to note. Paper to note 1 is a letter from the Chair of the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee to the Minister for Education regarding issues arising from the committee’s meeting on 12 November with the National Library of Wales. 

Paper to note 2 is additional information from the University and College Union following the meeting on 19 November.

Paper to note 3 is a letter to the committee from the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services regarding a revised children's rights scheme.

And paper to note 4, which went out in a supplementary pack, is a letter to the committee from the Welsh Government regarding support for the mental health and well-being of learners.

Can I ask Members to note those, please? Thank you.

Item 4, then. Can I propose, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42, that the committee resolves to exclude the public for the remainder of the meeting? Are Members content? Thank you. We'll now, then, proceed in private.