16/01/2012- Dr Russell Grigg

16/01/2012- Dr Russell Grigg Dr Russell Grigg gave us an insight to what ESTYN was and what did it do for education. He is the Head of the South West Wales Centre of Education. What does ESTYN do? • ESTYN inspects quality and standards in education and training. • It inspects many different educational settings such as nursery schools, primary schools, secondary schools, independent schools and specially equipped schools. • They have pupil referral units and help to further education. • They organise things such as adult and community learning. • They supply local authority education services for children and young people. • They work with offenders to develop their learning. • They organise work based learning and career companies. ESTYN also: • Provide advice to the Welsh Assembly Government on quality and standards in education and training in Wales. • Promote the spread of good practise in education and training. Three Fold Purposes. • Provides accountability to the users of the services and other stakeholders through the public reporting on providers. • Promote improvement in education and training. • Inform the development of the national policy by the Welsh Assembly Government. ESTYN is mostly known for their inspections, inspections are good as they are set up for the school and the community to improve. ESTYN covers the whole of Wales for inspections. What is an Inspection Like? Inspectors Learners Teachers, Parents and Governors The diagram I just created shows that the inspectors are the main importance of the inspection, then it comes down to the learners as they are the secondly most important when it comes to an inspection. The least important people in the inspection are the teachers, parents and governors as they are the ones that are being inspected. When an inspection is being carried out they have two different viewpoints which are achievement and attainment. Achievement is how well you are doing yourself, it is your OWN capability. Attainment is how well you are doing against someone else for example, someone may have a higher grade than you, however you are doing well for yourself. After taking the whole elements of the learning setting into account the inspector makes a judgement which may be: • Excellent • Good • Adequate • Unsatisfactory I found the lecture with Dr Grigg very interesting as he explained to us what ESTYN was, what they did and how they carry out inspections. He also gave us the ESTYN website so we could take a look for ourselves which I found very helpful in understanding how ESTYN works. http://www.estyn.gov.uk/english/