All-Age
Early Insights 2024-2025
Teaching and learning
Overall, teachers promote positive attitudes to learning effectively, although the provision for pupils to progressively develop their literacy, numeracy and digital skills often requires improvement.
What’s going well
- Across nearly all schools, most pupils display positive attitudes towards learning, engage respectfully with their peers and teachers, and generally behave well during lessons.
- Many teachers establish supportive and positive classroom environments, creating conditions that enable many pupils to make at least adequate progress.
- In many instances, teachers have strong subject knowledge, provide clear explanations, and use questioning effectively to check pupils’ understanding.
What needs to improve
- Provision for pupils to progressively develop their literacy, numeracy, and digital skills varies significantly and often requires improvement; in a minority of cases, particularly in secondary phases, teachers’ expectations are insufficiently ambitious, leading to limited curricular progress.
- A minority of lessons are over-directed by teachers, restricting pupils’ independence.
Well-being, care, support and guidance
Generally, all-age schools continue to provide strong support for well-being, although most need to improve attendance.
What’s going well
- Nearly all schools prioritise pupil well-being effectively, creating inclusive and caring environments where most pupils feel valued.
- Pastoral care and emotional support systems are generally strong.
- Provision for pupils with ALN is generally effective, with schools identifying pupils’ needs early and providing beneficial support.
What needs to improve
- Attendance remains a concern for many schools and, while schools are working to address the issue, the impact is variable.
- Persistent absenteeism remains an ongoing challenge, particularly among secondary-aged pupils.
Leading and improving
Many leaders promote high expectations and communicate a clear vision, although self-evaluation and improvement planning processes are not always effective enough.
What’s going well
- In the majority of cases, senior leaders provide purposeful leadership and communicate a clear vision that promotes high expectations among staff and pupils.
- In the strongest cases, leaders ensure pupils’ learning is carefully planned to provide continuity across the full age range; they know pupils well, meet their well-being needs effectively, and provide appropriate support for their families.
What needs to improve
- Leaders do not consider the impact of provision on pupil outcomes closely enough.
- Leadership structures and responsibilities in a majority of schools are not clearly defined or consistently applied, limiting accountability.
- In the majority of cases, leaders have not yet fully realised the opportunities that the through-school context provides.
Overview of recommendations from inspections
There were inspections in six all-age providers, with a total of 23 recommendations given, and two providers were placed in a follow-up category.
Six providers were given a recommendation aligned to teaching and learning:
- Two providers were recommended to improve the quality and consistency feedback
- One provider was recommended to increase the use of occasional Welsh in English-medium lessons to encourage pupils to use Welsh more confidently
- Three providers were given a recommendation about skills development or application
Five providers received recommendations aligned to well-being, care, support and guidance:
- All five were recommended to improve attendance (one of which was in a follow-up category)
Five providers were given nine recommendations aligned to leading and improving:
- Three providers were given recommendations about self-evaluation and improvement planning
Effective practice identified during inspection
Ysgol Henry Richard
Inspection report: Ysgol Henry Richard
Read about how Ysgol Henry Richard is supporting pupils’ well-being here