By Fin Wilson
In the first part of this blog, I reviewed the Estyn leadership team’s appearance before the Children, Young People and Education (CYPE) scrutiny committee in the Senedd, and what their evidence revealed about their approach to school improvement in Wales.
I want now to set out the international evidence that Owen Evans cited as an explanation of why Estyn is getting its approach to reading so badly wrong. Mr Evans cited several countries as doing things Wales could learn from. I have put these countries in bold in the table below, alongside countries which scored towards the top of the rankings for reading in the 2022 PISA results.
Those countries where standards of reading are high and where English is spoken are all using systematic synthetic phonics programmes. That includes the Republic of Ireland. It is true that Ireland has invested in a decade of focused literacy development across all areas of the system, including teacher professional learning (PL) and initial teacher education, but this has resulted in 86% of primary schools using a systematic synthetic phonics programme (Jolly Phonics) by choice. It is the quality of teaching that these programmes have supported that has made the difference for pupils. Systematic teaching of phonics is not something you can make up as you go along. You need to teach the graphemes and phonemes of English in a carefully sequenced hierarchy. This is what using an SSP programme supports teachers to be able to do.
Other countries that score highly in PISA but don’t mandate or use SSP are from one of two groups. They are either countries whose language does not use an alphabet but is syllabic and therefore SSP would not be appropriate, or they have a language where every letter has its own sound, in other words a phonemic orthography.
For example, each letter in the Estonian alphabet, in all bar a handful of words, has a consistent sound. However, in English you can make an “eff” sound three different ways – e.g. as in the words fat, phone and laugh. English is a very difficult language to read. It has very low phonetic transparency.
So, when our Chief Inspector tells politicians that we should be looking to South Korea or Estonia for ways in which to raise standards in reading, he is literally comparing apples with pears. The best countries to look to for advice as to how to get it right for reading English are those where English is spoken. And the top three countries in the PISA rankings all speak English and they all use SSP. As Claire Morgan commented about numeracy standards, the same is true of reading standards, it is the teaching that makes the difference not assessment or accountability.
I want to explore one more topic from Estyn’s evidence session to explain why I think the inspectorate is not using evidence effectively to advise Welsh Government or schools on a way forward. The strategic team were also asked about professional learning for teachers and particularly about INSET days. Again, Owen Evans cited Estonia as an example of good practice and where training days for teachers had been grouped together at the end of the year rather than taken as separate days across the year. The suggestion was that this might be something that Wales could look at, that would both ensure professional learning improves the quality of teaching and makes planning holidays easier for parents.
However, what Mr Evans didn’t say, possibly because he wasn’t aware, is that research from Sims et al (2022) highlights the mechanisms of effective professional development, one of them being that improvement happens over time. An intensive five-day course, no matter how good the quality, is not the solution he thinks it is. There is also research (Research in Estonia, 2021) which looked at the efficacy of five days of intensive professional development, the Estonia model, in improving standards of teaching in digital skills. The five-day course was, however, followed up by additional monthly sessions over the rest of the year.
But it’s not just PL research that disagrees with Mr Evans’s assessment that cramming all the PL that a school needs into the last five days of the summer term is a good idea. The huge international body of evidence from cognitive science also disagrees. It says that effective learning happens best when it is spaced over time with gaps left for forgetting to happen before retrieval and participants have an opportunity to carry out deliberate practice over time (Bjork and Bjork, 2011). Liz Miles, Assistant Director of Estyn, also gave evidence that from her experience as a former headteacher, every school needs to be able to determine when and what each INSET day should include and how best that initial input would be reinforced over time. So, Estyn’s leaders can’t even agree among themselves. This is why education policy should be guided by those who have the depth of knowledge in both teaching practice and research, not by civil servants.
What this whole evidence session exposes, is that those at the top of Estyn do not have the depth of understanding of how teaching and learning works and are unable to draw sensible conclusions from research evidence as a result. If you don’t have the data, or don’t understand the evidence, should you really be making the decisions?
References
Allen, R., Mian, E. & Sims, S., 2016. Social inequalities in access to teachers. Social Market Foundation Commission on Inequality in Education: Briefing 2. Available at: https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Social-Market-Foundation-Social-inequalities-in-access-to-teachers.pdf [Accessed 15 Mar. 2026]
Bjork, E.L. & Bjork, R.A., 2011. Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In: D.S. Dunn (ed.) Psychology and the real world: essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society. Worth Publishers, pp.56–64. Available at: https://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2016/04/EBjork_RBjork_2011.pdf (Accessed 15 Mar. 2026).
Estyn, 2025. Estyn’s enhanced focus on reading: supporting every learner to succeed, 21 November 2025. Available at: https://estyn.gov.wales/news/estyns-enhanced-focus-on-reading-supporting-every-learner-to-succeed/ (Accessed 15 Mar. 2026)
Sims, S., Fletcher‑Wood, H., O’Mara‑Eves, A., Cottingham, S., Stansfield, C., Van Herwegen, J., Anders, J. et al. (2022). Effective teacher professional development: new theory and a meta‑analytic test (EdWorkingPaper: 22‑507).
Sustainable Technology‑Enhanced Learning Innovations in Teachers’ Classroom Practices, 2021. Research in Estonia, 20 May. Available at: https://researchinestonia.eu/2021/05/20/sustaining-technology-enhanced-learning-innovations-in-teachers-classroom-practices/?utm_source=chatgpt.com (Accessed 15 Mar. 2026).