Covid: Call to delay school inspections until 2022

Pupils are currently learning at home due to coronavirus lockdown restrictions

Inspections of schools to measure how they are performing should be suspended until next year, Plaid Cymru has said.

The party wants schools to focus on being able to "catch up" with their academic work and "deal with issues such as student wellbeing".

It said the stress of inspections by watchdog Estyn was "the last thing" schools need.

The Welsh Government said it hopes some inspections can start in September 2021 after being suspended since March 2020.

However, it added, this would depend on the pandemic.

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Over the last year, schools in Wales have had to change the way they work and function, with most pupils learning from home.

As a result Estyn deployed their staff to "support schools" and brought their inspections to a stop.

But with the Welsh Government hoping to reintroduce them in September both Plaid and some headteachers are calling on ministers to stop them going ahead.

Speaking to BBC Radio Cymru's Dros Frecwast, Plaid's education spokeswoman, Sian Gwenllian, said the remaining months of 2021 should be spent "concentrating on the education lost by pupils" not with schools facing inspections.

"Schools are going to have a lot of work in helping the children and young people catch up with all the education they've lost," she said.

"The last thing they need is the stress and the added pressure that naturally comes with an inspection.

"I think the fairest and most sensible thing to do would be to suspend them."

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'Added pressure'

Neil Foden, head teacher of Ysgol Friars in Bangor, and executive member of Wales' largest education union NEU Cymru, said inspections create "great added pressure".

"This means that schools don't really act in the way they would usually," he said.

"There is some evidence that suggests that schools that have inspections… well they don't reach quite the correct standards for the rest of the academic year because of the effect it's had."

Mr Foden added schools will have lost six and a half months of "normal" education by the end of this academic year due to the pandemic.

A Welsh Government spokesman said it was "important for inspections to resume when the time is right".

He added they were "hopeful that a level of inspection activity" could resume by September 2021, though they acknowledged that this was "subject to the incidence of the virus".

An Estyn spokesman added their staff have currently been deployed to help schools in other ways and that "statutory inspections and their frequency are subject to Welsh Government regulations".

The Welsh Conservatives have been asked to comment.