Do school colours paint true picture?

COLOUR-labelling schools creates a temptation to look no further than the bald, traffic-light statement.

School colour categorisation has caused controversy since its introduction by the Welsh Government in 2014.

As the latest results were published yesterday, Education Minister Kirsty Williams said she will “consider the future” of the scheme, which aims to drive improvement by identifying levels of support every school in Wales needs.

Labelling by colour effectively creates a league table.

Teaching unions and head teachers’ leaders have criticised categorisation as “blunt” and “flawed”.

Schools must be accountable, but is there now too much and which of it should we look at first?

Assessment must be meaningful to gain the trust of the public and the teaching profession.

Should we look at exam results, national test results, Estyn inspection reports, views of the school improvement consortia, colour bands or all of them? Sometimes they don’t agree. Colour categorisation doesn’t always chime with what schools inspectorate Estyn finds.

For instance, last month Estyn told Wrexham County Council to “urgently improve outcomes for learners” and particularly those aged 14-16. Yet it has no schools in the latest Welsh Government ‘worst’ red banding.

Only weeks after being rated the best “highly effective” green in 2018, Hirwaun Primary was put in Estyn statutory monitoring and deemed in need of significant improvement.

Last year the school was labelled amber and this year it has gone up to yellow. Last July it was removed from Estyn monitoring, which points to improvement actions working but a contradictory picture.

Nationally schools appear to have improved since colour categorisation was launched.

More moved up to “highly effective” green this year, while fewer are red.

Within this there is a picture of some persistent problems and some schools falling two categories.

Worryingly, one in 10 secondaries is in the red band.

Whatever the future of categorisation, it needs the confidence of the whole profession to work as intended. And that’s something it does not appear to have.