In 2014, Wales (United Kingdom) set out to reform its education system. A curriculum reform for children aged 3 to 16 leads this long-term agenda, which was developed following a consultation across Wales on the objectives for the future of its education system. The goal of the Welsh reform journey is that its education will help children and young people in Wales become ambitious, capable learners, ready to learn through their lives; enterprising, creative contributors, ready to play a full part in life and work; ethical, informed citizens of Wales and the world; healthy, confident individuals, ready to lead fulfilling lives as valued members of society. In a nutshell, Wales aims to prepare its youth to thrive in the 21st century.

The Curriculum for Wales is the cornerstone of Wales’ efforts to shape an education system led by commonly defined, learner-centred purposes. The curriculum is embedded in Education in Wales: Our National Mission, an action plan for 2017‑21 that falls in line with the Welsh vision for its education system. This vision calls for all children and young people to achieve the four purposes of becoming:

This chapter presents an overview of the Welsh education system and introduces the background to the development of the new curriculum to be implemented in schools across Wales. It then describes the purpose of this report, which follows an invitation by the Welsh Government to the OECD to assess the progress made in advancing the curriculum reform and to suggest ways to move forward with its implementation. It concludes with a description of the methodology of the OECD assessment.

This chapter analyses the design of Wales’ new curriculum policy, including its vision, its framework, and its implications in terms of teacher capacity, equity and resources. The Curriculum for Wales follows a vision shaped by four purposes for student learning. The national curriculum framework, still under development at the time of writing this report, aims to guide schools in shaping their own school curriculum. As the new curriculum differs from the current one, there are important implications in terms of resources, schools’ and teachers’ capacity, and equity that need consideration for success in its realisation.

This chapter analyses the implications of Wales’ commitment not only to engage stakeholders in policy making, but also to co-construct the new Curriculum for Wales. Co-construction can help stakeholders get deeply involved in educational change, seeing the new curriculum as a common endeavour to enhance education in Wales. Paired with strategic leadership and support from the Welsh Government, co-construction can contribute to building trust and collaboration between education stakeholders, crucial for the long-term sustainability of the new curriculum. For the next stages, there is a need to review and provide more clarity in roles and responsibilities between the various stakeholders involved in the process, as well as in the support that the Welsh Government and the middle tier can bring to help schools as they put the new curriculum into practice.

This chapter looks at some of the key institutional, policy and societal conditions that have and will likely continue to shape the curriculum reform efforts in Wales. Following an overview of why these are important, the chapter reviews the main contextual issues that underpin the curriculum reform, including policy coherence with particular focus on the alignment between the curriculum and the expectations of professional learning, the alignment of assessment and evaluation arrangements and the development of schools as learning organisations. The chapter then follows with an analysis of how the governance structures can continue to provide the improvement infrastructure required to support schools. It concludes with an overview of key issues for implementation.

This chapter proposes updating the implementation strategy of the Curriculum for Wales. It brings together the analysis of previous chapters in an actionable approach for Welsh education stakeholders to consider next steps. It suggests that the strategy adopts a school’s focus and perspective when planning for and rolling out the curriculum across all schools by September 2022. This requires developing the curriculum and capacity for all schools to be able to shape it; clarifying and focusing the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders involved to support schools in this process; continuing to align policies around the curriculum; communicating about the next steps of the strategy; and gathering data to monitor progress and accomplishments.

Beatriz Pont is a senior education policy analyst at the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, with extensive experience in education policy reform internationally. She currently leads the OECD’s Implementing Education Policies Programme. She has specialised in education policy and reform more generally, and in specific areas such as equity and quality in education, school leadership, adult learning and adult skills. She has also worked with individual countries such as Greece, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom (Wales) and others in their school improvement reform efforts and launched the comparative series Education Policy Outlook. Previously, Beatriz was a researcher on education and social policies in the Economic and Social Council of the Government of Spain and worked for Andersen Consulting (Accenture). She studied Political Science at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, and holds a Master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in Political Science from Complutense University, Madrid. She has been a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (Tokyo University), at the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies (LIEPP, Sciences Po, Paris) and was granted an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University.

The present report elaborates on over six years of interactions and visits between the OECD and Wales (between 2014 and 2020), which included visits in tens of schools across the country and repeated discussions with many more through participation in various workshops and advisory groups. As a result, findings from previous school visits especially were used to set the context in which the analysis of this report is grounded.