Wales has once again ranked as the worst of the UK nations in global education tests, with the latest Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) results showing a widening gap. The OECD, which runs Pisa, indicates that Welsh 15-year-olds are approximately two years behind England's in reading, science, and maths, and a year behind teenagers in Scotland and Northern Ireland in reading.
The results have led to difficult questions about Wales's performance relative to its neighbours. Education Minister Anna Brychan described the results as "not where we want them to be," while others called them "catastrophic."
A new curriculum for Wales, described as the biggest reform to Welsh education in a generation, is being fully rolled out this academic year. This curriculum gives schools freedom to design their own teaching plans. However, experts, including Lucy Crehan from Swansea University, suggest it is unlikely to improve standards and may worsen inconsistencies across schools.
Sir Nick Gibb, a former schools minister at Westminster, attributes Wales's Pisa challenges to weak accountability, arguing that schools are not being held accountable for their results. He claims that education standards in Wales and Scotland suffered because they did not adopt approaches like structured phonics teaching, which he believes helped England's international education rankings.