MS, Cabinet Secretary for
Education
First published:
3 September 2025
Last updated:
3 September 2025
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As we start a new academic year, and welcome new teachers,
leaders and support staff, I wanted to provide an update on how
we are supporting the profession. I fully appreciate the
challenges that our workforce is facing and I am working closely
with our partners to make improvements. The success of our
education system is reliant on a high-quality workforce, and it
is essential that we provide the best support and conditions for
them.
Work to develop the Strategic Education Workforce Plan is
progressing. The plan will set out our vision for supporting the
school workforce in four key areas:
- Supporting our workforce to deliver quality teaching and
learning to improve outcomes for learners
- Addressing workload issues
- Responding to new challenges for the school workforce and
ensuring access to support through a specialist workforce
- Ensuring that teaching, leadership and supporting teaching
remains an attractive career pathway.
The well-being of staff will be a key consideration across all
four areas.
I have already committed to taking forward a number of actions to
support the workforce, and today I'm also pleased to outline
progress in several areas. We have been working with the
Teachers' Pay and Conditions Partnership Forum to develop the
proposals to move Additional Learning Needs Coordinators onto the
leadership pay scale following the initial consultation during
the summer term. I intend to make a further announcement on this
work in due course. Additionally, I recognised the important work
of school leaders and the pressures they are under by remitting
the Independent Welsh Pay Review Body (IWPRB) to consider what
changes could be made to leaders' conditions of service. I look
forward to receiving the IWPRB report on that part of the remit
later in the Autumn. In the meantime, I have written to directors
of education to remind them of the importance of ensuring leaders
have time away from work on weekends and over school holidays.
And I am looking forward to receiving the outcomes from the
Strategic Workload Coordination Group shortly which will inform
our future plans.
As we further develop the plan, my key priorities will be to work
with our social partners and stakeholders to:
- agree how we will take forward my commitment to improve pay
and conditions for our support staff, who play a crucial role in
our schools
- collaborate on solutions to our recruitment and retention
challenges, particularly secondary teachers in both Welsh and
English-medium schools. This will include detailed consideration
of how we can improve support for teachers through initial
teacher education and their first few years of teaching,
- develop our proposals for covering teacher absence, which is
a complex area due to the variety of different approaches used by
local authorities to source supply staff.
The details of the plan will continue to be developed with the
profession, local authorities/governing bodies as the employers,
the education workforce unions and our key partners over the
coming months. I will also be taking account of the Children,
Young People and Education Committee's inquiry into Teacher
Recruitment and Retention, and my aim is to publish the plan
during the spring term.
Lastly, over the summer, I was pleased to announce that Dr
Gwenllian Lansdown Davies has been appointed as the Chief
Executive of the new national professional learning and
leadership body and will take up her role in November. The name
of the body will be Dysgu, recognising that our
education workforce need continued support to develop throughout
their careers to ensure the best outcomes for our learners.
Dysgu, which is now operational, will be taking responsibility
for my key national priorities for maintained schools and
settings, including literacy, numeracy and well-being, alongside
long-term change programmes including support for additional
learning needs and improving the teaching of Welsh in our
English-medium schools, and our practitioner leadership
programmes.
This statement is being issued during recess to keep Members
informed. Should Members wish me to make a further statement or
to answer questions on this when the Senedd returns I would be
happy to do so.
