Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg
Following your responses to the consultation during the autumn, we will be making some changes to the statutory Curriculum for Wales framework guidance. Some of these have already taken place and others will take place over the coming weeks. The ‘last updated’ date at the bottom of each page of the guidance on Hwb shows whether a change has been made. Please read on to see what’s changing and which parts of the guidance we’re working to improve.
Literacy
We have made minor changes to be clear about the role and importance of phonics. The statutory guidance for the Languages, Literacy and Communication Area of Learning and Experience is clear that the systematic and consistent teaching of phonics must be a key part of schools’ approach to reading. We have updated this section of guidance to further clarify the role of systematic and consistent phonics teaching in helping learners to decode words.
Having learned to decode words, learners use a range of comprehension strategies to develop understanding of the meaning of words and sentences. Changes have been made to the guidance to clarify the use of pictures or cues in helping learners to understand the meaning of what they are reading – it does not advocate the use of pictures to help learners to decode words.
Further support for teaching and developing literacy will follow later this year. We are already working with partners, including local authorities, to ensure all schools and practitioners have access to the same high-quality training and support to teach literacy and we are reviewing the Literacy and Numeracy Framework to support the whole of our teaching profession to develop literacy and numeracy skills across the curriculum. This will be underpinned by clear, evidence-based, national principles for effective literacy and numeracy teaching.
There’s more about our initial work around literacy in the blog: Curriculum Design: Evidence and expertise
Enabling Learning
Following feedback, we want to take more time to get the changes to Enabling learning and Pedagogy sections of guidance right, so there will be no substantive changes to these sections of guidance at this time.
The purpose of these two sections is to ensure all practitioners adopt a developmentally and pedagogically appropriate approach to planning, designing and implementing their curriculum, to meet the needs of all learners.
The Enabling learning guidance was developed with children of all ages at all stages of development in mind. Our consultation asked for views on changing the guidance to more clearly signal how these principles can support older learners too. Effective learning and teaching is essential to enabling learners to progress and we will continue to work with practitioners to understand the support needed to use the 12 pedagogical principles and the 3 enablers effectively for all learners.
Definitions
Some of the definitions you see when you hover over highlighted terms have been amended to make the definitions clearer and to make sure there’s consistency in Welsh and in English. These changes to definitions do not change the substance of what is conveyed in the guidance.
Welsh language version of the guidance
There is a Welsh language version and an English language version of the statutory curriculum framework guidance (rather than a direct translation from one language to the other). Some parts of the guidance were subject to a bilingual editorial process before publication and your feedback in the recent consultation highlighted the need for a review of the Welsh language version in particular. We intend to take this review forward over the coming months to improve the quality and consistency of the Welsh language version.
Other changes include:
- Consistency of wording to reflect the approach to publishing your school curriculum summary set out in the Continuing the journey section that was published in January 2024
- wording that better links personalised assessments with progression and assessment and to clarify legislative changes relating to personalised assessments from September
- amendments to wording in the Designing your Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements sections to ensure consistency with other sections of the guidance and to reflect that all maintained schools and settings are now using Curriculum for Wales with learners up to Year 9
- addressing issues with hyperlinks and typographical errors.
If have a question on the guidance, or identify an issue, please feed that back to us at: curriculumforwales@gov.wales for review.
