Thank you very much. We're going to talk now a bit about schools causing concern with questions from Huw Irranca-Davies.
Thank you, Chair. If I can, just first of all, zoom in on the way in which we actually decide which schools need what support. So, one of the interesting questions for us is how do we use the different systems out there. So, we've got the school categorisation system, which we're familiar with. We've also got Estyn inspection reports, then we've got other intelligence, including local intelligence on the ground. How do you decide from that? How is it decided what schools need support, need challenge? How do we do that?
Well, you're right: what we have is a variety of ways in which we can identify schools that need support, or need to be challenged on their practice. But it's important not to confuse them either. So, our primary route to doing this is our school categorisation system. Sometimes, and perhaps this is inevitable—. That system is primarily there as a triage system around identifying where our resource should be spent. So, our school improvement service—it's a risk-based approach, so they can evaluate where they need to put their time, effort and resource. Sometimes, it's used by other people for other things, but that is not its primary purpose; its primary purpose there is not one of accountability, it is one of identifying risk and aligning that then to the support that is available. Estyn—now that is part of that accountability system. That is our method of holding schools and their governing bodies to account for their practice and for the work that they do. Both systems, of course, are evolving. So, how we do categorisation has changed over a period of time. The elements that go into making that judgment around the levels of support have changed, and, of course, the Estyn inspection regime is also changing. At the moment, schools are only inspected once every seven years. We're moving to a system where Estyn will be more regularly in schools. So, they are two systems, but they are different and they look at different things. But our categorisation system is how we look for those ways of identifying support for schools.
And you've made, with feedback over the last few years, adjustments to the way that the categorisation system works. Are you content with where it is now, or do you see more adjustments being made? Have you got things in front of you that you're getting feedback on saying 'Well, we need to tweak this again a little bit'?