It was certainly variable. It lasted for a relatively short period of time, so it's quite difficult to be definitive about the evaluation of it, but it was certainly variable. It varied from school to school. Some were very successful, some didn't make as much improvement. If it had lasted longer, maybe it would have made a difference. Overall, the data made—. There were improvements overall for the 40 schools over and above the general improvement that there was for all schools in Wales. So, you could say that it was successful in that respect. So, it's quite difficult to say whether it was successful, because that was a fairly limited improvement for quite a lot of money. It is, you know, quite a difficult judgment to say whether it was successful or not overall. What strikes one, I think, was the variability in the success of it, and I think that was clear also at an operational level. It was clearly more successful in certain areas where all the various people involved in the work worked together effectively. So, the challenge adviser and the local authority and the regional consortia were all working effectively together. And, in other cases, they weren't, and there had to be changes in personnel and that sort of thing. So, it was quite variable.
Of the five schools within the programme that Estyn actually inspected in the last year of the programme, I think that three of those were in special measures and two required significant improvement. Doesn't that suggest that, as far as Estyn engaged with the programme, your evidence was not to suggest that it was being successful?
Not wildly successful, certainly, but many of these schools would have been in those sorts of categories in the past as well. So, it's not very surprising that many of them still remained. So, it wasn't a huge success, clearly. As you say, many of these schools are still struggling schools, so it hasn't been a panacea.
Bearing in mind your remarks earlier over the focus on key stage 4, in particular the C to D grade boundary, what sort of minimum length of time should a programme like this run for if we are to expect success?