What we're seeing, and we've seen this before in the previous cycle, is that the performance of some authorities is patchy. There are authorities that we have concerns about. Those are the authorities—. I think I said to committee last year those authorities are ones that we held improvement conferences in last year. That was to get the senior leadership—both political and officer-led leadership—and the consortia and Welsh Government and the Wales Audit Office and, as it was, the Care and Social Services Inspectorate Wales, around the table to get those senior leadership teams to actually identify what the longer-term issues are, to surface those issues and to put together an action plan. We're revisiting those three authorities very, very shortly. The first of the revisits is in April to see what progress they've made over the past 12 months or so.
Okay. And, with things like the curriculum reforms, you've identified the new directors in place, but you've said that, although they're new directors, they're actually very experienced in education, so therefore you're confident that they're going to manage the reforms well as they are developed in the next few years.
I think one development, and I've raised this in committee before, was—. One of our concerns, apart from the fact that there was a large turnover of directors, was what sort of level of training senior leaders and middle managers were getting in those authorities. One of the things that I'm quite pleased to report is that the Association of Directors of Education in Wales and Welsh Government have stepped up to address that issue. Last year, all serving directors attended residential courses run by the Staff College Wales, facilitated by ADEW, and ADEW have just finished the first round of director—. The name of the course is the 'Welsh future leaders in education' course and 26 people have just finished that—aspiring directors. They're preparing for another cohort in September. That course, again, is developed by the Staff College Wales, but it has a lot of external input. They're putting in directors and chief executives from Scotland, they're putting in headteachers of very successful schools in England, who've got current grass-roots experience to share with these aspiring directors. So, I think the concerns that we had previously about the professional learning for middle managers and leaders in local authorities are being addressed. The proof will be in the pudding when we start to do the inspection cycle, but at least the issue now is being tackled.
Can I just look at, then, consortia? One of the criticisms in the report was that national policy wasn't being put in context—I think that was the statement in the report—in certain consortia. Can you elaborate on what you meant by that?