Education Policy and Practice- Estyn and overview

Today's guest speaker was Dr Russel Gregg, who is the head of the south west Wales Centre of Teacher Education. This lecture gave us an insight about Estyn which is the welsh inspectorate body. "Estyn inspects quality and standards in education and training providers in wales" (Estyn 1999). Estyn not only inspects schools and universities but also other educational settings such as pupil referral units, local authority education services for children and young people and offenders learning. Dr Russel Grigg also told us that Estyn also provides advice to the welsh assembly government on the quality and standards in the education and training in Wales and also promote the spread of good practice in education and training. He also talked about the three fold purposes of Estyn which are Accountability, improvement and development. We were also shown on the Estyn website examples of Estyn reports. This lecture was very interesting as it shows us the importance the Inspectors bring to the education system in Wales, as it makes a huge difference also in our own education