Wales’ controversial school ‘banding’ system is to be replaced with a new colour-coded support mechanism designed to raise pupil performance, we can reveal.
Officials in the Welsh Department for Education are preparing to launch the “national school improvement and categorisation system” as a means of ensuring schools get the right support and intervention to improve.
Unlike banding, it will extend to primaries as well as secondaries and see schools in Wales categorised annually into one of four groups.
A judgement on standards – based on available data – will be made, and schools at the lowest end of the scale (category Four) will languish in the “red zone”.