Today, 18 September 2017, Ofqual has announced that the next, annual National Reference Test will be held between 19 February and 2 March 2018. Our test supplier, the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER), is contacting about 350 schools that have been selected to take part in this year’s test to make arrangements.

Commenting on the first annual test held in February and March 2017, Sally Collier, Ofqual’s Chief Regulator said:

Thank you again to all the 341 schools and nearly 18,000 GCSE students who took part in the first test, earlier this year. We have completed the analysis of this year’s test and we are very satisfied with the quality of the information that it has provided. Nearly all schools that had been asked to take part did so and this was a major contributor to the quality of the information we obtained. I would ask all schools that are contacted for the test in 2018 to take part. Thank you in advance for your support.

Each year a sample of GCSE students will take the same test so it will show, over time, if there is any change in how students perform at a national level. Results from the test will only be used to measure changes in performance nationally. There will be no results for individual students or schools.

We would expect to see an improvement in early National Reference Test results as student and teacher familiarity with the new English language and maths GCSEs increases. This, alongside the need to compare the performance of student cohorts over several years, means that we expect it will be 2019 at the earliest before exam boards will start to use the information from the National Reference Test when they award GCSEs.

For more information about the test, please visit the National Reference Test document collection.

For more information about the National Foundation for Educational Research please visit the NFER website.

It has been 20 years since Wales made the historic decision to create its National Assembly and, in that time, we have seen some significant changes to the way in which Wales is governed.

I am pleased that my government has made an important contribution to Wales’s devolution journey. We enacted the Wales Act earlier this year which delivers a new devolution settlement for Wales, further powers to the Assembly and the Welsh Government and making clearer their areas of responsibility. We have also agreed a fiscal framework with the Welsh Government that secures fair levels of funding for Wales for the longer term and paves the way for the Assembly to take responsibility for Welsh Rates of Income Tax in two years’ time.

The Welsh economy has also acquired an international reputation for excellence. I took the CEO of Aston Martin to Japan with me where the company signed a £500 million deal which will help safeguard jobs in Wales and open new possibilities for future deals with Japan.

We also saw the signing of the Cardiff City Region Deal and Swansea Bay Region City Deal bringing in millions of pounds of investment and creating thousands of jobs, helping provide real opportunities for growth and prosperity in Wales.

We have also announced the abolition of Severn tolls which is a vital investment artery into Wales which will boost the economy of South Wales by around £100 million a year.

We are now engaged in another historic mission which will see the UK leave the European Union and start the process of bringing a range of new powers back from Brussels to UK shores.

I have been clear that throughout this process we will negotiate as one United Kingdom, taking due account of the specific interests of every nation and region of the UK.​

I will continue to engage with the devolved administrations as we seek a deal that secures the specific interests of the people and governments of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, as well as those of all parts of England.

Wales will always have a voice at the negotiating table.