SIAN Gwenllian Arfon AM has branded the current colour banding categorisation of school performance as "a crude traffic lights system."

She says that a "common framework" should be applied across the board to help parents, teachers and policy-makers better understand what is really taking place in schools.

Mrs Gwenllian also warned that if education standards are to be improved significantly then more must be done to tackle the "basic issues" of school underfunding and the looming workforce crisis.

“If the Labour Government is serious about improving education in our schools then it must do more to tackle the basic issues of school underfunding and a looming workforce crisis due to its failure to recruit and retain enough teachers.

“They also need to explain why there is continued disparity between the categorisation of schools and the outcome of Estyn inspections, which can still contradict each other.

"We need greater synergy between the two systems of assessing schools and a common framework which can be applied across the board to help parents, teachers and policy-makers better understand what is really taking place in our schools. This would be better than a crude traffic lights system.

“These figures cannot either be meaningfully compared to previous years given the changes in the way schools have been assessed this time.

"The Government has admitted that it cannot therefore use the categorisation figures to identify any positive or negative trends in provision. Any such assertions would be disingenuous.”