Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) is a special health authority within NHS Wales. As part of the NHS our purpose is to work with partners to plan, develop, education and train the current and future workforce. Our vision is to develop a skilled and sustainable workforce that improves care and population health.
As we progress into an era marked by rapid technological advancements and generational shifts, the importance of a robust and forward-thinking education strategy has never been more critical. As the strategic workforce body in NHS Wales, we are responsible for commissioning and delivering education and training for the NHS in Wales. Our role is to ensure that the NHS has the skills it needs to meet population health need and deliver quality care. The education we commission and deliver serves as the foundation for our current and future workforce equipping them with the skills to deliver high quality care to patients and to improve population health.
It is important that we take a long-term and strategic approach to education to help us anticipate and prepare for changes in healthcare delivery driven in part by rapid technological change and shifts in service models that could affect the demand for healthcare skills. Our goal is to ensure that our education provision is fit to deliver the workforce that we need into the future avoiding education provision becoming outdated or misaligned with population need leading to gaps in critical skills. We also need to ensure that we have in place an education approach that meets the expectations of future generations to maximise the number of people who want to study and learn in Wales to ensure a healthy future workforce pipeline.
We are inviting stakeholders to help us develop our strategy including but not limited to learners, educators, employers, education providers, statutory organisations and policy experts to help us develop a comprehensive strategy and with this in mind, we are launching a formal call for evidence to ensure that our education strategy is informed by diverse perspectives.
The main objective of this call for evidence is:
We will use the information and evidence to help inform and shape our future education strategy and it will help us to identify key themes to explore at our engagement events to be held later in 2025 and early 2026.
There is further information available on the development of the strategy here.
To frame the discussion, we have identified areas where evidence and input will be particularly valuable including:
Further information on these areas is set out below:
1. Educational Quality
How do we ensure that our learners are supported with quality learning experiences that focus on the knowledge and skills needed to deliver high quality care and improved patient outcomes?
Prompt questions
2. Curriculum and Pedagogy
How do we ensure that healthcare education remains pedagogically sound and able to adapt and respond to scientific and technological advance?
Prompt questions:
3. Inclusion and Equity
How do we address barriers (such as age, geography, background, ability) to extend opportunities for all learners to access education or training that improves access to healthcare roles and career progression?
Prompt questions:
4. Technology in Education
What role should technology play in modern healthcare education?
Prompt questions:
5. Supporting Educators
What support and training do healthcare educators* need to thrive in their roles?
Prompt questions:
We invite you to submit evidence to HEIW.EducationStrategy@wales.nhs.uk in the following formats:
Please send information to HEIW.EducationStrategy@wales.nhs.uk. Alternatively, please use the following forms to participate:
In addition to written submissions, we are planning to host a series of engagement events to facilitate dialogue. These will include face to face and online opportunities
Further details will be published on our dedicated webpage in due course.
We are committed to handling all submissions with the utmost confidentiality. Personal data will only be used in compliance with data protection laws and a Data Privacy Impact Assessment (DPIA) has been completed. From the evidence submitted we will develop a thematic summary with anonymised contributions. If you submit evidence from an organisation and indicate that you are happy for us to publish information you supply, please let us know. Responses from individual persons will used in an anonymised way and no personally identifiable information will be published.
Your voice matters. By participating in this call for evidence, you are contributing to a shared vision for the future of healthcare education and training in Wales. We thank you in advance for your time, expertise, and commitment to shaping our strategy.
Curriculum - the curriculum is a framework for setting out the aims of the programme of education, including the knowledge and understanding to be gained at each stage.
Digital divide – this is used to describe where there is unequal access to digital technology
Inter-professional education - this occurs when students from two or more professionals learn about, from and with each other
Pedagogy - most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners.
*in the context of the strategy, the term ‘educator’ is being used as a broad term to describe those who have a formal role in educating and training the workforce including students and trainees within a healthcare environment. Across professional groups, job titles and roles differ and there are standards laid down by Regulators that define specific responsibilities. The strategy will not focus on those who work in other settings such as higher or further education institutions which are outside our remit.