Rewards of failure go unchecked
AS SHOCK waves continue to reverberate from the publication of the Mulkerrin review into Education, a common theme will emerge: move on, learn lessons, look for improvements.
AS SHOCK waves continue to reverberate from the publication of the Mulkerrin review into Education, a common theme will emerge: move on, learn lessons, look for improvements.
That must be done. There is an urgent need to get the provision of education back on its feet, under a new chief officer, and to implement the Mulkerrin recommendations.
Beyond that, however, there is an equally pressing case for looking back. Taxpayers, parents and former pupils are all owed an answer to a simple question: how was this debacle allowed to happen?
Islanders should be under no illusion. The failures of the education service were not the result of some misfortune or accident. They were visible, predictable, in the public domain – and played down.
Despite all the warning signs, despite numerous cries for help, a manifestly unsuitable director of education was allowed to remain in office overseeing an educational regime damagingly out of step with best practice in England.
He was kept there by officials who refused to act and who persuaded deputies not to rock the boat, to the detriment of the island as a whole.
It is also clear that there are serious questions about the judgement, value and role of the various political boards supposedly overseeing a £75m. organisation and ensuring that local children benefit from a quality learning environment.
Yet who is asking these serious questions?
As it stands, no one is accountable. The director of education has been shunted into a cushy sinecure with just a few years to go before drawing a gold-plated pension based on – guess what? – his director's, not his new, lower, pay. The minister clings to office, still drawing her enhanced 'I'm in charge' salary.
In short, it is the unacceptable rewarding of failure – yet it goes unchallenged.
And now, it is the architects of Education's failure who are tasked with implementing the improvements that, until yesterday, they insisted were not necessary.
At least the department has admitted losing public confidence and acknowledged that it needs to be restored.
But after what has happened, that cannot happen while the minister and the man she had so much confidence in remain involved.
