Hiding the truth helps nobody
AFTER years of darkness, a harsh light has been shone on the island's education service. A shroud of secrecy and misinformation has been pulled aside to expose some rather unpleasant truths.
AFTER years of darkness, a harsh light has been shone on the island's education service. A shroud of secrecy and misinformation has been pulled aside to expose some rather unpleasant truths.
We now know, for example, that far from being the educational centre of excellence islanders had been led to believe, Guernsey has been failing its children.
The result is that a sizeable lead in GCSE results over the UK a decade ago has been squandered and the island is falling behind.
To reverse that trend is going to take some work but, with the Mulkerrin report as a guiding hand and a new, more enlightened, board in place, it is far from impossible.
However, the confidence that this problem can be fixed begs questions. How did standards slip so badly? Why was nothing done to reverse that trend?
The answer, of course, is lurking in that darkness.
Without public knowledge, it was all too easy for Education to foster the common misconception that Guernsey was ahead of the game. Through selective use of statistics those whose jobs should have been on the line were able to pretend that nothing needed to change.
If, for example, parents of pupils at La Mare had been able to see that GCSE results over the past decade were in freefall and it had gone from best-performing secondary school to worst there would have been an outcry.
But that did not happen because, as the Mulkerrin report notes, 'If there is a policy it appears to be "tell people nothing"'.
It is a policy common to all the worst States departments. Genuine public scrutiny and accountability is to be feared and the default position is to hide away anything that does not paint the department in the best light.
Yet report after report recommends an open approach. The review into the firefighters' dispute said that only in exceptional cases should a report not be published. Yet many departments continue to ignore that advice.
Education signalled last night with the publication of validation reports that it is beginning to embrace open government.
Other departments must now follow suit.
