The system is too cosy to change
WHILE the Education saga has been playing out and the former minister and her acolytes stick to the script prepared for them – it's all the fault of the 11-plus, Mulkerrin's just opinion and everyone's got it in for the director of education – there's another thread to this that warrants examination: just who is running government?
WHILE the Education saga has been playing out and the former minister and her acolytes stick to the script prepared for them – it's all the fault of the 11-plus, Mulkerrin's just opinion and everyone's got it in for the director of education – there's another thread to this that warrants examination: just who is running government?
Poor exam results are just a symptom of wider problems and were, in any event, apparently widely anticipated by those in the know.
So why did they come as such a surprise to the Policy Council that the Mulkerrin review was immediately ordered?
In any other organisation, a division commanding the second biggest tranche of resources would be required to account for how successfully it was using them and how that contributed to corporate objectives.
Since the GCSE failures were a surprise to other ministers, it is clear that they do not hold each other to account or review key performance indicators or do anything meaningful to ensure that government is operating effectively as a whole.
If they do not, who does? Neither Scrutiny nor Public Accounts have looked at Education and when warning signs were posted by the Frontier Economics skills strategy report nothing happened – even after Education tried to trash the data it had supplied.
And as the Treasury minister confirms on page four today, the head of the civil service wasn't in control either and chief officers were effectively a law unto themselves.
At least now they do report to the States chief executive but it is far from clear how conflicts between the corporate agenda and what a department's political board want can be managed.
Ultimately, under Guernsey's system of government, each department retains a wide degree of executive power and autonomy and any 'central' direction – other than via the chief executive – has to come from the Assembly as a whole.
But when deputies tried to raise the issue of Education's management back in 2003, they were soon slapped down by officials.
One of the benefits of having everyone in charge is that no one is responsible and no one accountable. And even on the odd occasion when a minister is toppled, the civil service remains unscathed.
Why change a system like that?
