Much more to learn from Mulkerrin
IT'S worth reading the Mulkerrin report on Guernsey's education system more than once. First time round, the key findings about the main shortcomings at the Education Department hit you in the eye so hard it's difficult to look beyond them.
IT'S worth reading the Mulkerrin report on Guernsey's education system more than once. First time round, the key findings about the main shortcomings at the Education Department hit you in the eye so hard it's difficult to look beyond them.
But actually there's a lot more to learn.
For example, Mr Mulkerrin stresses that he didn't have time to look at the primary school sector. But from the reading ages of many children when they first move up into secondary education, there's clearly a problem. Given the speed and thoroughness of his first report, perhaps the Policy Council should persuade him to carry out Mulkerrin 2.
Another interesting snippet is revealed by the graph showing GCSE results at Guernsey's four secondary schools over the last decade. La Mare may be the lowest-performing now, but 10 years ago it was actually the highest.
This shows two things. The first is a long period of decline which should have been picked up far sooner. The second is that despite struggling to achieve public support in some quarters recently, Deputy Jenny Tasker must have been one heck of a good head teacher. Maybe those outstanding skills as an educationalist, and her fulsome acceptance of the report, make her the ideal caretaker minister at Education until the election?
Another fascinating idea raised by Mulkerrin is giving long-term housing licences to a small minority of exceptional teachers on a strict quota basis. They would still come in on five-year contracts, but those who prove to be inspirational pedagogues could become permanent residents.
Such a system could obviously prove hugely beneficial to schools, but it would require iron discipline from the Education Department to resist 'mission creep' and starting to make the case on behalf of any half-decent teacher. And if the principle was established, HSSD would be bound to make the case for extending the system to health care workers.
Another detail worth highlighting is Mr Mulkerrin's warm praise for the standards being achieved at St Anne's secondary school in Alderney. Maybe its physical separation from the educational command bunker in the Grange has given it some of the local autonomy the report advocates, or perhaps the absence of a housing licence regime has created greater continuity. Certainly, they're doing something right and deserve congratulation.
The section on the 11-plus is fascinating. It's certainly not written from a dogmatic viewpoint and falls short of recommending that Guernsey adopts a comprehensive system. However, it does go out of its way to shoot down many cliched objections to doing away with selection.
As Mr Mulkerrin points out, many of these preconceptions are media-fuelled fallacies reflecting the glaring mistakes made during the UK's original ham-fisted conversion to comprehensive education.
The truth today is that the system is thriving. This is particularly true in affluent areas akin to Guernsey with few really bad social problems.
Expert analysis shows that the top 25% of children academically do at least as well as they would in a grammar school, while the rest do better than they would in a secondary modern.
It's a compelling argument, but going comprehensive is hardly the first priority to arise from the review. There are far more urgent steps to take first, but the idea shouldn't be forgotten and should be properly revisited within the next few years.
My final thought on this damning report concerns the irony if the politicians (rightly) get the order of the boot for failing to tackle the problems it highlights, while the main author of those problems gets rewarded with a plum job – a job doing the very work which took up too much of his time when he should have been focused on his main responsibilities.
I really don't want to get personal about an individual civil servant, but if performance management is to mean anything, the States can't go around rewarding failure.
Talking of performance management, what does the disaster area revealed by the Mulkerrin report say about the quality of line management of the director of education by the States' chief executive?
Many of these problems have been known about and ignored for 10 years and the main desire at the 'centre' at Frossard House always seems to have been to be to play them down to prevent any upset or ruffled feathers.
Surely this reveals an unacceptable culture of mutual self-preservation at the top of our civil service which must be tackled before any similar situations arise.
