Lessons to be learned
WHILE much of the Education Department's response to the Mulkerrin Report is encouraging, there's one aspect that is deeply disappointing.
WHILE much of the Education Department's response to the Mulkerrin Report is encouraging, there's one aspect that is deeply disappointing.
The statement that the pros and cons of abolishing the widely discredited 11-plus system probably won't be even be considered during the next four-year political term is astonishing.
What is it about this aspect of our education system that makes successive departments shy away from it?
After all, the widely praised Mr Mulkerrin made it crystal clear that our selective system is damaging the educational chances of the majority of Guernsey children without even benefiting the minority.
I concede that after the States misguidedly decided to retain the 11-plus more than a decade ago it was important not to immediately revisit the subject.
A period of stability was needed and for the rest of that four-year term and the next it was probably best to let it lie.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that it was simple political cowardice over tackling a proven controversial subject. Either that or it was not high enough on the agenda of the civil servants who were clearly running the department at the time.
Talking of which, who says the issue of selective verses comprehensive education is unlikely to be tackled before 2016?
The agenda for any department should be set by its elected members, not its paid employees, and we have no idea who will be sitting on the Education board in a few weeks' time.
Hopefully, whoever it is will have the courage not simply to park the 11-plus in the 'too difficult' tray just because it's a subject that raises strong passions.
To say that it isn't the most pressing matter facing a board trying to rescue education from many years of mismanagement is fair enough. It's understandable if they shelve it for a year or two, but to put it on ice for four or five years after the clear steer they have been given by Mulkerrin would simply be seen as 'bottling it'.
Taking the wider issue of Guernsey's troubled education service, this is probably a good time at which to reflect on the ructions of the last six months.
The whole episode has been nasty and messy but definitely necessary.
Without many people pushing and probing, including this newspaper, then the culture of inept centralised control could have gone on for years longer.
If that had happened, even more Guernsey children would have been failed.
With hindsight, the initial reaction of the former Education minister to both the GCSE results, which had to be dragged out of her, and to the Mulkerrin Report seem risible. Remarks like 'don't get hysterical' or 'it's just one man's opinion' were clearly so misguided as to be almost sad, particularly when we've seen so much corroborating evidence over the last few weeks. It's almost as if the dam of silence and control has been broken and the truth has flooded through.
Hours after La Mare de Carteret's GCSE results were made known, one long-serving member of the school committee lectured States members over their shocked response. 'You believed La Mare was a good school yesterday, so what's changed today?'
Such platitudes no longer wash. It's now clear that the oft-repeated mantra that Guernsey's education service is much better than the UK's is simply folklore which was widely believed because it had become deeply ingrained in our collective belief system.
With all of Guernsey's advantages, this urban myth should be reality. I really hope that the new regime at the Education Department can make it so.
They will certainly have everybody's support in their efforts, but the sad thing is that the task should have been started long years ago.
A system that cared more about protecting its own than about resolving chronic problems didn't help.
Neither did the willingness in some quarters to believe that those with genuine and deep-seated concerns about the Education's Department's failings and poor management culture were simply bitter and twisted individuals enjoying a sadistic witch hunt.
Neither did the weakness of politicians too dependent on their officers to question their actions.
Let's have no repeat of any of those failings as Guernsey's school system embarks on a new era.
