What has been done to date?
GUERNSEY'S chief minister took time out of a busy schedule in the States yesterday to say that, contrary to this column's view yesterday, there would be no whitewash report following the review of the Education Department.
GUERNSEY'S chief minister took time out of a busy schedule in the States yesterday to say that, contrary to this column's view yesterday, there would be no whitewash report following the review of the Education Department.
Quite the reverse. The determination of the Policy Council to put right and improve any problems associated with Education was considerable and the terms of the inquiry enabled the reviewer to embrace any matter that had a contributing effect on the decline of exam results at the high schools.
That is welcome news and we are happy to accept the assurances about the intentions of the Policy Council in this matter.
Nevertheless, as columnist Peter Roffey outlines opposite, grounds for scepticism remain.
In the spring of 2007, an Employment and Discrimination Tribunal took the unusual step of publishing a 67-page decision on the unfair dismissal by Education of now deputy Jane Stephens. One of its conclusions, highlighted in bold type, was as follows:
'…any possibility of following a fair process was seemingly very remote; and became impossible due to the continuing failure of senior Education management and the Education board to adopt the rules of natural justice that are so evidently missing in this dismissal.'
It is just one of a large number of damning observations about the deficiencies in the way the department – not the schools – was run.
Shortly afterwards, Ibis Consultants Ltd reviewed the options for the future management of the department, having been commissioned by the Policy Council such were the concerns about what was happening there.
That was published in 2008 and highlighted a deep division of views about the style of the director of education and the department generally and while it could not resolve that difference, concluded (also in bold type) that 'carrying on as now cannot be a sound basis for success in such a context'.
In other words, there was ample evidence that things were not well within the department.
The latest review and its rigour notwithstanding, what islanders want to know is what – if anything – the politicians on Education have done to rectify the already identified problems.
