Education roadmap torn to pieces
A YEAR ago, a very different type of roadmap was presented to the States.
This one had nothing to do with lockdown or Covid-19 but was intended to plot a way out of the mess secondary education was in.
First, there was to be an agreed vision statement to define the objectives and outcomes for building an education system fit for the 21st century.
A ‘structured and open approach’ to this was required so islanders could understand the purpose of the changes.
Then a ‘well-consulted, well-researched report’ would objectively assess all the options for transforming secondary schooling.
It was the only way to achieve the vision, the leader of the pause-and-review requete, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, told the Assembly.
Twelve months on, that roadmap has been torn up. No report will outline the pros and cons of all the options and weigh up their costs and educational benefits.
Instead, islanders will learn next month of Education’s ‘direction of travel’ through ‘detailed guiding principles’ it has developed via talks with unions and staff.
Assuming the States lets Education off a hook its own president hammered into place, a policy letter will follow in May, 14 months after the original requete.
The delay, like so much about the States at present, is laid at the door of Covid-19.
No doubt that is a factor, but it is also worth noting that the requerants envisaged the pause-and-review report taking just four months. Much of the information had already been gathered, they said, so parents, pupils and teachers should not suffer more needless setbacks.
As we now know, that report was almost finished prior to October’s election but, perhaps because it made for an uncomfortable read, it has been shelved and its parameters redrawn.
Education says it must be allowed time to complete its work. Yet it seems to have spent longer talking about why it will not be publishing existing reports than producing new ones.
When the requete was laid at the end of February 2020 its proposers said it would delay the project by about a year. With that time passed, islanders still have little clue what the new direction of travel is, let alone the timetable for its delivery.