Education’s next blow could be a knock-out
IT’S not an easy time to be a member of the Education, Sport & Culture Committee. It feels like their political fortunes have almost gone full circle since the ‘rebels’ celebrated trashing the ‘Two-School Model’ committee.
ESC had two main priorities this term – getting secondary and post-16 education sorted, and reviewing the decades-old Education Law. Its members must have felt ‘that’ close to getting them done.
Until, almost by stealth, their political colleagues slowly, and clinically, derailed the revision of the law. First, they extricated the independent colleges from the mix. Then, at the last minute, they came for the school governance boards, the most significant part of this package.
They picked apart those boards, which were ultimately identified as being about as wishy-washy as its sixth-form centre solutions.
Why does this all matter? Proper devolution of responsibilities to the schools, their committees and their headteachers would ultimately make schools more accountable to parents. But this committee just won’t go there. So why call a ‘review’ of the law a flagship proposal if that key amendment amounts to little more than tinkering around the edges?
The withdrawal of the proposals on Friday morning was utterly predictable. ESC had been floored.
It will bounce back to its feet and lick its wounds, but if it faces another ‘mauling’ in ‘losing’ the capital projects cash-grab for its post-16 project at Les Ozouets in September, that should surely be a knock-out blow for another Education Committee.