Education up against it to deliver the goods on time

IT SAYS plenty about the leadership and decision-making within Education that one day they were going to nominate Deputy Marc Leadbeater to get his seat back, the next they had plumped for someone else.

Such has been the way within the committee, which has a bad track record so far for showing any clarity of thought.

And clarity is exactly what is now needed if reforms to secondary education are going to be delivered with the buy-in needed from the teaching profession and, equally importantly, the community.

Education vice-president Carl Meerveld told Deputy Leadbeater that the committee had been advised by a senior States member that bringing him back on board would look 'weak'.

The upshot of that is we now have a committee that is even more unbalanced, more vulnerable should there be any sign of straying from the path they have pledged so strongly to follow, despite four of them not wanting to go there.

Deputies Le Pelley, De Lisle, Dudley-Owen and the newest member of the team, Neil Inder, have all spoken out with varying degrees of vociferousness against the States resolution to move to an all-ability system based around three schools.

It leaves Deputy Meerveld as the sole champion, and even then, his thinking is one or two steps removed from others on the issue.

They do not have a wildly strong mandate from the States when you start to consider the reasons for surviving the motion of no confidence.

For some it was far too early in the life of the committee to make this kind of move – they wanted to give them the opportunity to come up with a plan and set about implementing it – something of a crash-and-burn philosophy.

Some simply believed this was dirty politics, bad for the public image of the States. It was not so much about confidence in the board, but not wanting to be seen indulging in such things when there were important decisions to be made.

Some did not know or did not think there was enough evidence to judge either way.

Others cannot look a colleague in the eye and say they are not up to the job.

But the majority have faith that it matters not what you believe, but that you can put your heart and soul into devising and then defending a system you have argued against.

This is partially based on the notion that people do this in the business world all the time.

Remind them of this next time they argue politics is not a business.

Also remind them what happened with paid parking, and then the tortuous progress with the waste strategy where boards have been asked to work on something against their will.

This is not the case of one manager disagreeing with a strategy devised in a boardroom but still implementing it, but four out of five board members not backing that strategy.

We are all now being asked to have faith and to give Education the space in which to work.

Next week all States members will be invited into a workshop at which they will talk through something like six options that this committee believes can deliver on the States resolution.

It is a remarkable and somewhat unprecedented way of going about things, one which has as much chance of creating confusion and muddled thinking as it does a new education system.

While the majority of the States has voted to say it has confidence in the committee, the committee does not have confidence in itself despite being set on a clear course.

Any board is wary of working up proposals that are out of step with their colleagues' thinking, but if we go down this route every time a major decision is needed it will bring government to a halt and leave it open to the criticism of working behind closed doors, stitching up votes before they even get to the chamber.

Politicians have been elected to boards to specialise and lead in different areas, not be led by others who have only a passing knowledge of a subject based on a brief introduction in a function room.

It is an olive branch to the sceptics and one way of Education showing their colleagues they are not about to stray, but it is not an efficient way to go about government.

Fortunately, the no-confidence motion has absolutely pinned the committee.

Deputy Le Pelley has said you will not see him for dust if plans for an all-ability system are not sorted out by June or July.

The only thing that will stop that happening is an internal board meltdown or the States being so underwhelmed it throws the whole thing out again – both scenarios should be unlikely given the events of the last few weeks.

Do expect, though, a range of options being floated in the States report which will give the committee and the States the chance to splinter all over the place again.

After all, Education now has a new member who has said he does not close schools, a president who has said we cannot afford to lose La Mare, a vice-president who has promoted a vision with La Mare being retained and the Grammar in conjunction with the CoFE becoming the Guernsey Higher Learning Institute.

The committee has spent eight months treading water and now, given the reporting deadlines, has less than half of that time to devise a new secondary system.

That is an incredibly tough ask – if it delivers a coherent policy in that timeframe, it should rightly be congratulated.

If not, look out for the dust.