Wednesday 03 November 2021
Development of the island's Education Strategy is continuing at pace with a focus on collaborating with a range of staff - from early years through to post-16 - to ensure tangible benefits for young people.
The Education Strategy, the development of which has been a key priority for the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, has been referenced in States debates about the future of secondary and post-16 education but extends to the delivery of education across all settings and age ranges. It provides a framework which will help deliver a high-quality education for all learners.
This is an evolving piece of strategic work that is designed to outline the key priorities and the underpinning commitments that leaders from education settings, the Education Office and the Committee have agreed set out the medium to long-term vision and ambitions for education in Guernsey and Alderney. The Education Strategy should be viewed as the glue that holds the complex education eco-system together as it shows what is important and lays out the collective aspirations for the whole system.
It is staff in education settings and across our education services and whole estate who will determine the success of turning the strategy into tangible benefits for young people, so a network of staff from across settings are working together to support the development and visibility of the strategy as it moves from intent to implementation.
The four pillars of the strategy are below with a brief overview of each:
Achieving equity, safety and inclusivity
Embedding whole-setting cultures and practices which promote inclusivity, challenge inequity, support well-being and remove barriers to personal ambition.
Ensuring that our curriculum at all phases reflects the needs of all learners and is appropriately broad, diverse and ambitious.
Meeting the needs of our community
Ensuring that our education system equips learners with the right balance of knowledge and skills so they are able to succeed wherever they are, either within or beyond the Bailiwick, now and in the future.
Delivering high quality learning and excellent outcomes
Establishing practices which support leaders to develop, invest in and retain a robust, evidence-informed and highly-skilled education workforce including excellent continuous professional development and high-quality recruitment.
Ensuring that our schools, post 16 and lifelong learning offers evolve to reflect best practice in curriculum development.
Providing outstanding leadership and governance
Developing cultures, reviewing frameworks and investing in leadership development at all levels to empower leaders to lead.
Review and develop appropriate education governance systems for settings and across the States of Guernsey.
More information on the development of the Education Strategy is available at www.gov.gg/educationstrategy
Nick Hynes, Director of Education, said:
'The priorities and commitments identified within the strategy are necessarily high-level, as you would expect any vision to be. However, we are very clear that the intention and purpose of the education strategy should be to have our children, young people and adult learners at the centre and ensure that as a result it delivers a tangible impact on the lives and outcomes of the community we serve.
'The key to the success of the strategy will lie in how all of us who work in education across the Bailiwick can work together to implement the ambition of the strategy for the benefit of children and young people in the system now and in the future. To support this we have established a network of aspiring leaders from education settings who are working together to support the development and visibility of the strategy as it moves from intent to implementation. We are also working with our Head Teachers and Principals to map their own development priorities against the wider Education Strategy and this will help us to see where we have great practice that we can share across our settings; where we can learn from each other and where we might need to invest time and resource to meet the vision for the whole system.
'This is an evolving piece of work, which really emphasises the need for continued development, and we will continue to provide regular updates as this progresses and we're able to explain tangible improvements to the community. That is the key part in all of this; the Education Strategy is not something that will sit on a shelf, it is the most important workstream within education as it underpins everything education delivers and sets the standard for how we deliver education both now and in the future.'
