Our Education Strategy

The Education Strategy, which has been established by the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, serves as a guiding compass for what the Bailiwick's education system needs to deliver.

Even in a small community like ours, the States-maintained education system is broad and diverse, covering early years, primary, secondary, post-16, special educational needs and adult learning across numerous sites. Think of the Education Strategy as the glue that binds all this together with one common purpose.

It articulates the ambition and aspiration for the islands' learners through four overarching priorities and describes how these priorities will be realised through a series of more detailed commitments. This helps to ensure the best possible outcomes for all learners so that the education they receive makes a tangible difference to their lives and the community as a whole. Beyond our schools, our education strategy also covers community, professional and business to business learning.

We are aspiring to excellence

Our four priorities have been developed in partnership with schools, settings and service leaders to make sure that there is a collective sense of ownership throughout States' education community.

Moving forward, everything that we do in education can be linked back to these four themes. It helps ensure accountability and that resources are directed in the best way possible.

The priorities are necessarily high-level, as you would expect any vision to be. Collectively they set out an overall framework to enable all aspects of education to flourish. What's key is that learners are always at the centre.

• Equity, Safety and Inclusivity

  • Pivotal to our Education Strategy is fairness. We want to ensure every learner has everything they need to be successful. And we deliver that through equity, safety and inclusivity.
  • But what do these three terms means in practice?
  • Inclusivity is about ensuring that all learners can benefit from the same opportunities. Equity builds on that by recognising that learners need varying levels of support to attain the same progress and the teaching and other assistance they receive should reflect that. And to be able deliver on either of these promises, everyone needs to feel safe in our educational a settings so that they can be confident and be the best they can be.
  • We will achieve equity, safety and inclusivity with the following commitments:
    • Embedding whole-setting cultures and practices which promote inclusivity, challenge inequity, support health and well-being for all and remove barriers to personal ambition
    • Ensuring that our curriculum at all phases reflects the needs of all learners and is appropriately broad, diverse, creative and ambitious
    • Ensuring that the protective measures in place to safeguard and keep learners safe are of the highest standard in all settings
    • Striving for excellence, by acting quickly to challenge any areas of under-performance and providing effective and responsive support to settings so that all learners receive a high quality of education

• Meeting the needs of our community

  • The world continues to change at a rapid pace and the educational opportunities we offer must reflect that. Thus a key focus of our Education Strategy is ensuring that we will continue to meet the needs of our community. We do that by:
    • Ensuring that our education system equips learners with the knowledge and skills so they are able to succeed wherever they are, either within or beyond the Bailiwick, now and in the future
    • Engaging and working with partners through appropriate channels so that educational development is informed by a range of views and is clearly communicated to a broad range of key stakeholders
    • Operating in a spirit of openness and transparency so that all stakeholders understand the processes in place across the Bailiwick to maintain the highest quality of education
    • Making the most responsible, efficient and effective use of public resources to provide learning environments that promote excellence and facilitate individual creativity and community prosperity
    • Working in partnership to embed and promote learner-centred practice across the sector so that our learners, their families, staff and settings receive a consistently high quality level of support

• High quality learning and excellent outcomes

  • Surely a fundamental objective of any education system, but how do we intend to keep achieving it?
    • Championing early intervention approaches in all phases and building on excellent foundations to provide the best outcomes for our learners
    • 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
    • Developing partnerships within and beyond the Bailiwick to provide effective validation, challenge and support to improve the quality of education

• Outstanding leadership and governance

  • Our staff across our educational settings are our strongest asset and we need to support them with the right leadership and governance to enable them to do what they do best - the daily delivery of excellent education. We achieve this by:
    • Developing cultures which embrace creativity and innovation, reviewing frameworks and investing in leadership development at all levels to empower leaders to lead
    • Reviewing and developing appropriate education governance systems for settings and across the States of Guernsey
    • Reporting regularly, accurately and meaningfully on the quality of education across the Bailiwick
    • Developing a shared culture of trust, honesty, open communication and reflection across the whole education sector that embraces and promotes continuous improvement and accountability at all levels

• 2023 Education Strategy Annual Report

  • The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has published the first annual report examining where the priorities and commitments of the Education Strategy are being met and where improvements are needed. While the first annual report highlights that in many areas positive progress is being made, it is also an honest reflection of where more improvements are still required. You can read it in full here:  Our Education Strategy Annual Report [6Mb]

• 2024 Education Strategy Annual Report

  • The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has published its second annual report examining where the priorities and commitments of the Education Strategy are being met and where improvements are needed. You can read it in full here:  Our Education Strategy Annual Report 2024 [6Mb] and an executive summary here:  Our Education Strategy Annual Report 2024 - Executive Summary [3Mb]