Wednesday 31 March 2021
The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has moved the publication of its policy letter on the future of Secondary and post-16 education to enable it to carry out two further phases of engagement with staff.
Following on from consultation carried out with the profession and other stakeholders in the last half of 2020 as a result of Pause & Review, which has informed and influenced the Committee's approach, the Committee has considered time limitations and pressures of work on staff before taking the decision to move the publication date of the policy letter.
Lockdown made it impossible for the Committee to carry out its plans for further face-to-face engagement with staff in Secondary schools and The Guernsey Institute (TGI). The Committee had then planned for these further sessions to take place last week, but the States moved the debate on the Government Work Plan so the Committee had to change its plans.
This week the schools and TGI will close for the Easter holidays and staff will have the opportunity to take a well-earned break following a spring term severely disrupted by the second lockdown. The Committee is acutely aware of the challenges this has presented for staff and listened to the feedback from school leaders and unions that holding sessions during the last few days of term was less than ideal.
As such, to meet its commitment to engage with staff, and to ensure staff get the most out of the sessions, the Committee has decided that a short delay to the publication of its policy letter - now planned for 28th May - is needed so that it can meet with staff groups in a two-staged approach.
The first stage will see separate engagement sessions with groups of staff from each of Guernsey's Secondary and special schools, The Guernsey Institute and then school and TGI leaders. These will be held soon after the Easter holidays. The sessions will be discussion-based and examine some key issues that the Committee is aware from their union representatives that staff want to discuss. The sessions will be led by independent facilitator Phil Eyre, who also ran workshops with staff last year.
The second stage of the Committee's engagement with staff will take place in May. The Committee will deliver a presentation, open to all Secondary and TGI staff, which will outline the contents of its policy letter and explain its recommendations. This will be delivered before the policy letter is published so that staff hear it direct from the Committee first.
This presentation will also be delivered to other key stakeholder groups, again before the policy letter is published, culminating in public presentations at least one of which will be live-streamed on the States of Guernsey's Facebook page.
Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said:
'From the start, we have been very clear on the importance of engaging with key stakeholders - in particular Secondary school and The Guernsey Institute staff. Extensive consultation was carried out last year as a result of Pause & Review, the feedback from which has significantly influenced the Committee's direction of travel including the Guiding Principles for the future of Secondary and post-16 education that we published earlier this month.
'When we announced our original publication date of 10 May for the policy letter, we did so with the intention of carrying out these two phases of further engagement with staff before that date. However, a combination of lockdown making face-to-face engagement impossible and the impact of the sensible delay in the States debating the Government Work Plan has meant we simply ran out of time to engage with staff in the way we wanted to. As such the Committee has taken the pragmatic decision to push back the publication of the policy letter, which will in turn give us time to run an intensive period of engagement with staff.
'Also, and just as importantly, it gives us the opportunity to present our recommendations direct to the whole community before the policy letter is published. While it is unusual for a Committee to present its recommendations prior to a policy letter being published, we felt this was a continuation of the level of engagement we seek that is so vital to this process. There will of course be an opportunity for members of the community to attend in person and ask questions, but we recognise that some people who are interested in our plans might not want, or be able, to attend in person. By live-streaming the presentation in a similar manner to that which has been so successful for COVID-19 briefings we are trying to ensure everyone who wants to has the opportunity to hear first-hand from the Committee.'
