Education Strategy annual report published

The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has published its second Education Strategy annual report, which looks at where the priorities and commitments of the strategy were met in 2023 and where improvements are needed.

Successes across education in the last year include:
• A significant rise in literacy levels across all settings
• The cultural enrichment programme which has enabled all primary-aged children to access a wide range of culturally rich activities
• All settings inspected by Ofsted in 2023 received positive reports
• A new on-island Initial Teacher Training programme will allow us to train teachers locally

The report highlights the positive progress being made in many areas while also providing an honest reflection of where more improvements need to be made for the benefit of young and adult learners.

Some key challenges where focus is being given in 2024 include:
• Raising outcomes for mathematics in all settings
• Improving school attendance to pre-Covid levels
• Continuing to improve the ‘Quality of Education’ with an aim to securing at least ‘good’ inspection judgements across all settings
• Progressing the Transforming Education Programme

Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen, President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said:

‘Delivering high quality education is essential to the future success of our islands and I am sure the community will agree that every student from the youngest to the oldest, needs to be equipped with the skills, knowledge and confidence to be a success in their future endeavours, whatever and wherever they might be.

‘The Education Strategy is the route map through which we are driving improvement in all areas of education locally. Evidence of the political commitment to our Education Strategy is seen through the many different actions set out in this report, for example, where we have increased resourcing for more Learning Support Assistants and developed policy to support strengthening the role of our Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators. Such actions have a direct and meaningful impact on the children and young people in the classroom.

‘We acknowledged in our first annual report which looked at work undertaken in 2022 and was published last year, that there was much work to be done. We laid the foundations for this work in 2021 and I am pleased that in 2023 the green shoots of improvement began to appear in many of the areas we have been focusing on and supporting through change.’

Nick Hynes, Director of Education, said:

‘I have said many times before that the Education Strategy is quite simply the glue that binds everything together and ensures that everyone working across our organisation is working toward the same vision, with the same shared values and aims.

‘While there are many areas to be proud of, there continue to be ongoing challenges and things we know we can do better. We know we are not quite where we would like to be just yet, and quite rightly should be held accountable for making further improvements. In this report, we set out where we are now and what we are going to do to improve things this year and beyond, with a transparent and honest appraisal of the progress we believe we have made against the priorities and commitments within our Education Strategy since last year’s report.

‘Guernsey has all the ingredients necessary to deliver an excellent education system and establishing a long-term vision and aims is key to this. Our strategy provides this as does clear overarching policy direction that enables us to deliver the high-quality learning leading to the excellent outcomes that our community and learners deserve.’

The Education Strategy serves as a common point of reference, or guiding compass for what the Bailiwick's education system needs to deliver. The four priorities of ‘Our Education Strategy’ were developed in partnership with schools, settings and service leaders to make sure that there is a collective sense of ownership throughout the States' education community. The development and implementation of the Education Strategy is supported by the workforce through a staff Network Group that works together to embed the Strategy in each setting, with staff fully engaged and active in supporting its aims.

The priorities, which have several commitments within each of them, are:

• Equity, safety and inclusivity
• Meeting the needs of our community
• High-quality learning and excellent outcomes
• Outstanding leadership and governance

You can learn more about Our Education Strategy and read the full annual report at https://www.gov.gg/educationstrategy