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WRITTEN QUESTION TO THE MINISTER FOR EDUCATION, SPORT AND CULTURE BY DEPUTY R.G. LE HÉRISSIER OF ST. SAVIOUR
ANSWER TO BE TABLED ON MONDAY 20th JUNE 2011
Question
How does the Minister justify his statement that schools gave information in confidence for the compilation of Inspection Reports and that therefore he is obliged to keep such Reports confidential?
How does he expect the States and public to make meaningful assessments about the effectiveness of schools in the absence of such information?
Answer
The reason I am obliged to keep the Value for Money reports on the fee-paying and private schools confidential is because sensitive information was given in confidence on the understanding that it would be treated as such.
As the reviews were commissioned for internal use and their main purpose was to assist governors in looking for opportunities for efficiencies, it was important to give that commitment to ensure that schools had the confidence to engage fully and that the outcomes were accurate and meaningful.
While parents may approach their children's schools at any time and request information on their performance , I recognise that there is a need for meaningful information to be made available to the States and the Public so they may be better informed about the effectiveness of schools.
As I explained to the Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel at a recent hearing, we have been working on providing a range of data that properly recognises the progress of our schools and puts their effectiveness into context.
The Department has researched good practice in a number of countries and two years ago started to develop a Jersey Framework for School Evaluation based on some of the more successful approaches. The first three-year cycle will be completed across all schools by 2013.
Out of this work, the Department will be in a position to provide a much broader range of information for the States and the public about the performance of the system and individual schools.