Digital Skills - Minister for Education, Sport and Culture - Transcript - 26 November 2013

Economic Affairs Scrutiny Panel Digital Skills

TUESDAY, 26th NOVEMBER 2013

Panel:

Connétable S.W. Pallett of St. Brelade (Chairman) Connétable J. Gallichan of St. Mary

Connétable D.W. Mezbourian of St. Lawrence Deputy J.M. Maçon of St. Saviour

Witnesses:

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture

Director, Education, Sport and Culture

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture

I.S. (Information Systems) Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture

[9:02]

Connétable S.W. Pallett of St. Brelade (Chairman):

We are going to do introductions. You will have to be gentle with us because this is the first time this panel has met so ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It is usually the other way around.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well we are a new panel. So I will start the introductions off. I am Constable Steve Pallett, Chairman of the Digital Skills Review Panel.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Good morning, thanks for coming. Thanks for giving your time; much appreciated. Obviously we are here to talk a bit this morning about the I.T. (Information Technology) strategy and how that is going to link in with Digital Skills.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Constable, would you like us to introduce ourselves?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Absolutely. Yes, sorry, I have jumped the gun there a little bit. We do like to know who you are. After you, Minister.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Thank you. It just shows how keen we are to get on with it. Obviously we are here because the I.T. strategy was launched on 11th October and I think it generally went down fairly well with the media and the press and the people that were involved on the day. But just going back a little bit from a historical point of view, I think the I.O.D. (Institute of Directors) debate back in September 2012 highlighted the importance of a well-trained and creative I.T. workforce for the success of any digital industry in Jersey and obviously, without getting the education side of it up and running very quickly, there is opportunity that could be missed. So in terms of the launch of the strategy, could you maybe highlight some of the progress you have made since 11th October?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, do you want me to give you a bit of a timeline and show you what we have done?

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Yes. If you could, yes.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

All right. So at the point of the I.O.D. debate, and I was the first speaker at that, you are right, that was when it was raised on the floor of the I.O.D., but we had been working on it some time before then. If I roll it all the way back to the point where Patrick and I became Ministers in the Education Department, we started going out and talking to schools for one reason or another. It became apparent in that situation that people were uncomfortable with the situation with I.T. in the schools for 2 reasons really: one was that they felt it was inadequate in terms of what the provision was for teaching I.T. in the schools and the other was the personal situations within the schools. So I embarked on a discussion with the Director and said: "Look, this is something we have to address." We began talking about it then and that was when we were entering into the Green Paper discussions to do with education anyway. At that point in time at Le Rocquier I met Julian Box who voiced his opinion as both a parent of somebody in the digital sector ... but he had similar concerns, he had been at the I.O.D., and what could we do about it. I said at the time: "Well if you talk with Mario and Patrick, then we can be in the position ..." because he would like to create a computing club, so we did that. We put in 4 computing clubs in the school. I worked quite closely with Julian at that point and that was just to really discover what the appetite was for the kind of the thing that they were looking at. This is pre-Digital Jersey, I have to say. Digital Jersey was all but a name on LinkedIn at that point in time. That really produced the materials to some extent that we were going to be looking at. Equally, though, I think it goes back to Eric Schmidt at Google saying: "You are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You have invented the Internet but you are not keeping pace of the 21st century stuff. So you just teach people how to use Excel and PowerPoint and all that sort of stuff but you do not teach them coding and everything." So that was globally responded to at that point in time and, in fact, that was when we were having much bigger discussions within the department about what we should do. I suppose that is when Christine, Romy and myself started to meet Keith Posner who were the real main team at that point and said: "How do we put some shape on all of this?" So at that point in time we had really discussed what the vision was. My particular vision really was just that all kids - and this is one perspective; it broadens out later - every child in Jersey should have the opportunity to have the best education that they can receive in terms of computing skills or I.T. from both sides of what I have just described. So that is what we started to work on, that is when we expanded. So then we put together the team which, as I say, was Keith Posner, Christine Walwyn and Romy too, who are here today. Then we began to spread out to further consultation because it was quite obvious the team themselves could not run the whole thing. I think you have had it described to you before; you have the documentation anyway. So we went through a process, that was very early on; December 2012 was really when we began that agenda. I think you have had information related to it. We talked to teachers, we went out to schools across the U.K. (United Kingdom). I think you have made note of different jurisdictions. I for one was down to go to Malta with Senator Bailhache at one point but that all got put on hold because his administration flushed out, so that did not happen, but we were aware of what other jurisdictions were doing. I have gone to the Isle of Man, my colleagues here have been to various places and schools across the U.K. to look at what they were doing. That sort of coalesced into the situation where we find ourselves with this document and the roll-out. Can I just ask who attended the roll-out?

The Connétable of St. Mary : I tried very hard to.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay. No, it was just to get an idea if you did not attend the roll-out of the Digital strategy.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I could not park anywhere near.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: It is just to know who has done it so I know who to talk to.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Yes. Going back to the actual launch on the day, obviously, it was very interesting and I think very informative. I think you got a lot of good feedback on the day from those who attended, but in terms of the actual strategy, I do not know whether you would agree, it is very much a vision document, an overall view of ...

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Absolutely.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So you would agree it is that role rather than a detailed strategy?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, we are pleased that you have come in this early because it gives a chance to work together really in terms of what we are doing. This is how I always saw Scrutiny working.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So from the document itself, I am looking at your timeline. You have got timelines for developing a training programme to finish in the fourth quarter this year and developing school business plans to be completed by first quarter 2014. Can you give us some indication of how that is progressing in terms of certainly within the schools themselves, and what engagement you have had with them?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, well I will probably expand the discussion out to my colleagues in a second because they had more of a hands-on situation with that. We have pushed one of the times back a bit because I think one of the concerns with primary schools per se ... so the 2 sets of secondary schools were up for this, and most of them were motoring anyway. The construction of this came very much from what they wanted, at the end of the day. So this notion of evolution ... so Education then pushing this out to the schools because they are all at different various points. I suppose the pinch point, if there is one, was the care and consideration given to primary schools. They have not really come across this before so we sent the consultants out to explore what we were suggesting through this document. They came back to us and said: "Look, some of them, like Deputy Pryke's daughter at St. Martin 's, are well ahead of the game." We utilised them in terms of where we placed them.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You mentioned pushing timelines back, what are the timelines that you pushed back just so we have got some indication of how you are going to progress this over the next 12 months?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, can I pass it over to Christine?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture: No, Romy.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: All right.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

The original schedule was for the business plan work to be all submitted by the end of January 2014, but we have realised now that the schools require some additional time to share best practice. We have used this month to arrange lots of best practice sessions within Jersey with local best practice in going along to some schools that are less confident to be able to see what other schools are doing locally. Then we are going to be arranging a U.K. e-learning day in Jersey, so we are going to look at getting some experts in from the U.K. and possibly elsewhere to inspire teachers to develop their business plans appropriately. So we have extended it from January to the Friday after half term, which is Friday, 7th March.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Okay, 6 to 8 weeks, something like that?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Okay. You mention there is going to be a difference between secondary and primary schools. Can you give us an idea of where we are with secondary schools and their business plans compared with the primary schools?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

The secondary schools have already started developing them. I would say they are already into their first drafts. We have not had any issues from them. They have been asking some general questions and we have been responding and sending information out then to all schools so anybody that does not know something then we are providing crib sheet questions and answers and sending it out to all the secondary schools. But basically the feedback from secondary head teachers is this is exactly what they want: the freedom to develop their own solution. Because you said it was a strategic vision, and that is absolutely right, that was what we were trying to do. We did not want to be too prescriptive in terms of defining exactly what was going to be done because we wanted to keep it open and flexible and then let the head teachers decide the most appropriate solution in terms of innovation and technology for their own schools and their own settings and their own contexts. Secondary teachers are very confident. We have not had a single complaint from any of them about it. They are really looking forward to this and they have really welcomed the opportunity. We have been telling them at secondary head teachers' meetings for a while that this was coming and to start thinking about it. It was going to be, like I said, a change. It is a big culture change from a centralised roll-out of things that we have done before but we are going to be working with schools and supporting them through that process. Specifically, now we are focusing on the primary schools, and Keith Posner and myself have done some sessions with the primary heads to help to again reassure them of any things that they do not know. Now we have given them an extension on the submission date; that has given them more time because it is obviously a very busy term as well. So we are happy to receive bids from any schools that have completed them by the end of January but other schools can have that additional time to research it a little longer.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Thank you. I would like to go back, because it is marvellous in November 2013 to hear from the Assistant Minister that the agenda began in December 2012. In September 2012 we were already being criticised for falling behind such jurisdictions as Malta and Singapore, so I think now is the opportunity for you to tell us that you did not begin this agenda in 2012 but that something was happening well before then.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well this agenda begun in 1996. I think you will probably find if you went into the late-1990s that every single school in Jersey was already on broadband when England was just thinking about it. So, we have tended to be ahead of the game for many, many years but I think the point that Deputy Bryans was making is at that stage, and this is on a third I.T. strategy, each strategy has been successful but I.T. moves very quickly, it changes very quickly. Without continued investment in I.T. then you are likely to fall behind. I think that is basically what happened, not that the infrastructure was failing, because it was not. We still had fast broadband, we still do, but our strategy was based on the ratios of computers to children in the schools, so 4 children to one computer.

[9:15]

It was based mainly on desktop computers. Now, to change that whole thing requires investment. Through that period, and for about 3 years beforehand, we had conducted a number of pilots, wireless pilots in schools. They had not necessarily been that successful, primarily because the technology was almost there but it was not quite there for schools. We did visit some schools in England which had invested in the technology and, quite frankly, it was not working very well. It is not much fun when you have got a class full of kids on a wireless network and they cannot all log in. It creates a bit of a problem for the teachers so you need a stable infrastructure. So fibre and the opportunity to put high-speed wireless networks in schools is a game changer. I think, with respect to that, that has given us a new opportunity and the investment has come at the right time.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Are you saying you did not have the investment when you needed it?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, what we are saying is, had we had the investment, that the infrastructure was not out there, the technology was not out there to deliver a good enough quality product in the schools. We had a number of pilots. We run a pilot at Les Quennevais School which was a Bring Your Own Device pilot where the wireless network was established and children were given the opportunity to bring their own devices into school. There were 2 challenges with that: one was around the effectiveness of the ability of the technology to deliver but the other one was around the challenges of e-safety. Our e-safety has been tight, very tight, in fact. We have been challenged that it has been too tight. So the difference as we move forward is that the e-safety policy will be more age suitable as opposed to a blanket policy that stops some of the older children from getting where they need to get to on the Internet.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well it is not so much about what was being taught because the new introduction to the curriculum this time around is computing, but it is not all about computing. I.T. was being taught in schools in 2 ways: one, as an individual subject, as a G.C.S.E. (General Certificate of Secondary Education) subject based on the curriculum and based on the examination services that were set in the U.K., both in G.C.S.E. and at A level where someone would take it up. It was also being taught across the curriculum, so I.T. was being used as a vehicle to do work in other subjects, and that is important. It is a feature of it, but it is not just about turning out little programmers from primary school who are then going to go through into the industry.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : Why is it not?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Because traditionally in education we try to help children develop a broad range of skills that enables them to have choice later on. We have had this debate many times and countries have had this debate. For example, if you were to say: "Now why are the schools not turning out plumbers for next year?" Well, the question would be: "How many plumbers do we need? Where is the demand?" We are not there to train and turn out plumbers or to turn out computer programmers. We are there to inspire, to help children develop a broad range of skills and to be able to pursue their ambitions within school and after school. Now that is what we want to do. What we believe is that the curriculum that was in place for I.T. computing was a good curriculum if you have a well-qualified specialist I.T. teacher who is able to adapt it. But if you think back to 1996, around the mid-1990s when we first introduced this technology to schools, there were not many people who had desktops at home and had laptops at home. So the very first strategy that we implemented way back then was to provide a laptop for every single teacher on the understanding that they signed up for a training course, and that kick-started things. But at the same time there were not teachers of I.T. around. There were very few teachers of computing and I.T. around. So most of the teachers who came forward stepped up to the plate to take this subject forward, really: the mathematics teachers or they were business studies teachers, teachers who were broadening their own experience at the same time as they were developing the subject within schools. That context has changed now. You can go to college now and you can come out as an I.T. teacher or you can come out as a computing teacher, so specialist skills will now be more available.

How many pupils have you inspired to become computer programmers?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I cannot answer that, and I will check the facts on this, but my understanding is that we have got about 2 per cent of our economy revolving around digital businesses and about 2 per cent of the students who go into higher education are studying computer or I.T.-related courses. So we need to do an analysis of that and give you that data. But we cannot give you that data, the number who are in university this year and ...

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : I think that would be useful for us.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Can I refer to that a little bit? I can give you a direct thing, talking about inspiration. I gave a little talk at the I.O.D., a little buffer talk, a 5-minute piece of work. Stuart Philip, who is the I.T. teacher at Highlands, well, in the talk what I talked about was Google spend 20 per cent of their time ... you can work on anything you like within Google, provided it is about Google and 50 per cent of the new ideas come out of that 20 per cent of that time. I talked about FedEx days and different things, this was all in the talk. Equally, as you will probably see, we wrote on my iPad there: to be audacious. Philip took that as an inspiration and has now devoted 10 per cent of his time with his students and 10 per cent of his budget - that was 100 students I spoke to - working on projects with anything to do with the community or the outside world. So that is a complete change; that is talking about inspiration. You mentioned before Malta and Singapore and the parallels are not quite the same. What we have done and what the Director was talking about, we work from the inside-out instead of the outside-in. The outside-in in Malta, if you put Malta into computing you will see that what happened is Microsoft saw this as an opportunity to step into a small jurisdiction and flood it full of cash and test everything else. Everything you see that is related to Malta generally will have a Microsoft finger in it. What we have done is all thanks to the Treasurer kicking off Gigabit. So the Director is right, we did not have that sort of infrastructure to tap into now, so through Gigabit we have begun to do that. Then, secondly, the arrival of Digital Jersey has given a greater focus on all of this. So I hope that answers your question.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I sort of understand it but it is not just about it, it is having a base of teaching within schools that can provide an I.T. education through the subjects, but I just want to carry on on the speed of this. Because obviously I think it has been identified now by those that are trying to promote these industries in Jersey and new digital business, a dearth of digital skills within the Island. I think if

we are going to grow that economy and grow that business within the Island, we are going to need those skills being produced here if we are not going to flood ourselves with inward migration and bring people in. What timeline are you looking at to fully roll this out within schools? Is this September 2014?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, the first thing I think to say is that this has been around in schools for some time. What we are developing now is the computing aspect of it, and that has already started.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I understand that. But it is clear from what the industry is saying that there is no digital skills base here so what we have been doing has not been producing the sort of skills that are being produced elsewhere, and we need to try to improve on that. It is going to be a speed issue: how quickly we can get up and running within the schools.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

But the Director is right, it goes back to 2 things, in fact 3 things, probably: the pedagogy of teaching, which is what we are educating the kids for in the first place, the realisation that the digital industry in this Island represents 1.7 per cent of the working population, which is not a vast amount. We know we need to get to a bigger place and that is the reason for things like Digital Jersey and why we are working so closely with them. But, equally, I will give you an example, we had a ministerial meeting yesterday to do with the curriculum and examination reforms in England. So we do follow through on that, we do not invent our own along the way, we do adapt and adopt. The I.T. strategy in the main, I will just read out this little piece as it is quite important: "This is developed beyond previous roll-out strategies that will fund and replace purchase of hardware and software within the schools." This is in the U.K.: "It heralds a new style of teaching whereby pupils will be encouraged to embrace new technologies and programming skills at a much earlier age." Hence the reason we are doing the primary: "It will also structure the development of a curriculum for computing, a subject that becomes compulsory in the new National Curriculum for England." This is not thought to be rolled-out until over the next year so we are already, in terms of where the U.K. is compared to ourselves, ahead of the game in that sort of context. So your notion about speed, although I know you want to increase the speed for what we are attempting to do ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Well, it is not I do.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: No, no, no.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

It is a case of, I think, those that are looking to build on digital skills here.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, we cannot have the tail wagging the dog. Essentially, if the digital community is quite a small community, and I know we are heading somewhere to a greater extent with the digital community, we still have got to educate architects, plumbers and electricians, the sort of thing the Director is talking about, so we have to put it in context.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Sure. But specifically though what we have all said is that we are not just teaching computer programmers; I.T. is fundamental to the architects.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Absolutely. Yes, that is the point.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Exactly, that is the important thing here.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is all the soft skills, all the creative thinking and the problem-solving skills as well which is going to be a big change, and it is not just skills for learning within the schools but employability skills, skills for life and learning in their future careers of the economy. So that is a big change and the new curriculum will deliver the requirements of businesses in Jersey.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I just ask you, on that point, because I know in your document, Thinking Differently, on page 11, one of the outcomes of the vision strategy is that: "Pupils will develop wider skills required in the workplace such as creativity and business acumen." On those 2 elements, how will the strategy teach students creativity and where is it falling short at the current stage? Because "creativity" is a very vague and wide term, it can mean many different things. So I want to understand what it means.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is not just about the creativity - creativity is one of the softer skills - it is about an inquiring mind which is the essence of all education, pretty much. The biggest component of this strategy is the use of I.T. across the curriculum to develop learning in more areas than just computing. For example, if you were to compare a traditional classroom of some years ago, the teacher might be teaching geography by telling the students about a particular country, about the G.D.P. (Gross Domestic Product) of that country, the social context of that country, the broader economy, the temperature, et cetera, and it would be a very didactic sort of approach. Nowadays what teachers are moving towards, and many already do, notwithstanding the fact that they can use technology more effectively for this, is posing the young people challenges and problems. So a simple problem like: "If you had the choice, what country in the world would you choose to live in?" can encourage young people to use technology, to research to find out about various countries in the world, to find out about their economy, about their climate, et cetera. Solving that problem, and this is just a simple example, develops their learning and develops their other skills as skills of research, creativity, et cetera. So that is the way it is done. It is by shifting the style of teaching from a didactic approach where the teacher delivers all knowledge to the pupil to an approach where the teacher is setting challenges and problems for the pupils to work individually and collectively together to solve those problems, and technology is the key enabler in that programme.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just going back, because there is something that we did not tidy up. We were talking about secondary schools, primary schools in terms of their business plans and bidding for their business plans. In terms of secondary schools, for example, you mentioned some help you have been giving them. Is there a template or criteria that you have given them to help them to put those business plans together? If so, what is it? Is it a general template that we could have a look at, for example?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, of course. We have not brought a copy of it today - I did not think to bring it - but you are more than welcome to have it. It is basically setting out their context of their own school environment initially their "as is" position, benchlearning where they are, and then looking at the different aspects of the strategy in terms of the underlying principles and the aspirational strategic objectives and then linking that with their school development plans. What they do ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Is that more advanced at secondary school rather than the primary schools?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is different because you have got specialist teachers. You usually have a specialist teacher in a secondary school.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Within the secondary schools, yes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

But I think the trick in this is not just to have a business plan that sits in isolation. Schools every year have to put together a business plan. So we would want to see in the business plan how the schools intend to use technology, for example, to drag up standards in literacy, to drag up standards in numeracy, so it is connected to other aspects of the curriculum. When you are looking at computing, I think it is 2015 will be the earliest I think that we will see an examination in computing and an examination in the new computing syllabus.

[9:30]

It may even be 2016, because there are still some further changes to be considered. So, really, the sustainable future, you are not just going to turn it round by suddenly taking year 11 students, teaching them computing and hoping that you are going to put them out into a work environment next year and it is all going to be very successful. You might get some but as a longer-term strategy it is not going to be successful. So that is why the emphasis is on bringing computing into the school curriculum much earlier so as the children come through primary school they will be able to capitalise on the more specialist subjects at secondary school, so it is a long game here.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I understand that. It is a long game but presumably the primary schools do have some criteria that they are working to to put together ...

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

The primary school will have the same template as the secondary but they will fill it in in a more relaxed manner.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You used the word "isolation", and one of the worries that I had was that I think some secondary schools would be more advanced than others. How are you going to ensure there is a consistency across that?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Can I answer that to some degree? I want to pick up 2 points, and one was Jeremy's, so I will come back to the creativity thing. One of the key criteria for me is the evolution then would allow the schools to create their own things. But the important thing for me is that you bring them all together to share good practice to understand, to look after those people who may have - to use a word my colleague used before - trepidation about anything that they have got. We are looking after schools in that particular way. But it is to get them in all together and say: "This is the kind of thing we are doing" which breeds creativity. To go back to your point about creativity, I suppose this is one of the areas that I am most ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just before you leave that in terms of how are you going to ensure consistency, because obviously some schools ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are going to provide advisory support to schools. This is very important because what we have done, we are changing the culture. It has always been a top-down strategy. So people who are very confident and comfortable with a top-down strategy may not be confident and comfortable with the strategy that we are putting forward at the moment. So I expect that we have got quite a few head teachers who are wondering: "How am I going to tackle this?" We will provide advisory support for those head teachers. We are not expecting to turn down bids, we are expecting to work with the schools so that their bids are successful. But there was a report, I think it was a B.E.C.T.A. (British Educational Communications and Technology Agency) report a year or 2 back that said there was something like £2.4 billion worth of technology sitting in school cupboards across Britain not being properly used. Now if you are going to utilise it then schools have to go through the thinking process: "How are we going to use it, what is it that we need, what skills do we have to develop to be able to make this a success?" Each school is going to be in a different place and we need to recognise that and we need to put more support into the schools that are less confident and give the schools who are confident a bit more freedom. So it is not a "one size fits all" model. It will take account of where each school is, their context and help them move on. Some may take a little longer than others but that is not a problem.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Something that was mentioned at the launch, I think it was Deputy Bryans that said it, and it is something that rang with me just for 10 seconds, was the mention of trying to get an I.T. specialist in each school. Is that something you are aiming at? On top of that, are you looking to appoint, or have you appointed, an I.T. specialist to oversee the whole structure within Education Department?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, we have a structure that is now built around the strategy and we have advertised for an e- learning co-ordinator who will essentially be the adviser to schools, an adviser on trying to prepare for the bids for the ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

What is the sort of timeframe for getting that person in?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The advert is out. I think we have applications in at the moment so an appointment is imminent, really. We will also use external advisory support. As you know, we maintained our own complete advisory service in Jersey; way back in the old days you would have a geography adviser, you would have French adviser. So we do not maintain an advisory service, we buy it in when we need it. So if there are schools that need specialist support we buy it in. Appointing I.T. specialists is something obviously that we will work towards. Some schools do have I.T. specialists, other schools have other people in those roles so when the opportunity arises schools will seek to appoint I.T. specialists; not in primary schools because it is unlikely that you would have an I.T. specialist in every single primary school. But one of the things we have done with this, as you are probably aware, we have 4 clusters, we have 4 secondary schools and the feeder primary schools. So we are giving those clusters the opportunity to come forward with a cluster bid as opposed to a school bid so that they can work together in a cluster, share their expertise and share their training.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Already we have got draft eastern/western cluster bids; they are working together already.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

You do need to know that we do have experts within the schools already operating, spread ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well I know one at Les Quennevais School, for example, so I know they do exist.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. So one of the things I did first of all was go and explore some of the schools. So Bob Bonney at J.C.G. (Jersey College for Girls), Rory Steel, who is fantastic, he is now an Apple character, from Beaulieu, Paul Attard at Les Quennevais and various other people like Stuart Hughes at Hautlieu and Stuart Philip at Highlands. These are really good guys. I think there is a consideration within the digital community. They do not quite realise that because they have not been into the schools to see the kind of stuff that they are doing. These guys are just well above a lot of I.T. teachers that I have ever seen.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

How closely do you work with local business to identify what skills are needed?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Can I just jump in quickly?

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

I do not mean necessarily just I.T. but broadly how closely do you work with business to identify those skills?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That is a really good question. In terms of highlighting it, literally coming straight in as an Assistant Minister and meeting Julian is an example. He runs an I.T. business not far from this building. Julian is the guy who now sits on the Education T.A.G. (Technical Action Group) from Digital Jersey. It was one of his considerations. In fact, I mix with several entrepreneurs outside of my life as a previous ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just for the record, have we said Julian Box is the Chair of the Technical Action Group?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Sorry, he is the Chair of the Digital Jersey Education T.A.G. team. I need to get all those titles out. But I have come across loads of people in the community, friends of mine who are entrepreneurs, who were saying there was a dislocation to some extent of what their expectations were. But what they were looking for was quite minor numbers. I think it has already been said this is an area that is growing massively. Moore 's law says that it doubles in size, or whatever, in content every couple of years and you have got to take account of that. I think the cliché is that we are training kids for jobs that do not even exist at the moment.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

So how closely does Education work with businesses?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

In terms of developing our strategies in the past we have developed them with just really educational representation, but this time we did it completely differently. On our steering group we had full business representation to make sure that the business skills were incorporated within the strategy.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Can you pinpoint what level of input there has been from Digital Jersey into the  Thinking Differently document?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, when we put the document together we formed a steering group who led it every step of the way and Digital Jersey was represented on that steering group from the very start. That was before the Education T.A.G. was set up so we had Dara Lutes starting with us and Julian Box then came on to it as soon as he was appointed the Education T.A.G. group. But we also had representations from Jersey Finance, the Institute of Directors and the Skills Board.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

The vision or the strategy very much has to be education-driven, I think we all accept that. But to what concept has the strategy been influenced by Digital Jersey?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, Digital Jersey have been part of the steering group.

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, so every step along the way they have looked at what they have done, they have put their input in, they have said what they want, all the skills that we are working to.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

What specifically have they said they wanted from this strategy?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, we came up with 3 straw men of the skills we thought would be useful in it. We went round to a few of the industries, specifically to Digital Jersey, to say: "Are these the skills that you want?" They looked at it and they agreed and they did not have any extra skills that they wanted.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : What were those skills?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Have you got the pictures?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: We have.

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

They were split into the 2: so the softer skills and then the harder I.T. skills. But you have got the pictures with it.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is not the first time that we have consulted with businesses on various projects.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Thank you, that is what I am trying to establish.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. We ran some major projects, Critical Skills, which you may remember, going back. We have some significant experience in rolling out wide skill reform in the Education Service. Not everybody brings that to the table on this. Of course, the Digital Jersey focus has got to be on the digital industries and ensuring that the skills are there to support those digital industries. We also want to make sure that we turn out well-rounded individuals who have all the softer skills and ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well, that is an important point. Were they in total agreement with that, that they wanted to see rounded, flexible skills, or did they have specific skills or specific areas that they wanted ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, I think they would want both; most employers would want both.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : How have you dealt with that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I think we really have not had a tension in respect of that at all, we are in pretty much agreement. I think where there are sometimes differences, not necessarily with Digital Jersey, but more philosophically about how you roll-out a project like this, there tends to be on the one side those who would think: "You just do it from the top down, you come up with a plan, you put it out there, you tell people what to do and you give them the deadlines and you tell them to hit it." We know, not just from our own experience, but from the wide range of research that we have done into education reform, that that does not work effectively. What works effectively is you give the vision and direction from the top and you build up support for that strategy from the bottom. Now, that does not mean you get the support right at the outset because people are going to lack some confidence. So you need to build that confidence, you need to put in the support, the development, et cetera, in order to get out of it a strategy that is worth delivering. That is why we have chosen this approach. So if there is a tension there, it would be between those who would think this should be a top-down strategy, tell people what to do, and those who would maybe say that - in fact it has been said - our strategy this time is basically because we have run out of ideas from the top down and we just want the schools to do it for us. Well, that could not be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that schools know their own context. You are not going to have the same strategy in Mont a l'Abbe School as you are going to have in Victoria College.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of the decentralisation of the I.T. strategy, where does that idea come from? Is it something that you have developed yourself or is that from a ...

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Just from consultation with the schools as a part of the ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It has, yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But has it come from somewhere else as well, somewhere that it has been developed elsewhere?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well the approach, the general approach to education. This is probably the one part of the education structure in England that has been successful for them. The Government sets the policy and the direction and provides the resources and the schools then have to make sense of that policy and direction, interpret it for themselves and put in place plans to deliver it.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So that direction very much follows the U.K. model?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is not just the U.K. model. If you do wish to challenge me on this research I will find it for you but there is a wealth of research that will tell you that engaging people and empowering schools and making them accountable for strategies and projects such as this is more effective.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Can I just make one comment? I have not said a lot but I am just going to say something on that.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

You have not said anything, Minister. Yes.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The panel should not be surprised about this approach. If you take virtually every change management project of all kinds, of all varieties throughout all levels of business you will find that the question of top-down is old hat now. All successful change management projects work with a vision and with a bottom-up. So it is not just in I.T. I am talking about; every change management, every culture change, any in any industry that you would like to name, if you look at it all there is a general acceptance now that you have to look at it in the kind of way that we are looking at this. So that is a very, very general comment and I am sure that if you look at other examples around the world of, I do not know, whether it be the post office - whether it be anything virtually - any H.R. (Human Resources) specialist will tell you that there is a lot of theory and research around how you go about change management. So do not be surprised that we are following this somewhat.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Can I come back to ... because I did not get to mention the creative thing which is important to what was being asked earlier. This has been a voyage of discovery, particularly for Digital Jersey and ourselves walking along, as we are, these parallel paths. Particularly Julian who right at the beginning wanted this, a desire of a parent, or a passion of a parent, wanting to get this right in his mind. I always remember when he put the computer club together and saying: "You are going to need to teach these kids how to be creative because you will find there is a kind of a dislocation." He was fighting: "No, no, no, we have got our job to do, we know what it is about. It is about teaching coding." We got to the end of it all and he came back to me and said: "You were absolutely right." Because at that point in time, once you had got the kids primed with all this ability or this technical knowledge, they did not know what the next step was. The kind of thing that the Director was talking about, those 2 things, problem-finding and problem-solving then become apparent because that is what you have trained yourself to do with this technology. So teaching creativity is paramount alongside of all of this.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But in terms of, again, timing and working closely, and you mentioned a parallel path with Digital Jersey, they have got some pretty, I think, ambitious targets.

[9:45]

I will just mention one because it is the first one: "By 2016, 400 new jobs in the digital sector in the Island." Are we going to be able to deliver those skills within our current curriculum to feed that industry within that timeframe? Because if not then we are going to be looking at importing a lot of people.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well it is difficult to be able to predict that. We can ensure that the curriculum is in place and that young people have the opportunities but it is down to the young people themselves and the careers advice, obviously, that we provide for them. We have about 96 per cent-plus of our young people stay on in education post-16, so businesses are recruiting from a very small pool in the first place, and that pool is usually a pool of young people who have chosen to leave school at 16, maybe because they do not see further education, or higher education, as being for them. Deputy Bryans has said it: the important thing is that the jobs are there. Our experience of it is that young people are quite shrewd when it comes to this. They see the job market and they go for the job market. So, for example, the growth in nursery education around the Island has seen a correlating growth in the number of young people who are studying the N.N.E.B. (National Nursery Examination Board) in the nursery course at Highlands College. We have got a foundation degree in I.T. at Highlands College, a successful foundation degree. I cannot tell you about the numbers of that but I can give you the numbers; I can get them for you.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of skills from graduates that have left the Island or are off-Island, do you think there are skills outside the Island of local graduates that do not come back because there is not the opportunity here at the present time?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I am not sure that it is because there is not the opportunity. I do not know what the latest statistic is but, in the past, about 60 per cent of the graduates who went away came back within 10 years and often brought a graduate's place with them. The advantage there was, of course, that we did not have to pay for their higher education. Whether or not they come back is not just about whether the jobs are here, it is also about the types of jobs. Because if you are a real high-flier ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well that is what I mean about the types of jobs.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

... in technology and computing, there are broader opportunities in other jurisdictions. The gaming industry, to name just one, there are opportunities, and students when they go away will have to determine for themselves whether they want to pursue their career off-Island or whether they want to come back. It is always going to be a challenge.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You mentioned job opportunities, do you believe that ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I do not see the schools turning out 400 youngsters over a period of 2 to 3 years who are all going to be ripe and ready to take their place in the digital industry. But I do see the schools and Highlands College and higher education over a period of time increasing the number of people who want to move into those industries and who are very, very savvy.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well within that, has there been some tension between yourselves and Digital Jersey about the sort of targets that they are putting down? Because, like I say, we are getting this mismatch between their targets and what we are likely to produce over that period of time which will lead to undoubtedly, if this industry is going to grow the way we hope it will, between numbers we can produce here and numbers we may have to import to fill that.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The fact is that Digital Jersey's strategy is aiming to produce 400 new jobs. I think one of the lessons that we have learnt working with the finance industry, and we have worked very, very closely with the finance industry over the year, is that part of the challenge is ensuring that young people see the opportunities there is for the industry to get into schools. That is exactly what Digital Jersey do with the digital hub. To get into schools, Finance does this very well, telling young people about the opportunities in the industry and encouraging them to look at that as one of their options, and it works. So as well as providing the education and the careers advice, what we have got to do is to make sure that the industries come into the schools and that is the business partnership part of it. They come into the schools, tell young people about the opportunities that they think are going to exist in the Island in the future, and inspire them to go for those opportunities.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

You just mentioned the digital hub. Can you expand on that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Deputy Bryans, do you want to ...?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. The digital hub is a consideration because obviously you have been focusing on what we are trying to do at this moment in time with the people going through at this point. The consideration was, and this was one of those things that we began to formulate between the 2 of us, was what happens to those people who have gone through the system, have fallen out the other side and will not benefit from that? So there are 2 things that have happened: one has been a growth of computing clubs, those kinds of clubs. There has been a recent one just started, it was in the press yesterday. Secondly, was the digital hub, and the notion is there this will attract those students who feel they have missed out on this benefit of what we are attempting to do in this new strategy or vision and to mop up that situation in consideration of what they can do. That has been really quite relative to everybody in the higher education thing because it gives them a different focus. They have never had it before, they have never really had the industry stepping back towards education, it is always education going out and saying: "Have you got these ideas?"

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Is that going to be available to the youngsters who are currently unemployed?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I was listening to the figures yesterday. The young people's figure has not gone down at all, as I understand it.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. It goes back to the point that the Constable was making before about the inspiration. Really, it has to be at that point in time what attracts them. You could not channel them into that kind of thing, but to say: "Is there something here that you can look at?" So there is a great groundswell feeling of passion for this at this point in time but it has to be, as the Director said before, something that they are attracted to.

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think that is also the link between that and the numbers, because certainly the Digital Jersey numbers perceive that some of the existing community will be re-skilled at some of those jobs as well. So it is not seeking for the whole 400 to come straight through from education, and which is why they are putting on the decoding course which is re-skilling.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Okay, well if you are going to mention re-skilling, how do you intend that to work through Highlands College? Because it is not something that is mentioned in the strategy itself but obviously ...

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture: This is Digital Jersey through the digital learning hub.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You are jumping there. Do you expect education to play a role in re-skilling people who are past education ages into that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, we do.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

In which case, how do you intend that to proceed?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, at the moment that is mainly done through the further education courses at Highlands College in the I.T. foundation degree. Also, of course, through the other schemes that we are running such as the Trackers Apprenticeship Scheme, but the pure course, if you like, is the foundation degree.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The digital hub will be seen as a form of almost like the Trackers and that sort of thing in the context of ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Where do you see that being based?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I believe they are looking around for premises at this moment in time so I do not know where they are likely to ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : But that is only Digital Jersey or ...?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Again to separate the 2 things, that is Digital Jersey and not the digital hub. But I know of a young lad, Tom Haquoil. I have known him for years in terms of his contacts with a previous relationship in terms of business with his father, so I have known him. He is a real inspiration. I think he is of the right age to really get kids in the sense of the kind of thing that you can achieve. But just going back to another point you were making earlier about students leaving and going off to college. I think I can give you a very specific. My son's friend who has just got an M.A. (Master of Arts) in computing, his consideration is 2 years somewhere like London where he gets to see what life is happening, and then they come back here. They always tend to gravitate back to where they were born in the first place. So they do but they want to learn what the opportunities are out there before they come back.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

It has been put to us, just to change the subject slightly, that Jersey is a very risk-averse community and there has been scaremongering about the access for pupils in schools. Tell us about your e-safety policy and whether it restricts learning at all.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I think most e-safety policies might be considered restrictive by some people. There are those who argue for complete open access and there are those who argue for completely controlled access. We have what is called a managed service, so schools have the flexibility through the department to open the gateways, if you like, to unblock websites. This strategy will give schools more control over that and more support to be able to do it. The difficulties at the moment are that the schools have to do it through the department, they generally have to do it through the department. The skills are not there in the smaller primary schools. But e-safety is a ...

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

What do you mean they: "have to do it through the department"?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well because we are exercising the filtering controls from the department, for the most part.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

So you have to approve what sites they are able to access?

Some of the primary schools would expect us to. There is a lack of confidence. Some of the secondary schools have got the skills to do it themselves but I think it is a question not just of being able to do it, it is where the accountability lies. If you have a centralised system, as we have done pretty much for e-safety over the years, then you have got to be confident when you are opening those gateways that you are opening it to the right materials. What we want to do is to decentralise that system a little bit more so that schools have more flexibility and can act, for example, on the day to be able to change access to particular sites if they need to do that. But what we cannot do here is throw the baby out with the bathwater. The bottom line is that e-safety is important, it is important right through the education system, particularly at primary schools, because the dangers of the Internet are not just around children having access to inappropriate sites, they are also around children meeting people online, chat room stuff type of thing. So e- safety is not just about filtering controls, it is about teaching children how to use technology safely and that will be, and is, part and parcel of the current curriculum. But there are views, in some views that it is far too restrictive, and there are other views that it needs to be restrictive. That sort of spread of views you can see it in parents as well. Some parents want a totally closed system and others want it open.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of bringing your own device, where will the responsibility lie for pupils bringing their own devices into school?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, they can bring their own devices but it still can be subject to filtering arrangements within the school.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Just to give an illustration, because I visited the Isle of Man, the Isle of Man guy came over and was quite surprised at the extent that we have done with this. He has asked us to go and filter those guys because they rolled-out the strategy a year ago but did not do it in the way that we have. At one of their top secondary schools, they could not access anything. Their filtering system was really tight. People think it is about pornography and the sort of thing the Director was talking about. The biggest growth is in cyber-bullying. So these are the real concerns. The Director is absolutely right, the e-safety thing is educating children to go back and utilise the same sort of skills in their own home.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Do you have a working relationship with the States of Jersey Police in this respect because ...?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We do in a sense that if there are any issues that come to light on this, we would obviously inform the police. The police might sometimes bring stuff to our attention. We do not have a specific working group with the police around e-safety but we do, through the Children's Policy Group, bring departments together and the police are represented on that. So we have had discussions about this. The whole policy group, the Ministers as well, received a presentation on e-safety, along with other issues. I think the thing that sometimes gets lost in this is that a school's first responsibility is safeguarding the children. That is its absolute priority and everything else takes second place to that. So it is important schools are confident that the systems and processes are put in place to keep children safe.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

What laws are you invoking in your e-safety policy?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: In what sense?

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Are you invoking the Children's Law at all? Is there anything in the Children's Law that stipulates how you deal with this? This is a question that was put to us.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are expected to maintain, and rightly so. Safeguarding, as I say, is the number one priority and you need to just take a pragmatic view of what you expose children to. So there is no law that says that we have to have filtering in our schools.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: It is a policy.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It is effectively a policy, yes.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

How do you deal with 3G just coming in and setting up their own network?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, you do not; you have just got to be aware of it. You do deal with it; you deal with it by educating the children and making them fully aware of the challenges and the dangers of it but you cannot regulate it in the same way.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I am just aware of time, can we move on to teachers? In terms of engaging teaches and head teachers, where are we with that at the present time in terms of rolling-out the strategy?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Do you want to ...?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well we have only just really started now because our strategy was only launched in October. Now we are working with schools sharing best practice so that they can start developing their business plans and supporting them through the culture change. Then some schools will submit their business plans by the end of January and the other schools will have the extended deadline submission now until the first week in March. So we will be arranging a U.K. e-learning day in Jersey and supporting them.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of that culture change, how accepting have teachers been of this new vision of ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is quite interesting because I think you could almost say that those who were confident before are less confident now and some of those who are less confident because they wanted more freedom are more confident now.

[10:00]

So it depends really where the school is and where the head teacher and the teachers in that school are. We do not expect everybody to be saying: "This is great, thank you very much." We do expect some schools to be less confident and concerned and asking us about support, and that is what we will do, we will provide that support. We have an ongoing meeting with primary and secondary heads every half term. These issues will come up on it so we will keep on top of it. We are dealing with a lot at schools so the collective events will be easier to put together for all schools. But the team at the department have got to work their way round in over 35 schools so it is going to take time. In the past when we have implemented an I.T. strategy it has usually taken 3 years from start to finish. The first year is all about planning, preparation, the second year is usually about putting in the infrastructure and the third year taking it right through all the schools. So it is not all going to happen by a date. It is going to be different for different schools as well.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, so it is going to be a phased implementation and it is really like a journey and we are starting that journey now with schools and working with them. So it is our stakeholder engagement, almost like consultation, because we developed the strategy. But now the next part in terms of developing the business plans which will have the detailed information, is moving it more into a strategy, like in terms of specific deliverables and key performance indicators, and that part is going to take a long time with all of our schools.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Can I ask you, surely one of the things must be that, as we have said, all the schools are at different levels now.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Getting them all to a comparable level at some stage in the future where any child, no matter where they are, has access to the same kind of level; when will we be there?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I would say that we will be able to stand up and start to evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy in about 3 years' time.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Have you identified how many teachers may need to be re-trained to deliver this?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We would expect most teachers to be receiving some sort of training with this because, remember, it is not just about teaching computing skills, it is about the use of I.T. right across the curriculum. So every teacher at some stage we would like to make sure is trained in using I.T. effectively in the classroom.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : How do you deliver that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

You can deliver it in a number of ways: sharing practice is a good way to do it and we have had a good pilot. You have probably seen where Hautlieu staff have worked with St. Martin 's children and St. Martin 's staff. That is all helping teachers develop skills. We will do a lot more of that. We will be bringing teachers together in bigger sharing practice sessions so that they can see what each of the other is doing. We will bring in advisory support to schools so, again, an I.T. adviser as an inspector or something to come in and work with the school for a week or 2 and help the teachers in the school develop better skills. We will put down some C.P.D. (Continuing Personal Development) that teachers can access.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : Is something in place for that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, there is.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, we have devolved approximately £3 million, which is the new funding that we have got in schools. It has been through S.M.T. (School Management Team) and the final budgets are being agreed and that funding is going to be devolved to schools. So we are expecting about half of that to be spent on training so ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But that is all existing money, that is money you have had set aside?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: A combination.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is a combination of the existing budget for I.T., an additional £3 million, totalling £6 million. If you look at page 16, the teaching and learning aspect, which is primarily about investing in the development of the curriculum and teaching skills, £2.4 million is targeted to go into that.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I suppose that was the other reason we wanted to get the vision out as quickly as possible. One of my things is really to communicate as quickly as possible what we felt we were heading towards. That is why I was asking about who attended the roll-out because you will have physically felt and seen the reception that the teachers gave, because it was populated by quite a lot of heads and I.T. teachers from other schools and they really were pleased by what we had done.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Deputy ?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, thank you. This is a very important area. Despite what you have said in saying this is a rolling project, nevertheless, there are deadlines to which the department is obviously working to, a key one being September 2015 which, I believe, is when some of the teaching is going to start taking place within the classrooms. From now until then that means the training period of the teachers is critical.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

In which case, can I just ask, what is the training plan for teachers in order for them to start to be able to teach?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are waiting for the business plans to be submitted before we can develop the overarching training plan and the delivery modes of how that training will be delivered. We will not have that until quarter 1 of next year. So that is like one aspect. The new curriculum is being developed as well, as you say, which is going to come into effect next year as well but straightaway schools are thinking now about how they are going to use that technology innovatively  within their own environments as well.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : When will teachers be trained?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think the first thing, this is not all going to start on a day and be done by a particular day. There is already a lot of good work happening in the schools and we brought the chap Clive Beale across from Raspberry Pi to help us with the launching of the strategy. I think he recognised that there is already a tremendous amount of work going on in the schools that is of high quality. This is already going on. It is about spreading it, it is about making sure that I.T. learning and I.T. teaching is of a high standard in every classroom and that is what we are trying to achieve.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But is there a possibility though that while this is being implemented over the next year and a half, 2 years, some pupils could be getting a better standard of education than others in terms of I.T. because the level will not be consistent through all schools?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It may be a different experience but you just cannot deal with that if there are inconsistencies.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But that is something you have got to work through.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, you cannot deal with that overnight. It takes time and you have got to work your way around the schools; find out exactly with the schools. But the essence of that is the school is taking responsibility for thinking through what it is that they need to achieve and want to achieve for themselves. The new curriculum and the examination syllabus when they come in, the examination boards will do the training for that. They do that for all our subjects. So they will come across and they will train the teachers in the requirements of the new syllabus, what they need to be able to do in order to help the students achieve that.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : When will the teachers ...

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can we flesh out this area a bit more because it is critical about the new curriculum, but do we know where we are with the new curriculum?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It is not our new curriculum.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: No, that is right.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is the English new curriculum and we think we know where we are but the fact of the matter is that education reform in England can change quite frequently and quite quickly. So we have seen the early drafts and it is what you would expect to see in a computing curriculum. It is not going to be language-specific. It is going to be about concepts, algorithms, all this kind of thing, broad coding concepts, and I do not think that that is going to pose a particular challenge for us.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Although it is a great shift from the current G.C.S.E., which is more user application-based.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

First of all, we are in the process of talking to teachers about the new curriculum now because we need to talk to teachers and make sure they are aware of all this, although most of them are because we have a Curriculum Council that has already been obviously ... you would be very surprised if I was not very involved with a Curriculum Council on discussing the new curriculum. So we will be in a position in about 2 to 3 weeks' time to make a fairly major announcement about the new curriculum, but I want you to be aware that we are working on it; it is just that we are not quite there yet because we need to communicate with teachers themselves and head teachers.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

I think it is important that we know when the teachers will be trained. Will you take them out of classes to re-train them during the day or will it be in their own time in the evening? How does it work?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If you use a model that already exists, for example, if there is a new subject or a new curriculum that comes in for a particular subject, say, a new examination syllabus in mathematics, then usually what we will do is we will bring together the heads of the departments; the heads of the mathematics departments. The Examination Board will probably come over and put on a presentation, a training programme, for them to help them understand what the new curriculum will look like then the heads of departments will go back into the schools and disseminate that to staff. Now that is about meeting the demands of a particular syllabus. Then, out of that, each department will need to do an audit of the teaching skills to know whether or not they have got the skills to be able to deliver that curriculum, and that is where it changes, that is where it is different for each school. Some schools will just say: "Okay, this is fine, we have got no problem with this. We have got an I.T. specialist, we can deliver it." Other schools will say: "We need additional skills, we need new skills or we need to train our teachers." That will all have to be built into the schools' business plans. So even the plans that have come forward towards the end of the first quarter will not be finite. It will be a plan that is going to go over the next couple of years and into that plan. The school will have to identify the training needs and then we will have to make arrangements to meet those training needs.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I know we have spoken about it before but something Julian Box said to us a couple of months ago, and he is quite right, coding and computer programme is a language within itself and we do teach languages in school. Are we going to be teaching languages within the school curriculum other than generally in terms of specific lessons, or are you looking to roll that as a general within all subjects?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Not necessarily the coding within all subjects, but you could. These are some of the opportunities that will open up.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But will coding, for example, be out of school hours?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I am not a geography specialist but it is a subject that is to hand at the moment. So if you have got a young person studying geography who has an idea to develop an app that is going to do something to assist in the learning of geography, or to record the weather or something like that, then you can see opportunities there to use the coding skills in that subject. For the most part, it will be the use of I.T. across the subject to enhance learning and to develop those softer skills. Again, the research, particularly the ability to present things. Way back when we went on a field trip, we took our notes; now children can go on a field trip, they can take out their mobile phone, they can record what they see. They can bring it back, they can turn it into a video and present it. So the possibilities are literally endless and it is about schools recognising those possibilities and teachers being trained to help students to capitalise on them.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You talked about that audit in part of the business plan, so has one already been done for each of the schools? Because the feeling I tend to get here is that what is being suggested is that not all teachers are using I.T. as part of their normal teaching curriculum. I know from my experience it seems to be quite different that a lot of teachers do use I.T. in their various teaching styles. So I just want to know, has there been any analysis of individual schools, the proliferation across the board, anything like that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, we did a skills audit I think in the first strategy, or the second strategy, but no, we have not done a skills audit with teachers this time around and we do not necessarily see the need to do it. It is important the schools do that themselves. Most teachers do use I.T. in some form or other in

their teaching, it is quite rare for teachers not to use it, but we are moving this a little bit forward. I.T. traditionally has been used for recording, writing up, Microsoft Word, using spreadsheets, using PowerPoint, et cetera. What we are trying to do is to encourage teachers to see the creative potential of I.T., for young people to be able to record things in a particular way, in video, sound, whatever, to be able to work collaboratively and share things, to work on projects together and use I.T. for that. You are developing the softer skills as well as the harder skills at the same time. That is where the opportunity lies and that is where we have got to invest in terms of training and development. Not every teacher is going to be a teacher of coding but every teacher hopefully will see the creative potential of I.T. to improve learning.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What provision is then going to be put in place for perhaps those children who do not necessarily learn or it is not their dominant way of learning through I.T.? Because I am particularly like that, reading from a screen is absolutely no use to me and I need that kind of manual process. So what provisions are going to be put in place to make sure that those students will not suffer?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

This is not to the exclusion of all other provisions. I.T. is just another tool in the sense it has taken the place of the blackboard, it has taken the place of the notebook but those things will still exist. So it is not going to be just one method of teaching and just one method of learning. The different learning styles of various pupils will still need to be taken into account.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Can I just ask, you talked there about technology and I.T. being spread into every different subject, what I was looking at when I was talking about the spread into different subjects was the method of thinking. Jeremy and I have done some coding now, it is not necessarily the skills about being able to code, it is the skill of being able to analyse the problem.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Problem-solving, yes.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Now, that is the thing I think that Julian Box particularly is very keen that we build in.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

So it does not matter whether I am using one device or another device or whether I am wireless or whatever, the very start of it is: how do I analyse the problem and how do I work it out?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: That is exactly it.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

Are we sure that we will be bringing that in? Because I know that from the curriculum point of view in the U.K., I have one to quote here: "The jury is still out whether it is going to deliver the skills and knowledge that we need."

[10:15]

It may teach a lot more things that we need but will it give that basic skill, that incisiveness?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It would have to. I would argue that any single strategy that is designed in schools to turn out coders is likely to fail because it is too narrow. But certainly it is about the skills, the logic, the problem-solving and it ...

The Connétable of St. Mary :

I was astounded how much fun has gone out of the window since I was 15.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

But it is the intellectual capacity around that as well, so that is absolutely what it is all about.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The Director is right, you cannot teach coding in that kind of thing. You would be looking at it in total isolation, which is why there has been a session with Education looking at critical-thinking skills for some time. The new evolution of that is the creative skills as well which come in, so not just the problem-solving, which is what you have just mentioned, but the problem-finding is the key part of it all.

The Connétable of St. Mary : Yes. Okay, so ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It might be useful for the scrutiny panel to see some work in schools in action because there is some ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Do not send me back to school.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: There is some understanding ...

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

There is a film in here, anywhere where you see a little barcode you can download an app on your phone to just read the barcode reader and you can watch the film and see ... you can practise. But when we had Clive ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

That is if we are capable of downloading an app.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

When we had Clive Beale over from Raspberry Pi, he was talking all about using technology, innovation and problem-solving and all of that sort of thing. The Raspberry Pi only costs about £30 and it is a little device that you can put in your hand and that is one of the types of things that schools will be able to use. There were some fantastic things. We did a session at St. Martin 's Primary School and Clive spoke to the children and they have had the experience doing Scratch. They were absolutely so moved by Clive being there, they were so inspired and engaged ...

The Connétable of St. Mary : Like a rock star, really.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. They were talking about all of the types of things and firing idea after idea of the type of thing: "Can you do this with Raspberry Pi?" One said, which was a classic moment: "Like, can you do it to do dog translation? Can it translate to dog stance?" So they were thinking just completely out of the box because they realised from the types of things they had been doing in school that the possibilities are endless. That is the type of thing that schools will be doing. They will be doing competitions and getting children to think creatively about the most amazing thing that they can do with a Pi all by themselves. Some of the children as young as reception are already doing some of the basic coding and getting Lego robots to move and programming them to do things. It is going to be far more hands-on towards ...

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

If you take Clive as an example, Clive deserves access because the Raspberry Pi has been revolutionary. It is a British invention. They thought they would sell 10,000 and they have sold millions of these little products. He came over here, did not know anything about us, and has left with a glowing report. He said we are far in advance of anything he has come across and that is his role, is to go out to schools across the U.K. To give you another example which was shown at the presentation, this young girl is an example of how advanced we are. She is at Beaulieu and was taught by Rory Steel. I cannot remember what the girl's name was. She walked in, she had had a life where her life was carrying around 3 pounds of equipment, because she is profoundly blind, into all of her teaching experiences. Then she walked into Rory's classroom where he teaches with an iPad and she becomes the same as everybody else. That was profound for her. Then the next move was that she then won a competition to become an artist on an iPad. This is how we are moving in the world. So the kids are teaching teachers how to teach, really; effectively the sort of thing Apple was talking about.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

Talking about technology, you have got £3.3 million budget for that, for technology and infrastructure. So what technology is in place now and what is planned?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

You have got broadband in place now. We would hope to put that on the fibre, which means we get a greater bandwidth, a greater speed which opens up the door for more exciting software and computers to be used within the schools.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : What is the timeframe for that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The fibre is, I think, pretty much at the school door right now but we have an existing contract with the provider so we will have to put our contract out to tender. We are hoping that we will be able to get that done between mid and end of next year. That does not mean ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Is that something you as a department are doing or something that individual schools do within their business plan? That is something you do?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, no, we do that as a department for the whole service. That is effectively the hardware, et cetera, that we need to go into schools to be able to deliver that and then the cost of the contract for the delivery. But, as I say, we have a contract currently with the provider and in due course we will be putting that contract out to tender. But whether that is the middle of next year or the end of next year is, in a sense, immaterial because we already have broadband. This will speed it up. So there is nothing that we cannot do with our existing infrastructure. It will be better once we get it on to Gigabit.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That is quite profound, going back to the Isle of Man. Every time we moved into a new area ... and you imagine previously we never had the wi-fi situation. You tapped into a central line, you would have one room that was humming away with a lot of computers, the very heart of existence, now there is access all over the place. I went into the Isle of Man and the minute some pupils would open something everything crashed and nothing could access it. So hopefully with Gigabit ... that is why Gigabit has been so profound for the Island.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are also planning to put extensive wireless networks in all of our schools as well. We are making sure that it is future-proof, so we are working out on 4 devices per student in terms of capacity. That is going to be the capability that we have researched and that is the best practice.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What provision, if any, is going to be made for individual students to have their own devices?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well that is essentially why we are putting the wireless networks in, so students will have the opportunity to bring their own devices.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

What about those that cannot afford that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are conscious of that and schools will make provision to ensure that there is not a digital divide so children who cannot afford it will not be disadvantaged. Schools will have devices that they can give to the students.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Is that something that they will have to factor into their business plans?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

They will be able to factor that into the business plan, yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I think is it the virtual learning, or something or other that you call it, is that basically a ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Learning hub.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It is a learning environment.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

... environment. Is that basically just a networked area where students can access some of the main materials and things like that?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well essentially that is what it is about, it is about communication across the schools, students into their schools. Eventually one would hope parents into their schools, parents being able to access data about their children within the schools, but that is essentially what it is. I do not know whether you want to add anything to that.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is to support personalisation of learning. So it is an area that teachers can put on resources for their students with different online reading books, for example, and the students can access them based on whatever their reading levels are and submit homework through it as well.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Sadly, you will hear me refer to it if we get any snow.

The Connétable of St. Mary :

"Do not worry, kids." Mario, you would not be flavour of the month.

So all the homework, really, done through the V.L.E. (Virtual Learning Environment) and it is a great mechanism for everybody being able to work collectively.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Within that infrastructure within the schools, certainly something I have learnt from using these type of devices is how quickly the battery dies. So if you are moving to a model whereby people are going to be bringing their own devices, is there going to be any infrastructure provision for something as simple as having a power point at your desk?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. Good point. In actual fact, the technology is really only there now because you need battery lives to be able to last really a school day. The first round of tablets and laptops did not really do that so we are only really there now. So this is a good time for us to be adopting this type of technology now that battery lives have caught up.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of some comments in the media, especially on the radio this morning in regards to a new coding club that has been launched - I think it is an N.P.O. (Not for Profit) a charitable organisation - comments were made this morning that they considered that education is moving too slow in terms of coding and programming and issues like that. Is it a case really that people, parents, pupils just need to be patient?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think it is a question of understanding the skill of what we are trying to roll-out. We have got about 14,000 pupils. It is not just a question of putting on a club for 20 pupils, it is a question of giving access and entitlement to all those 14,000 children and some of them at a very young age. But, having said that, one of the aims of this vision is to engage more with businesses and charities so we absolutely welcome any contribution that businesses or charities like this would maybe work with us.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So will you work hand-in-hand and support them to whatever ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Absolutely. They are more than welcome to and that is what we want. We want their engagement.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are already doing our own pilot project that is being run through Hautlieu and Hautlieu staff teaching primary school students coding, which is running really successfully in d'Auvergne and St. Martin 's. There are funding remits within our budget to roll that out to all schools.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Because you have to resource that, you have to backfill if you are going to take teachers from one school to another school to support this.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Exactly.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But a lot of the learning experience may well sit outside the Education Department as ...

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: As it does with so many other subjects, yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Yes.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

What was on the radio this morning, I heard it briefly, was a sales pitch really, effectively for a new club. There are several; there are about 3 or 4 of them now that have just bobbed up. I would see an opportunity ...

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: The more the merrier, really, it does not matter.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So you see it enhancing the education rather than ...

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, that is fine.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Absolutely, yes.

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

But we have already got it as an intrinsic part of our strategy. It is already there as a deliverable so that is one of the key things that we need to bring into schools, and specifically primary schools, over the course of the next few years.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Is there a concern about duplication though within those clubs?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture: No.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Should they not be better co-ordinated or ...?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

We will be co-ordinating essentially within the strategy with our pilot project and having one preferred delivery model and rolling that across the board, obviously for consistency and standardisation within our own context. But anybody else that does it, or through businesses coming in and running coding clubs, that will just enhance our offering, really.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : So do you have dialogue with them?

I.S. Strategy Manager, Education, Sport and Culture:

We have had dialogue with the people that have been running the coding clubs before, obviously. This was just new on the radio this morning, so it is a new initiative and we have not had particularly much communication.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I have. I have met with 2 of them. Gwyn Garfield-Bennett, who is ex-BBC, that is why she is on there, good girl, and Christine Lakeman who is running one called (she is an ex-teacher as well or a teacher) Steam. I think it was rolled-out at d'Auvergne the other day. But these are very private individuals wanting to make a difference.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But you do not necessarily see something that education should be leading?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

No, no, it is like learning a language or something. If you want to learn better French or you would want to learn whatever, you go to another school, do you not, in terms of that? There are lots of opportunities. This is part of a community, is it not?

The Connétable of St. Lawrence :

I just wondered how you react to the criticism though that is made in such interviews as we heard this morning.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think everybody, particularly us, have their own perception of what the school is like and what should be taught in the school. I think for the most part when people have been quite critical of the schools it is because they have not understood exactly what has been going on. It is not going on across every school, but there is some wonderful work going on across the schools. That has been recognised by people who have come into the Island, the likes of Clive Beale, gone into the schools and seen some of this amazing work. The fact that it is happening at all shows that the department and the schools are moving forward very quickly. The fact that it is not rolled-out to 14,000 pupils is quite understandable; you do not do these things overnight. I think we are well used to accepting a bit of criticism and if it is constructive we can act on it. But we are very confident with this at the moment. We have got a lot of experience at wide skill reform. We have been very successful with assessment for learning. We have done it very successfully with critical skills. We have done it twice before with I.T. strategies, albeit I.T. strategies that are not fit for today but were fit for their day in the day. We have done it very successfully with them, so we are very confident we know what we are doing. But that does not mean that there are things that we cannot do better if people criticise it and we will take that on board.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Maybe a question for the Minister, probably more ministerial level. What role are you playing, or E.S.C. (Education, Sport and Culture) playing in terms of evolving e-government at the current time? It is a big question, I know.

Rod is part of it ...

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I could answer it probably better because I assist with public sector reform. So the e-government has put out questionnaires to everybody. We have got the dialogue up and running. I sit in both camps so I understand what both are hoping to achieve. The e-government has got a slightly different slant: let us have a one-stop approach for everything that relates to the Government. But I know Neil Wells very well so we have spoken considerably about what is being done through education. He has had to take a step back because this is really about the Government per se and not Education in this particular context. So he is aware, we are both aware, of what is going on. I do not know if that ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are involved in the exemplar projects so we put forward a number of projects that we think would put the customer first when it comes to education. So our vision would be that eventually parents would be able to assess their grants, have their grants for higher education assessed online, that they would be able to apply for school admissions online. There are many possibilities.

[10:30]

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

What do you see is Education, Sport and Culture's role though in providing a much better grounding education for all the community from the young to the very old in terms of being able to communicate on the Internet and e-wise? Is it something that you see a role within?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is something that we have done in the past. If you look at Highlands College, with the community learning programme at Highlands College, there are many courses that attract a wide range of applications from the community that not all lead to qualifications but are personal interest and the Internet has featured on there. Some of the schools in the past, there is not the same demand for it now, have put on their own after-school classes for parents in the use of the Internet. Most people have got the basic skills now so there is not really the same demand.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Did the library not teach ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: The library, yes.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I just would like to jump in and say we have just appointed somebody new to head up the library, whose background is digital to some extent. In fact, I was just having the same conversation with Digital Jersey, talking about how we could work together in the context of the library because the library is obviously changing. You know now we have got books online you can access as opposed to the old paper stuff. I think the library itself will become that digital hub. It will be another digital hub for the community for those who access ... Philip Griffiths who was on the Island many years ago, a fantastic bloke whose consideration of e-government was somewhat advanced at that point in time, was talking about having digital hubs within each parish hall, strangely enough, just looking at the 2 Constables.

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : Yes, we were approached on that.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

So anybody could have access to computers, where there was space to put them, and find out about the approach that you are talking about with the Government, the one-stop approach. So I can come into my local community, either through the parish hall or through the library, and access any information that I need to know.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You mentioned Digital Jersey's lining up. Is that something that you play any role in or something that you feel you should play a role in?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I am on the Digital Jersey Education T.A.G. group and I have been involved with the digital learning hub from the start, advising and ensuring child protection issues and aspects of that are taken into account and just growing it with them, really. So I am very aware of ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So it is more of an advisory role rather than an actual day-to-day running that is more or less done by Digital Jersey themselves and the skills that they have got?

Finance Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, and they have really done it.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

They have got an incubator I think which is offered by Jersey Telecom.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You obviously see that maybe being rolled-out in a more wider format? The learning hub? In terms of like you say parish halls or ...?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: When we go back to e-government.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Yes, that is something that you see a part of?

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I think very much part of the e-government thing is to go back and make it more a community- based requirement.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Any other questions?

The Connétable of St. Mary : Not from me.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Deidre?

The Connétable of St. Lawrence : No, fine, thank you.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Jeremy?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Just a final one from me: have the teaching unions expressed any concerns to you?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think the teaching unions ... not directly, but we have a meeting this week, Thursday. So I would expect to hear if they have any concerns or issues for them to raise that there. Obviously, the big thing for the teaching unions is usually the workload that these things create for their members and making sure that their members are properly supported. I hope that when we meet them if they have got concerns, that we can give them the confidence that those concerns will be addressed.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Are there any potential changes to terms and conditions if you are looking to change the culture of teaching? Has that ever been mentioned in terms of what they ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No. There is no plan to change the terms and conditions in respect of this.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Okay. So there are no intentions at the moment, it is something that you just work through with them?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Not that we are aware of. Obviously, if you have got a school where there is maybe not the same degree of confidence, then teachers may talk to their union about that. That is understandable. We have got a good relationship with the Teachers Union, we meet with them quite frequently. So if they have got issues and they raise them then we will take account of them, we will not ignore them.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Can I thank all of you for coming in this morning, we very much appreciate it. I am sure we will speak again before the end of the review.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Sure.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

But I very much thank you for your time this morning.

Assistant Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Thank you.

[10:35]