Liberal Vannin leader and Ramsey MHK Lawrie Hooper has called for a balanced approach to publishing school inspection reports,.
He has frequently criticised the current system where parents only receive “very high level wishy washy kind of meaningless language”.
Speaking to Manx.News, Mr Hooper said: “”I think if you look at what they do in places like Scotland, they will publish what they call a summary information report, which takes the detailed report and summarises it with the relevant bits that are relevant for parents.”
He argued: “The problem we’ve got is I don’t believe those interim middle reports actually exist. So we really have a choice between, do you publish those detailed reports or not?”
Withdraw
The MHK said he was prepared to withdraw his motion compelling publication if the Education Minister agreed to improve transparency.
He said that ideally a middle way allowing the reports to be done in an open manner, while allowing parents to receive a greater detail of the information in them without “naming and shaming”.
Mr Hooper added: “It should never have reached this stage,” with his motion “calling on Tynwald to use its legal powers to compel the production of information”.
The Ramsey MHK maintained: “The challenge is, of course, when the department commissioned this work, they should have commissioned it with the expectation that a certain level of information would be provided, not the nth degree, not the absolute detail, but something that is meaningful to parents.”
Drawing parallels with healthcare inspections, he noted: “If you look at what we did in health for the CQC, we publish those reports in full… we’ve tried to focus on the bigger issues, and that’s really the approach the education department should be taking.”
The motion remains before next week’s Tynwald, but would be withdrawn if Mr Hooper receives the guarantees he is seeking.
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