The third guest lecture

 Mike Day

What Education policy is.

The third guest lecturer I will be discussing is from Mike Day. Mike is a cabinet member for education in Swansea. The lecture was based upon the role of education authorities, policies and politics.

Policy is the guidelines for action achieve goals and objectives.  This reflects: Political options, tradition and values, socio-economic objectives, over a long time scale and fundamental choices. Education policy is needed to ‘guide operational decisions and actions.’ Nevertheless, the question is who should develop it? Should it be politicians or practitioners? Politicians are elected to represent the people. Politicians ‘hold the purse strings’ and they are not subject experts. Practitioners know how it works in practice and can see things from their perspective; however they are unable to take a wider view. I believe that it should be developed by the practitioners and reviewed by the politicians. The Policy is then developed and involves consultation at all levels from UK level to Local schools and governing body. Here are examples of education policy at different levels.

At the UK level they set policies such as: Compulsory school ages, teacher’s pay and condition and the responsibility of the local education authorities, parents and schools.

The Welsh Government are responsible for policies such as; The use of welsh medium, Foundation Phase, No SATS, No academies/Free schools, Higher Education fees and the pupil deprivation grant.

The Local authorities are responsible of policies regarding; the organisation and number of schools and places improving standards, advice guidance to schools and the making arrangements to identify children and young people of compulsory school age (aged between 5 and 16) missing education within their area.

The school and governing body level are responsible for; uniforms start and finish times, the raft of policies on personal and social education, child protection, charging, equal opportunities, SEN and The school improvement plan.

Regional groups

Wales has four regional groupings, South West and Mid Wales (swamwac) with a ‘common goal of improving outcomes for young people.’ This is developed by the policy borrowing approach which searches the international experience for examples of unique transferable skills. Policy learning the supports the development of tailored national policies rather than policies taken of the-peg.

In the Swansea district, it has clear aspirations. This is to raise standards of achievement, improving the quality of the learning environment and to make the best of human, physical and financial resources. This is an all, inclusive and structured process.

To conclude, Mike Day outlined education policy and described education policies as guidelines for actions to achieve goals and objectives.