Matt Fallaize resigns from Education
Wednesday 12th October 2011, 4:55PM BST.
GUERNSEY’S Education Department’s troubles deepened yesterday as it lost another board member in the wake of its handling of the GCSE saga.
Deputy Matt Fallaize announced his resignation in the afternoon, having only the day before had it rejected when debated by the States.
It also emerged that the only member who had not put forward his resignation, Deputy David De Lisle, would have stood for the minister’s job if Carol Steere’s resignation had been accepted.
Deputy Fallaize had long argued that all the board should have resigned to be held accountable for their handling of the falling GCSE standards at La Mare de Carteret and St Sampson’s High.
‘We asked for our resignation to be debated so that we could explain our actions to the Assembly,’ he said.
‘Having done that, I was amazed when the States rejected the resignations.’
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Guess who wants to stand in the next general election…That said it is a shame that the others involved in this don’t follow you. Well done for standing by your principles
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Excellent news. Most unsuitable for the position.
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An honourable act, at last. But what happens now? The Assembly rejected his resignation yesterday. I suppose if they are not asked to debate it, the resignation just happens. The Board Meeting must have been a humdinger!!
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He was the only one I would have been happy for to stay. C’mon Carol follow suit…
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Well done again the States of Guernsey, Get rid of the new blood again and keep the old guard wobbling around creating nonsense and smoke screens.
A+ for Comedy Mr Trott .
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Actually Matt, sorry to see you go, I believe you genuinely work for the best outcome for the people of Guernsey. Hopefully the review will show where the mistakes have been made, but I have little faith in our Chief Minister who grabs at political opportunities rather than what is best for the Guernsey people.
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I’ve never understood how resigning is the “honourable” thing to do. The going gets tough so you abandon your post? People learn from their mistakes, at least they should do, so if you’ve already had experience in the area, that should help you come to a better solution to the problem?
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By the sounds of it the whole debate and voting on this was was a bit of a farse. Hats off to Deputy Fallaize for taking a stand.
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As if that’s really going to have any effect whatsoever in the way that the Education Dept. is run.
The deputies are not the experts in the field and are really there as the mouthpiece to and from (hopefully) the people. The people that have the real control and information as to what goes on, how things are done etc. are the civil servants within the education dept (and getting paid bloomin’ handsomely for their failures as well I’m sure).
Why is no-one from within offering to fall on their sword?
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I agree with Karen that the problems run much deeper than Board level. The entire system needs to be questioned, particularly the use of examinations as a valid yardstick of anything useful.
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@ Karen
because the CS’s have not done anything wrong – what don’t you understand?
You, the public, know nothing of the truth about this situation and must leave the running of the department to the education professionals employed to do the task.
All of a sudden everyone is an expert…
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Resigning is normally associated with accepting responsibility for the mistakes that have been made. True, those mistakes have been made at a civil service level as well and it would be good to see some of them accept their part in this fiasco. Far less likely I fear but if there were a proper performance related employee review process within the civil service, we could at least hope that they would not automatically enjoy an incremantal pay rise irrespective of performance.
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Another bites the dust,
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Shame to see Matt go, he is the only one who actually stands by his convictions. Respectable decision, hope to see you back at the next election.
Karen – agree. Carol Steere is not suited to a role where she is the “mouthpiece” to the people, especially as she so often has made it quite clear that she prefers to work “without the glare of the public”.
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Why are people praising him? Does anyone else think that he has just jumped from a sinking ship? He has inside knowledge of the ins and outs and simply does not want any part of it. There are Elections coming up in 2012 and it makes sense that he’s getting out before the layman’s vote has to be garnered.
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Why are these muppets allowed in
let the uk goverment run the islands
THEY DO OWN THEM
SIMPLES
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Ed,
‘You, the public, know nothing of the truth about this situation’
Yes. That’s how the Education Department seems to like it!
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Ed
“…. leave the running of the department to the education professionals employed to do the task….”
That would seem to rule out all the old members of the board then ….
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ED says that we should leave education to the professionals.
One thing for sure is that the so called professionals don’t know what is going on.
Only a few weeks ago Derek Neale was telling us that as was well. A few days later the head of La Mare was telling us that plans were in place to effect improvement in the schools. This afew days after Carol Steere had told us the poor figures for the High Schools.
From this it seems that Neale was unaware of the true state of affairs nor of the plans for improvement, otherwise he would have included this information in his letter to the Press.
Surely if was aware of the poor performance of the High Schools and plans to improve these schools he would have told us?
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@MJ
Agreed; if I am reading this issue correctly, it would appear that Rep Fallaize has been fighting for these abysmal results to be made public, behind closed doors, ‘for some time’.
Had he felt that strongly, he should have made this knowledge and his opinions publically known, after all, we voted him into office, not his previous committee.
I don’t know the format for resignation, but if he was genuinly wanting to jump, surely his resignation letter should have stated that he did not want his stance to be debated.
@Ed
Your post is both patronisingly rude and ignorant; This is a very small island; I think you will find that quite a lot of us Joe Publics have access to all sorts of levels of knowledge, probably a lot more than you have been appraised of, as your post would indicate.
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Matt, please explain why you didn`t force your resignation at the debate held on precisely that topic and allow a new member to be voted to the board there and then.
Now The States has to waste time at another meeting to vote for another replacement for you.
Maybe your mummy and daddy had a say in it after the debate and told you you had to resign anyway because you`d been a naughty boy.
Try thinking a bit more and saving the Tax payers the cost of extended debates.
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Cabbage – that is a fair point and often it is absolutely right to give people the benefit of the doubt and a second chance, however there is also the question of trust.
Deputy Fallaize has evidently realised what the rest of us know, namely the current Education Board have lost the confidence of the people of Guernsey and nearly half the House. He has decided – and rightly in my view – that this makes his position untenable, at least until the next election.
Personally I’m not inclined to write Deputy Fallaize off though. His time may well come again however this was his first term in office and perhaps in hindsight he would have been better off sitting on the back benches until he found his feet rather than sitting on a high profile board like Education. Either way I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Alongside trust there is also the issue of competence. Simply winning votes does not necessarily make someone competent enough to act on a board or in a ministerial role. Of course everyone makes mistakes however there is simply no point keeping someone in office who is incapable of doing the job. To use a sporting analogy, I’m OK playing football with my mates but if I played for Manchester United I would be well out of my depth and quickly found out. One couldn’t expect Sir Alex to keep me in the team in order to “put things right” – the fact is I’m simply not up to the job.
Personally I think that is the case with Deputy Steere. Unlike Deputy Fallaize she is a veteran of politics and yet has contrived to lead Education from one disaster to another during her 3.5 years at the helm. I think it’s pretty clear that she may be OK as a back bench deputy but it seems blatantly obvious she’s not up to the job of running Education. In my opinion she should go – along with Mr Neale who seems to have got away with lying low and letting the politicians take the flack.
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Sorry Matt may be in the small basket of good apples but he failed on this issue. He has had the decency to admit this which can be hard to do. Hopefully he will learn from this. If he stands again then I think he deserves another chance as he could be a good politician and we have very few of those.
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How can people say he is a man who stands by his convictions? This is the same bloke who stated in his manifesto that he was’totally against the closing of any schools’ then after getting voted in promptly changed his mind! New blood my foot, he’s just like all the other bloody sheep that we call a goverment.
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Mr Fallaize is clearly keen to prove that he has integrity and I feel he is a promising young politician however I wonder if he has simply bowed to the pressure.
He seems to have been rather indecisive about his resignation and how to execute it properly and this perhaps reflects his inexperience and lack of leadership qualities at the current time.
There will always be intense criticism in politics maybe Mr Fallaize needs to learn how to handle it better.
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Parent A says “Mr Fallaize is clearly keen to prove that he has integrity and I feel he is a promising young politician however I wonder if he has simply bowed to the pressure”
Your right ParentA, he probably was pressured not to reveal the information. People should appreciate how lonely it can be if you are the only one on a committee who wants to do something.
At least the man is standing up and being counted.
We should be far more concerned about those who disn’t want us to know the truth.
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@ stlletto
I have read the draft findings of the independent review and I think you will find that no faults will be found with the civil servants who are performing their duties as mandated by the board.
Hardly ignorant am I?
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Ed
If the draft you claim to have read is that of the review announced last week it is hardly likely to be any more than a superficial whitewash.
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@Ed
I continue to think you have no real knowledge, despite what you think you have seen. You appear to have an anal attitude.
@ Stephn John
Agreed, Ed thinks he has some special knowledge, he doesn’t. Independant draft review results to date are well known.
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Stephen John
You say “probably”. I’m unsure of this too. If you are suggesting he voted in favour of keeping the statistics under wraps due to pressure from the board, this perhaps indicates weakness.
In any case, feeling lonely as you put it is no excuse to bail out.
Its easy to say what you would’ve wanted in hindsight when it’s obvious the decision was a mistake. This is standing up to be counted?
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I have to smirk at the comments about Matt Fallaize’s ‘inexperience’ by demonstrating something most politicians have never even heard of… integrity. Matt has it in spadefuls!
Lets have a quick trawl at the decisions made by some of our more ‘senior’ politicians;
We have a senior advocate who demonstrated poor business acumen in his capital venture dealings with a local businessman who was disqualified as a Director in Ireland.
We have the HSSD minister and his rudderless command of hospital services and its spiralling budgets.
We have Stuart Falla and his poor decision making with the PEH building project, Mike Torode who gave away Guernsey Telecoms to Cable and Wireless and Bob Chilcott who was soundly sent packing by the Guernsey electorate some years ago for a catalogue of errors.
You can go on and on about our so called ‘senior’ politicians and their dire mistakes. Matt can either consider himself in good company or we can just respect him for showing integrity, something the names above have absolutely no concept of.
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Town Dweller
You left out Roger ‘overspend’ Berry
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Town Dweller – that’s a fair comment however I still think in hindsight Deputy Fallaize might have benefited from some time on the back benches before being thrown in the deep end. I think experience is vital when sitting on any high profile / pressure board – even if it is experience of the wily ways of the so-called “senior” politicians and civil servants you invariably have to deal with.
I certainly wasn’t questioning his integrity, and like Stephen John says it can be lonely when you’re the only one trying to do the right thing.
Let’s hope come next April there are more deputies in the House more concerned with doing the right thing than holding on to their job at all costs.
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In defence of Deputy De Lisle,who I think is a strange old cove,he too was pushing for the hidden results to be released,which is why he declined to go through with the resignation sham
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The thing is the statistics were never hidden. They were there in the open the whole time but no one made a song and dance about them because they were not a benchmark Guernsey has used before. With good reason.
The results do show there is some explaining to do but Mr Fallaize appears to be accepting the blame before the review, and before all the factors are considered properly. I think he should’ve waited. Mr De Lisle knows what he’s doing. Education needs some stability. Its not the time for a big change just yet.
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