If only such stringent standards of conduct were applied across the board in the public sector.
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| Resigned. The last thing the Welsh eduction system needs is the loss of such a dynamic minister. |
There is little doubt that, love him or hate him, Leighton Andrews was a man doing a job and doing it diligently. Never a man to hold back on his words, he was certainly on a mission to change things for the better in Welsh education.
Not that being better than the bottom of the PISA list was a tall order. But getting to the top few of the list was.
Had Andrews not committed the heinous crime of holding up a placard, he would probably be signing off on a deal to get rid of at least a third of Welsh LEAs, an alarming number of which are under special measures recovery boards for failing to conduct their affairs as they ought.
Was Andrews right to resign? I don't think so, and here's why: Yes, it does superficially seem odd that a Minister who was ordering the closure and amalgamation of schools was protesting a school in his constituency should be kept open.
But that misses a very, very important point: the choice of which schools are closed was never one for the Minister. It was the decision of the local council. And the way in which some councils have gone about selecting their schools for closure has often been the subject of considerable community criticism, being seen as based on whom is friends with whom and good-old-fashioned prejudice and bias.
Anglesey's education department, as one example, is one of several under special measures, and has seen plenty of schools closure opposition, including a U-turn on its policies after a well-organised community campaign in 2012 highlighted deficiencies in the manner of its selection for closure.
None of this had anything to do with Leighton Andrews, so he was in practice entirely free to support a school if he thought the local authority was going about its closure programme in a wrong way. It's a pity Andrews never seems to have been given the opportunity to express this entirely legitimate position, because Wales is, this morning, a much worse place for losing him.
We can only hope this is not seen as an excuse by some not to thoroughly shake-up the local authorities that endlessly fail to bring about the change that is so desperately needed by our kids.
