This week’s sitting of Tynwald will receive a select committee’s report into the new Education Bill and it makes for grim reading for the Minister.

The social affairs policy review committee’s first report into the draft bill says the Minister has failed to gain confidence of staff and criticises his department’s consultation and engagement with home educators.

The committee, chaired by David Cretney MLC, has concluded that ’despite having run two public consultations and held numerous meetings over two and a half years, the Minister [Graham Cregeen] and members had, by mid-2019, failed to gain the confidence of the staff working in the department’s own schools’.

This includes both senior leaders and frontline staff.

The report added: ’We conclude that in considering any future legislative proposals which may be brought forward by the department, the branches (of Tynwald) should ascertain for themselves the extent to which the views of key stakeholders inside and outside the teaching profession have been taken into account by the department.’

The report added that ’at the same time the department had antagonised home educators’.

It said: ’The department engaged positively with home educators in early 2018 but relations then appear to have broken down. The proposals in the department’s second public consultation, in 2019, have caused shock, dismay and outrage among home educators.’

The committee did accept that ’there is a case’ for changes to home education laws as there is currently ’a risk at present that a case could arise where a child was not receiving a suitable education and yet this was not apparent to the department’.

It added: ’In considering any future proposals in this area, the branches must assess the risk carefully in order to satisfy themselves that any intrusion into family life is necessary and proportionate.’

Issues were also raised with the consultation into the draft bill. The committee said that it ’lacked sophistication’, included leading questions and that ’the quantitative approach adopted by the department in analysing the public responses was ill suited to the complexity of the subject matter’.

And it said the proposed timetable in the programme for government to introduce legislation within one year was labelled ’unrealistic’.

The committee also noted that while it may be necessary to employ external drafters to ’relieve immediate pressures’ on the Attorney General’s chambers, it is ’preferable’ to use Manx law drafters.