The Isle of Man should have the ’courage and determination’ to exceed the UK’s model of education.

That was the statement of intent from Chris Robertshaw (Douglas East) in this week’s House of Keys sitting.

Mr Robertshaw made his statement during a supplementary question for Minister for Education, Sport and Culture Graham Cregeen on how the island’s education department is reviewed.

Mr Robertshaw asked if the Minister agreed that rather than the island ’slavishly following the UK model, in fact we should have the courage and determination to do better than the UK’.

Mr Cregeen said he agreed with Mr Robertshaw’s comments and questioned why the island should want to copy what he called the UK’s ’broken system’.

Mr Cregeen said: ’We have a system that is working, where the teachers are happy with the system and the unions are happy with the system and the Isle of Man system is actually held in high esteem by people within teaching. Why would we want to change that system?’

During this week’s Keys questions, Mr Cregeen also said that teachers and unions do not want Ofsted to review the island’s schools.

It followed questioning from former teacher Jason Moorhouse (Arbory, Castletown and Malew) into how the department is assessed and when the last Ofsted report was published?

Mr Moorhouse asked if the Minister believed it to be a good idea to have more external reviews from educational professionals to get an overall reflection of the performance of the education department.

Mr Cregeen responded: ’The discussions I’ve had with teachers is that they would not wish to see Ofsted operate in the Isle of Man.

’The department is monitored externally by individuals who review the education improvement service and that’s the position the department has taken.’

Julie Edge (Onchan) questioned how often Mr Cregeen speaks to teachers on the subject of Ofsted and queried why there is such opposition for the education watchdog to return to the island.

Mr Cregeen said he regularly talks to teachers and regularly meets the teaching unions who he says oppose Ofsted reviewing the island’s system as it does not place the emphasis on the performance of students.

Mr Cregeen said that while the island is not inspected by Ofsted, it is reviewed both internally and externally.

Internally, the social affairs and policy review committee and Tynwald provide public scrutiny with political members overseeing the performance of the department.

Manx schools are self- reviewed and evaluated against a quality assurance framework.

The self evaluations reviewed externally on a three-year cycle to ensure accuracy.

Mr Creegen noted that in 2016, Tynwald accepted a review from the Scottish inspectorate which looked at many aspects of the island’s education.

He was also asked by Mrs Edge about Castle Rushen High School and the well publicised exam error that affected some English IGCSE students.

Mr Cregeen defended the school, calling it a ’mistake by a member of staff’.

He called upon the Onchan MHK and anyone in the Keys to put their hand up if they had never made a mistake. None did.