Bishop Hill On this day...
Apr 20, 2008 Education Well, not on this day exactly, but roughly five years ago on 14th April 2003, David Milliband launched an all-out attack on red tape in schools:
The Government will continue its concerted attack on teacher workloads today, by launching the first-ever independent scrutiny unit made up of frontline teachers, to cut red tape and free schools of bureaucracy.
The Implementation Review Unit (IRU) is a key component of implementing the national workforce agreement and will tackle unnecessary paper work, assess workload implications and reduce bureaucratic processes. It shows the continued progress and delivery by signatories to reduce workloads and help teachers focus on improving pupil learning.
I wonder what they've been up to in the last five years? Let's take a peek at their website shall we?
Oh look, there's a news section! That will tell us.
And the news is:
"No news items have been posted yet".
I wonder when they're going to actually, you know, do something useful?
Reader Comments (1)
The 2007 report by the IRU (URL is http://www.vle-yorks.co.uk/leas/bfd/addingham/mod/resource/view.php?id=121 for some reason) states that it has a clear job for 2007:
"So we see our task in the year ahead as continuing to promote the importance of the new relationship; <b>to help the Department develop more practical and effective policy</b>; to improve the clarity of its messages to the intermediaries, and the effectiveness with which it holds stakeholders to account for the way they support schools in securing better outcomes for children and young people."
Reading the document carefully, it is full of criticism, mentioning that there is effectively a new government in place (new PM, new education dept, new education minister, etc).
So go easy on this quango. It can't be that easy criticising a department with which it shares its premises :).