Poor gauge of public mood to blame for national education retreat

On October 19, 1812, the French army under Napoleon began its momentous retreat from Moscow, which was to spawn the famous orchestral work by Tchaikovsky. Some 200 years later, almost to the day, our government has been forced to undertake a similarly humiliating retreat, on the vexed subject of national education, though it seems unlikely anyone is going to memorialise the event with an overture.

But when we have all finished enjoying the discomfort of our senior officials, we need to examine a serious matter that the episode has exposed. "We" in this context includes the whole community, but in particular the chief executive and his team of advisers on the Executive Council.

Every policy paper that goes to Exco has a section that tries to forecast likely public reaction to the proposal being recommended, followed by a paragraph outlining how the administration intends to "sell" the new plan to the community, if it is endorsed.

In my time in the government, I saw hundreds of public reaction paragraphs. Indeed, for a long time, it was part of my job to vet that part of all papers before they were put to the council.

Almost invariably, the first draft, which came from the policy bureau responsible for the subject, would predict an enthusiastic public response for even the most humdrum item. But that draft would then be subjected to close scrutiny by three other parties within the administration to ensure the final assessment was accurate.

First, the Information Services Department would dig out past media coverage of the topic and attempt to forecast how the press would react. Second, the Home Affairs Bureau would draw on feedback from the district council network to assess the likely reaction from the community. Finally, the information co-ordinator would give his advice on how the subject was likely to play out, and suggest the best public relations plan.

What is so troubling about the national education saga is that the administration seems to have been totally blindsided by the scale and vehemence of the opposition. Somehow, somewhere, the system broke down.