Two education specialists from Guernsey, Clare Sealy, (Head of Education Improvement), and Joanne Siddall, (Primary Education Development Officer), have significantly contributed to a new national writing framework launched by the UK Department for Education in July 2025.
As members of an expert panel, they helped review and shape the framework, which aims to boost national writing standards through an evidence-based approach, focusing on handwriting, spoken language, and early years education.
Their contribution looks to showcase Guernsey’s strong primary education, with Guernsey pupils already performing “significantly better in Literacy and English than the UK average”.
Clare Sealy noted the difference between the two jurisdictions results: “Our monitoring shows that pupils in Guernsey perform significantly better in Literacy and English than the UK average. As just one example, this year 40% of our Key Stage 2 pupils are exceeding UK benchmark expectations for their age compared with just 23% of pupils nationally, highlighting the quality of education in our primary schools.
Ms Sealy continued: “It has been fantastic to contribute to this national framework, helping to share our best practice, and shape and guide classrooms nationally about how best to teach children vital writing skills.”
Meanwhile Joanne Siddall highlighted how Guernsey’s primary schools are leading the way: “It has been great to share how our States primary schools are leading the way in using current educational research practically in the classroom to hone our children’s writing.”
Ms Siddall continued: “The schools that have implemented a sentence knowledge curriculum have seen big improvements in writing, and we look forward to continuing to share our sector-leading work with schools locally and further afield.”
The States list La Houguette Primary School in Guernsey as an example of their learning methodology, who’ve been following the practices for over a year, with their experiences directly informing the framework and showing “real transformation” in pupil writing fluency and confidence.
Claire Judd, the Headteacher at La Houguette Primary School, said they’ve noticed a difference over the past 12 months: “We’ve seen a real transformation in how our pupils approach writing. The framework’s clarity and structure have helped both teachers and our learners and we’re already noticing improvements in fluency and confidence.”