Email correspondence about teacher salaries (FOI)

​Request

Please could you provide all emails sent between the Education Minister, his Assistant Ministers, the Chief Minister and the Treasury Minister, regarding their proposals to cut salaries for newly qualified teachers as part of the MTFP?

For clarification the keywords NQT and MTFP, with a date range of 1 November 2014 to 30 April 2017, should be used as the basis for the email search.

Response

In order to ensure a full and exhaustive search of email correspondence, the Education Department also used the full wording for the acronyms newly qualified teachers (NQT) and medium term financial plan (MTFP).

A central email repository is held by the States of Jersey for a period of two years. This system was interrogated on Thursday 22 June, this resulted in the search period being limited to 21 June 2015 to 30 April 2017.

As this search yielded no results, the Education Department has determined that this information is not held, for the period 21 June 2015 to 30 April 2017.

For the period 1 November 2014 to 20 June 2015 the Education Department has determined that retrieval of this information would exceed the cost limit provisions under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.

Exemptions and articles applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 16 - A scheduled public authority may refuse to supply information if cost excessive

(1) A scheduled public authority that has been requested to supply information may refuse to supply the information if it estimates that the cost of doing so would exceed any fee of an amount determined in the manner prescribed by Regulations.