More to cuts than closing the toilets
WHEN the Education minister said that the requirement to cut £7.3m. from its budget over the next two years would stretch the department, it was something of an understatement – not least because it has significantly to improve the delivery of education in the wake of the GCSE debacle.
WHEN the Education minister said that the requirement to cut £7.3m. from its budget over the next two years would stretch the department, it was something of an understatement – not least because it has significantly to improve the delivery of education in the wake of the GCSE debacle.
It is one reason why the department is now looking a little uncoordinated over whether school closures and/or college grants are in the frame. Yes they are, says the minister; we've discussed nothing, says a member on the phone-in.
As it happens, both are correct. The economies demanded of all departments are now so significant that the targets cannot be met by the equivalent of counting paperclips. A far more fundamental approach is required.
In Education's case, that will include examining abandoning Grange House and moving somewhere cheaper to run, cutting its educationally non-productive bureaucracy – only employing a new schools build project team when it has something to do might be a start – closing schools and further reducing the subsidies to the colleges.
And why wouldn't it? The £7.3m. that the department has to find by 2014 will not be the end of the matter – further efficiencies will be required in future.
If educating island children to a certain standard is the department's core purpose then – as the Mulkerrin report identified – the quality of teaching and teachers far outweighs the buildings.
The decision to 'save' St Andrew's Primary and St Sampson's Infants was based on emotion, not finance, and in today's climate would make even less sense if there was no untoward impact on learning.
Should Education go down that route, it will not be popular, any more than reducing college grants.
Yet if the fundamental requirement of education to a standard is met, the alternatives mean islanders who are not involved emotionally or through their children will be asked to fund a shortfall that they in all probability do not care about.
To date, Guernsey has been spared such emotive decisions but they are now fast approaching.
The time of closing toilets in the name of 'efficiency' is long gone.
