Questions outnumber answers

A PROPOSAL to federate the five secondary schools, which was unveiled at midnight last night, will have teachers, pupils and parents fretting over what it means for them.

For high school children and teachers it means slightly longer days and 75 minutes extra time in the classroom each week. Parents will have to get their children out of the door up to 10 minutes earlier and can expect to see them home again a little later.

That, at this stage, is where certainty ends and conjecture begins. Until the five head teachers have firmed up the detail and agreed on a way forward, this is just a high-flying concept.

So while we know, for example, that teachers will change schools more often, we don't know what that means. Will it be termly swaps, weekly, daily, annual?

For a teacher posted to Alderney's St Anne's School, such changes could be life-changing.

Many people are resistant to change and uncomfortable with uncertainty. Teachers are no different and some will prefer to be established in their surroundings with a familiar set of colleagues.

Parents, too, will worry what federation will mean for educational standards.

Will the three high schools improve at the cost of the Grammar pupils as teachers are shunted around to address hotspots in other schools? And what will be the effect on continuity of education of an ever-churning pot of teachers?

If this were an exam paper, it would provoke more questions than answers.

But of all the questions the most fundamental is the one asking if these plans are laying the ground for an end to the 11-plus and selection.

For if all schools within the federation are to be treated equally in a bid to raise general standards, how can one be allowed to cream off the top cohort of pupils each year?

And one final question: how is it that the formation of a federation of five schools, each answering to one director of education, can be expected to lead to the devolution of power to local governors to run their schools how they wish?

Federation is surely all about the group, not the individual.