Now it's the pupils who are to blame

NOT content with blaming individual teachers for appalling GCSE high school results the apologists for a failed education system are now it seems prepared to make the children themselves responsible.

Even worse, pupils are being paraded in front of the media to defend a system that even the chief minister says has failed.

The message that came through yesterday from the high school head teachers was, effectively, 'what can we do with the students we are left with after the cream go to Grammar and the colleges?'

Just what are the children who go to the high schools supposed to make of that?

With one breath they are assured that they have not 'failed' the 11-plus, yet such low expectations are put on them that pass rates of 12% and 20% are considered excusable.

Yes, England does not have the same selective education process. The majority of pupils go through comprehensives but there are public schools, independent schools, faith schools and a degree of selection in many counties.

So it beggars belief to be told that the high schools of an affluent island such as Guernsey cannot compete with schools in some of the most deprived areas of England.

With low unemployment, a high average salary and a good housing and social benefit system, high school students in Guernsey should be able to demand and expect just as good an education as anyone in the UK.

Regardless, nothing explains the huge differences between La Mare and Beaucamps, where the latter outperforms the former by a factor of three.

That is not down to selection.

Also laid to rest is the excuse that dilapidated buildings are to blame – St Sampson's has fantastic facilities yet lags far behind Beaucamps.

No, as partially acknowledged by the reluctant offers of resignation by the Education minister and three of her board, the problems with these schools stem from policy not pupils.

The chief minister's root-and-branch review cannot come soon enough. And it must be truly independent.