Meerveld: ‘Two-school report is a waste of time and money’
EDUCATION’s former vice-president Carl Meerveld has labelled the two-school report ‘a waste of money’ and ‘nothing more than a high-level concept’.
The four deputies behind the alternative model want to see two 11-18 schools created under a single executive management structure, a devolution of powers from the Education Office to school leaders and a consolidation of all technical and vocational studies at one College of Further Education campus.
They have not committed to which two schools should be used, saying that an architect’s conclusion that La Mare de Carteret and Baubigny were most suited to site extension was based on a high-level 24-page assessment of each site.
Education, Sport & Culture ‘has not yet had the opportunity to discuss the alternative model in detail’, a spokesman said, and will do so at its first meeting in the new year.
However, Deputy Meerveld, who stepped down from the committee earlier this month over a bungled PR campaign, said the report was not worth the wait.
‘I am very disappointed – I was expecting a proposal that actually had some meat to it, but this is just a high-level concept instructing the future ESC committee to go back to the drawing board and work up a new two-school model from scratch,’ he said.
‘All it does is say, “We think two schools are better”. Personally I think it has proved to be a waste of £93,000 and, by delaying the debate of the ESC committee’s proposals, it could end up costing the States millions of pounds more.
‘Whilst I would hope that States members would dismiss this as simply a waste of time, the States has a history of procrastinating on major issues, such as the waste strategy, and pushing them down the line rather than making a decision.’
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