A total of 446 children are enrolled to start in a mainstream primary school this September, compared to 437 who were registered at the equivalent time to start last September.
The intake will be a few pupils larger than initially anticipated, following late registrations, and stalls the steep decline in pupil numbers experienced in recent years.
However, the latest figures are unlikely to discourage the new States from undertaking a long-awaited review of the primary phase of education.
At least 23 of the 38 successful candidates at last week’s general election indicated that they supported or were open to closing or merging schools.
Class sizes at each primary school are usually available in May, three months or so before the start of the academic year, but the Education, Sport & Culture Committee has so far declined requests to provide the detailed figures for this September.
It said they should be released next week.
‘While pupil numbers and classes across primary settings are largely confirmed, there are still a small number of more complicated cases that officials are working through with individual families and schools to resolve,’ said an ESC spokesman.
About 25 children who were initially registered for a place in reception at a States primary school have since been enrolled at one of the private colleges or left the island.
Enrolments confirmed for September mean there will be about 180 spare places in reception classes, as States’ mainstream primary schools have capacity for just under 650 pupils in each year group, although space is unevenly distributed across the island.
Early in the current States term, the outgoing Education Committee won the backing of the Assembly to postpone a review of the primary phase, and during the recent general election campaign most of the committee’s five deputies indicated opposition to closing or merging schools. None openly supported such a move.
The committee’s president, Andrea Dudley-Owen, said that closing schools was ‘distressing and took years of recovery’ and instead suggested that space in primary schools could be used by other related services.
But three of the committee’s members, including Deputy Dudley-Owen, lost their seats at the election, and their successors will be elected next month by a new Assembly which would appear to have a greater appetite for further consolidation of the island’s primary schools.
The Guernsey Press published a pre-election supplement in which all 82 candidates were invited to answer a series of questions about their proposed policies, one of which was about the future of primary education. Successful candidates were on average more likely to support closing or merging schools than unsuccessful candidates.
In total, 16 successful candidates provided either a clear commitment or a strong indication of support for closures or mergers, and seven others said they were open to the idea.
Only seven successful candidates said or implied that they were opposed to closures or mergers. Seven others prevaricated and one failed to reply.
However, none of the successful candidates who clearly indicated support for closures or mergers has so far publicly declared an interest in standing for the presidency of ESC.
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