Does each Education Committee have to reinvent the wheel?

Evidence-based discussion must be part of the Assembly’s decision-making process. The last ESC’s costly research shows that self-governing schools with pupils aged 11-18 give best results.

Their mistake was to try to concertina four schools into two which does not work in Guernsey’s infrastructure. Teachers and other stakeholders expressed opposition in detail (200 letters to the Guernsey Press alone). The plan is now for four schools, building a new one (the reason LMDC has been abandoned) and no 11-18 States school, discouraging locals from staying in Guernsey and new families coming, along with housing issues, so reducing the tax take.

ESC said it has not transferred any power to headteachers because it has not been tried and tested. It has, and political intervention has only led to uncertainty, which is detrimental to pupils.

Mulkerrin’s report commissioned by the States in 2012, recommended that devolution of power to schools was beneficial to the school and thereby the community.

This was piloted at LMDC (which suffered from consistent States under-investment) and resulted in improved standards thanks to teachers. Subsequently, a focused board, when creating the Guernsey Institute, brought together successfully the previous three strands of post-16 education. Why has that non-political board been disbanded now by ESC?

Have subsequent ESCs considered this report, particularly on self-governance? Are they bound to decisions or will each new ESC reinvent the wheel at taxpayer’s expense? Schooling spans more than a four year Assembly.

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