La Mare pays the price for lack of love

And when those plans were overturned, and deputies voted by 30 votes to 18 to keep selective education and build three 720-pupil high schools instead, La Mare was once again playing Cinderella, last to go to the ball.

No reasons were given or asked for, it was simply ordained that the other two schools would go joint first. La Mare's roof was already leaking but Education wanted its shiny new schools at the Baubigny and a revamped Les Beaucamps.

As the island is now learning, it was a costly mistake. La Mare has always been the most flexible site with much more scope to develop than Les Beaucamps in its cramped, awkward hillside site.

So when the ambitious 10-year building programme for all three high schools (costed at a bargain basement £50m.) started to slip, La Mare's place at the end of the queue became increasingly precarious.

The timeframe stretched to such an extent that, in 2010, two years after La Mare should have been built and with the recession biting hard, Les Beaucamps finally got the go-ahead.

The vote to spend £37m. on Les Beaucamps was unanimous and not a deputy dared whisper that the wrong school was being built. Almost a decade had passed since the grand plan had been dreamed up but nobody questioned the wisdom of which school to build next.

After all, La Mare's time would surely come. They would just have to wait a little longer.

And so the island has been driven down an educational cul-de-sac. We cannot afford to build a new school, but we cannot afford not to.

Falling school rolls have left a plan cooked up in 2002 – by an Education Council still reeling from losing the 11-plus argument – looking over-ambitious and costly.

But, having been promised action for more than a decade, should La Mare teachers, parents and pupils pay the price for the States' failures?