Education on verge of final decision

After years of debate, vacillation and empty proposals this States will get to put the seal on plans that will determine how this generation of primary age children are educated.

It will be this Assembly’s defining moment.

It is a big moment, both in human terms for the lives it will touch, and in financial cost. Over 25 years, up to half a billion pounds rests on the coming vote by 38 deputies.

The mission has to be first to select the right system, secondly to do it at a cost the island can bear. Both parts of that equation must be satisfied.

No one should pretend it is easy. Weighing up the relative merits of sixth form colleges, tertiary colleges, 11-18 education, big versus small schools, further education institutes; all have their advocates and detractors.

Education, Sport & Culture has plotted its path through the maze. Its plan reflects the demands placed on it by the States and, for a committee that was far from united behind all-ability schooling, they are to be commended for getting behind it.

With the exception of one board member, who is opposed to spending more money on sport facilities at La Mare and building a primary school on the west coast site, the committee is unanimous. Again, given the disparate nature of the committee, that is no small feat.

That does not mean, however, that it should go unchallenged. If this is the right plan it will have to stand firm under the pressure and repel all counter-arguments.

The big question, of course, is whether a 960-pupil secondary school should be built at La Mare at a cost of £52.6m.

Could those millions be saved, or at least repurposed, in a two-school system?

Education’s report does not really help with that. They focus on a three-school system and waste little effort setting out the pros and cons of other options.

If the two-school 11-18 model is to supplant this report it will have to do so on its own merits, as explained by its backers.