‘We told you so’ debate is just theatre

After four gruelling and quarrelsome days of discussion at the start of the month, deputies look set to climb back in the ring within a week to do battle all over again.

Education says that they want clarity. Issues were left ‘unresolved’ by the marathon debate.

There are many holes in the requete. Few policy letters are watertight, let alone two-paragraph requetes.

The instruction to the committee was never going to be all-encompassing.

With good will on both sides this might have been avoided. Perhaps, in a different universe, the requerants and Education could have agreed a way forward both could live with.

But after more than four years of ebb and flow over selection and transformation the battle lines are drawn and trust among deputies is sorely lacking.

The suspicion remains that Education is labouring its point. The committee argued throughout the debate that the requete was too open-ended and would leave children in limbo.

By returning to the States so soon it gives them the opportunity to say ‘We told you so’.

They will also be able to show islanders once again how divided the Assembly is on which school model they really favour.

What else it can achieve is hard to discern. For Education knows that the forum of the States is not suited to define ‘the level of detail required’ for its comparisons.

It also knows that if it included the three 11-18 model in the comparisons no one would complain. It would not be the first time that a committee had ‘interpreted’ the wording of a States instruction.

If good will and trust still existed, Education could do this with much more light and a lot less heat. A workshop or consultation with deputies would draw out a shortlist without the need for another public display of division.

And for what? A new Education committee will be elected in June who will go their own way, as committees invariably do. Four years ago that meant one last bid to retain selection despite the previous Assembly rejecting it.

If February’s debate was a drama, this one is in danger of being pure theatre.