Guernsey Press

No hint of bias if cynics to be proved wrong

THE States provides plenty of sustenance for cynics.

Published

Half-hearted consultations, hidden agendas, personality politics, buried reports. It’s all there.

Top of the pile though is the pre-determined review. A committee asked by the States to look again at a thorny issue will invariably write a report which backs its original position.

Education wants islanders to cast such cynicism aside. Its review of the secondary transformation options has only one objective: to bring an end to years of debate. If it was just about validating the two-college idea the committee would ‘have walked away months ago’.

They would say that, the cynic would scoff. They can promise to be open-minded but it is impossible to fight tooth and nail for a dream for year after year against fierce opposition and not harbour deep-seated bias. It is like spurning a much-loved child.

We shall see. Certainly, Education puts its case with clarity and passion. It wants agreement, reform and improvement more than ‘winning an old argument’.

To that end it is asking people what they think. Unions, teachers, head teachers, pupils, parents, support staff. The list of ‘stakeholders’ being consulted is extensive.

We have been here before, the cynic would argue. Famously, Your School, Your Choice was billed as one of the biggest consultations ever held in the island. Yet when the Education department ignored its central message to leave selection well alone because it did not fit with the reformation agenda it became a byword for government duplicity.

But if this promise to engage is a charade, what is its purpose? Using the review as armour plating to bullet proof the two-college model and force it through the Assembly is bound to fail. Once teachers made clear how united they were in opposition it drove many nails deep into the proposal’s coffin.

Only a genuine open-minded review has any hope of success. The merest whiff of bias will leave the island’s schools stuck in limbo, the first circle of hell.

Education is right to fear that above all else.