What a difference a year makes for education plans

IT HAS taken only a year or so for thinking about the best way to provide secondary education to turn completely on its head.

Let's compare and contrast this Education committee with its predecessor.

The 2016 model was anti-selection, but pro four schools operating as one, pro continuing with a sixth form centre, pro choice at 14 and pro including an autism centre, pre-school and community facilities at La Mare.

It argued passionately, backed by the professional advice of its staff, that this was the best way forward.

All that thinking has been turned on its head, although somewhat ironically led by a board with a majority against delivering the comprehensive system they are now instigating.

Now it is all about three schools, definitely not shifting around at 14, no specialisms within those schools so no bussing staff and pupils around, no sixth form centre attached to a secondary school and certainly no autism centre, pre-school or community facilities at La Mare.

This, it tells us, is the best thing, backed by the professional advice of its staff, many of whom are the same.

You get the gist.

No wonder you have to take it all with a pinch of salt – we are all being collectively asked to wipe our memory banks.

There are some interesting points to be taken from the independent review that was done of the last Education Department's plans for La Mare, especially the £1.8m. of additional facilities that are now considered surplus to requirements.

Of the £840,000 autism centre, it said: 'There are, however, educational, service delivery and management advantage benefits in having primary and secondary provision co-located, and, subject to the secondary school development going ahead, we would recommend that this plan is followed.'

Not so says the new committee, because now the educational specialists advise that children and young people with autism or communication difficulties should be supported by bases in each of the secondary schools – note that there is no cost attached to that at the moment.

The primary base will continue at Amherst, even though the independent reviewers agreed with Education last term that it was 'in sub-standard and unsuitable accommodation and should be replaced'.

You could tear your hair out at the contradictions.

Move on to the £525,000 community facility, which has been dismissed by this committee with barely a murmur and some mutterings about working with other community services on something. Why worry?

Well, you would have hoped its report would have addressed the points raised earlier.

'The need for additional community facilities is supported by a range of indices and data indicating levels of deprivation, for example the high number of pupils on the child protection register, children in receipt of school uniform bursaries and numbers in social housing,' the independent review says.

'High quality community facilities do make the local population feel valued and have been proven through international research to have a positive impact on outcomes for children, as well as contributing to wider regeneration of deprived areas.'

That social need remains

unaddressed in these plans, yet the committee will push on with an enhanced sports hall, more than three times the size of the existing facility, for £6.5m.

These points need to be raised and debated, not brushed aside.

Education's report is also completely lacking on why it no longer wants the pre-school, although hints that it remains a longer-term goal.

The panel was in fact concerned that the pre-school planned would not be big enough.

It said: 'Given the level of social deprivation in the immediate locality (which emphasises the need for early intervention) and the contraction of supply in the area (the closure of two local nurseries), we strongly support the provision of the nursery at LMDC.'

Education has subsequently said, when pressed by this newspaper, that there remain powerful arguments for the pre-school and community hub, but it has had to prioritise capital spending.

Even with all these elements lost, the new school at La Mare, admittedly with a much larger capacity, still comes in above what the last department's proposal cost.

There remains a healthy scepticism over the sums involved in Education's latest proposals – and there should be.

Some would like to take the pound signs out of this debate, but they matter.

It has too often felt that Education's answer has always been to rebuild La Mare whatever the question that is posed.

It needs to dispel that, and the cost comparisons with other options which it says are more expensive will help.

More reassurance is definitely needed about those costs, as more reassurance is needed about the sudden change of heart in what produces the best educational outcomes.

In a pretty thorough report, Education has also proposed a radical reform of post-16 education, which again could get lost in the focus on secondary education.

Contrary to the path the States finally followed with the secondary system – decide your policies and then how to deliver them – here we get everything as an 'all in one' package.

Given the points raised about the cost of the College of Further Education in the PwC report, and the role of the GTA and Institute of Health and Social Care Studies, it is clear that reform is needed.

It is equally clear that Education's thinking in this area could do with being tested, prodded and probed to see whether it really has come up with the optimum idea – or whether, in a year or so, we will be told all the expert advice is completely different again.