‘The time for reluctant acceptance has now passed’

OK. THE time has come when I really have to speak out over the latest plans for Guernsey’s 11-18 education sector. They are going from the ludicrous to the surreal.

I have made no secret over the past year or two that I was deeply unimpressed with the education model finally arrived at by the current States Assembly. It is flawed in so many respects. But I have never actively campaigned against it for two simple reasons.

Firstly – like it or hate it – it was a model arrived at through a democratic decision and I felt I had to respect that. Secondly our education system has been in a state of flux and uncertainty for so many years that it seemed unfair to even to attempt to delay matters further. A decision (of sorts) had been taken and the sooner certainty was achieved the better.

Now that has all changed. For reasons unrelated to any political opposition, the timetable for reform has been delayed. Not only that but the response of the Education Committee to that delay, and their proposed interim plans, are so absurd that they really do require pushback. Failing to do that would be failing as a people’s representative.

Briefly, let me step back and explain why I never liked the current plans. What was wrong with them? Just about everything.

The States has agreed to replace one four-school model with another four-school model at a time when the number of pupils is forecast to fall significantly. That will be incredibly expensive to run. Not only can the island supremely ill-afford such inefficiency at the moment but it will inevitably lead to educational cutbacks, such as larger class sizes, to stay within budget. In fact in already has.

Even worse, one of the four schools is to be a stand-alone sixth form college of just 400 or so pupils. This is a really dangerous experiment being about half the size of the smallest such institutions elsewhere – barring the odd private facility with oodles of cash to throw at overcoming the obvious problems such Lilliputism throws up.

What are those problems? A staffing nightmare. Either fewer subject experts or else teachers needing to drive around the island teaching A-levels on one site and 11-16 stages somewhere else. An inherently narrower curriculum. Last but not least, an inherently expensive institution in relation to pupil numbers.

But the micro, stand-alone, sixth form college will also cause problems for the rest of the system. Probably the biggest challenge facing our secondary schools is recruitment and our biggest market, by far, for recruiting teachers is the UK. And yet we know beyond doubt, as a result of extensive surveys, that a huge number of teachers in the UK would far prefer to teach in an 11-18 setting than an 11-16 setting. So by abandoning 11-18 schools and going exclusively for 11-16 schools we are wilfully making recruitment harder for ourselves.

As I said, the States’ decision was a very bad one but I have been willing to accept it on the twin grounds of democracy and avoiding further delays – until now.

The latest chapter in this saga really does beggar belief and requires vocal opposition.

Faced with at least a year’s delay – maybe more – in building the new sixth form college, the Education Committee is proposing moving it out of Les Varendes and down to La Mare. Out of a purpose-built facility and into a school which for the past 20 years successive education committees have contended either needed to be closed or rebuilt. What the heck is going on?

Not only that, but they don’t even argue that the move is necessary. Rather they made crystal clear in their media release that there was a perfectly workable alternative to keep the sixth form in its current home at Les Varendes. Their only reason for not adopting this option, and instead booting the sixth form out of its current, purpose-built, home was the contention that the public wouldn’t like to see a school as large as the one which would result on the Grammar site.

That is very shaky logic. Particularly when it would supposedly only be for a year or so, and considering that in the past the Grammar School has seen pupil numbers not far short of what would be required. In fact the cynic in me rather feels the real agenda is a deep concern by the committee that the island might see a medium-sized 11-18 school of circa 1,250 pupils working very well and ask, ‘Well, what really is wrong with this?’

So at the very least the interim solution should be to keep the sixth form at Les Varendes while the delays in the transformation are resolved. But ideally I hope that the unavoidable delay will allow a modest rethink, keeping the sixth form where it is, and thus retaining 11-18 secondary education in Guernsey’s state sector. All of the private colleges use that model for a reason.

That would then allow ESC to press on with the long overdue new build of the Guernsey Institute at Les Ozouets. This would encompass the old College of Further Education, the Training Agency, and the Institute of Health Studies. The CoFE in particular has been in appallingly substandard buildings for far too long and really deserve this investment. Not only that, but my understanding is that the timely creation of a new facility for the Institute of Health Studies is absolutely crucial to the project to redevelop the PEH site.

I don’t believe in fate but sometimes the stars seem to align in a way which makes the best way forward seem obvious. I think that is the case here – and the obvious direction of travel is definitely not moving the sixth form centre into a clapped out secondary school for a year or three.

So what am I going to do about it other than writing in the Press? As I say, I think the time for reluctant acceptance has now passed, and I will be actively speaking both to colleagues and educational experts over the next few weeks to see if there is an appetite to salvage something sensible from this slow motion car crash.