Segregation, not selection

The two main camps appear to be those who are arguing for one particular school, be it the Grammar or one of the colleges, and those who are concerned with the educational wellbeing of all students on this island.

Two questions I have posed many times to people who support 'no change' are:

1) Why do the opinions of our States schools head teachers count for so little, when they are normally regarded as highly respected members of our island community? Is it simply because they all want to get rid of selection?

2) Why do we select out children at 10 years old and physically separate them into different buildings for just five years and then bring them back together in the Sixth Form Centre?

I have never managed to get a convincing answer to either question, but have now discovered answers for myself, which seem to fit, but they aren't pretty. In fact anyone of a nervous disposition should move on to the next letter.

The main justification often given for selection is this idea of social mobility, but as we all know there have not been any students from social housing backgrounds at Elizabeth College for seven years, and I suspect the situation is similar at Ladies' College and Blanchelande. At first I thought this would convince islanders selection was not working, but I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope. For many, selection IS working, and is a euphemism for segregation.

The day after the States made the momentous decision to scrap the 11-plus (8 March 2016 – pour 26, contre 20), we saw Lyndon Trott and Paul Le Pelley present a hastily prepared amendment to retain the selective system, but on the basis of a combination of progress tests and continuous assessment conducted during the final two years of a pupil's primary school education.

It was defeated (pour 20, contre 27) as a majority understood the problem is selection itself, not the method of selection and, as one deputy said, the proposed system made the 11-plus look good.

It did however make me realise that though now everyone accepts that the 11-plus is broke, some people still want to fix it – but why?

Is it because these people want to segregate their children from the rest of the island's pupils, who they view as a possible bad influence?

Is that why they disregard the perfectly sound advice from our head teachers that selection is wrong? It would also explain why they are happy to reintegrate pupils from the high schools and the Grammar in the Sixth Form Centre, but only after the former have overcome the inevitable stigma of being labelled 11-plus failures and 'proved themselves' over a five-year period.

So there we have possibly the rather unpalatable answers.

Selection, or as I prefer to call it, segregation, acts as a buffer or filter to alleviate the fear, intrinsic to certain parents, that disruptive students won't interfere with the education of their offspring.

Scott Ogier brought an amendment to 'manage disruptive behaviour . . . without detriment to the education of others' which again highlighted this fear and was passed, so hopefully that will allay the worries held by some parents when mixed ability schools are introduced in 2019.

It might be argued that to use the island's children as pawns in a 'selection game' is selfish in the extreme, but those parents would argue that they are just doing the best for their children.

What is certain is the States has made the decision to end the current selective admission of students . . . and replace it with a non-selective

admission . . . based predominantly on a feeder system from primary schools.

This overturns the judgement made on 10 May 2001 to reject the then Education Council's 'A New Direction for Local Education' proposals as a result of the Berry/Torode amendment. Proposals incidentally not very dissimilar to the ones that have now been passed.

To anyone who is thinking of reversing the decision to scrap selection, I would say two things:

1) It would make the government of this island a laughing stock.

2) The opponents of selection accepted the 2001 ruling as part of the democratic process.

I therefore respectfully suggest that the decision to introduce mixed ability schools is given a similar period of time to prove just how superior it is, i.e. in the next 15 years, without any interference.

I can't close without mentioning the ill thought out amendment to clumsily introduce a three school option rather than four.

Deputies were initially trying to claim that the Education board's report was rushed, had insufficient costing and details and was a 'leap in the dark'. Then they went ahead and voted for the amendment which was devoid of any detail and was so rushed that in its first manifestation it was incorrectly worded. A leap off a cliff into the dark, perhaps?

Engineers have now reported that the three existing schools, the Grammar, Les Beaucamps and St Sampson's, cannot be expanded without huge cost, disruption and without compromising those buildings. So much for making policy on the fly. How many extra millions will that decision cost the island?

La Mare de Carteret schools must be rebuilt now, without delay.

TIM LANGLOIS,

L'Ecluse,

Rue des Marchez,

St Peter's,

GY7 9AF.