Education taking a step backwards
AS SOMEONE who knows the sorry limits of his own intelligence, even I can't believe the foolishness, crassness and obtuseness of the Education board in proposing, and the deputies in backing, the break-up of student selection (11-plus). Why fix what ain't broke? There is only one reason and one reason alone for this change in the education policy, and that's money, but it's a short-sighted one. The young are this island's future and those who will probably need the most help with their education will ultimately be the ones to suffer. I'm someone who missed out because of the implementation of comprehensive schooling (that year the pass level for Grammar schools was raised a few per cent, 'just enough for me to fail', uh). And although I'm not a Guernseyman myself, I'd hate to see what happened with the end of the 11-plus in England happen in Guernsey.
With the structuring of a comprehensive system (for want of a better tag), there will be fewer schools but the same number of pupils and the money saved by closing one, two or three schools will not see the funding that those schools had received get shared out to the remaining schools. A percentage will be, I'm sure, but even that won't be equally distributed. The majority of the money will be earmarked for other areas... more deputies possibly, or even just better paid ones?
And then there's the money that will be gleaned from the selling off of the schools for property development, which should also be ploughed back into education, but again I doubt that it all will be.
Why should this current government of Guernsey be any different to the government that installed comprehensive schooling in the UK nearly 50 years ago?
The immediate and obvious financial savings will in the long term be a false economy, as once the schools are gone you won't get them back. And those pupils with the intellect will still rise to the top and that top will get the majority of the attention and funding. Some schools will inevitably lose out as there won't be the cash for all of them to grow and, consequently, classes and facilities will be lost and larger class numbers will result... and that's all a serious argument for extending courses and serious investment in the CofFE (not just more courses at the GTA University Centre).
Finally, some eight years back I had cause to visit Beaucamps School (possibly one of the schools to be lost... a lot of land for building on there) and I was really surprised even then to see how the education system had evolved from when I was being taught – the quality of the schooling, the amount of options, level of facilities and trips, etc. – but now the system is going to take a big step backwards. It will be a real regression for schooling as a whole*.
Don't let anyone tell you that this change in the education policy will in any way be beneficial to schooling in Guernsey... and exactly why is Theresa May in the process of re-establishing grammar schools in England if the comprehensive system is so great?
Name and address withheld.
* Elizabeth College being the exception, but I don't think that this was ever about, or will ever affect, them. They will, however, get more pupils who may have gone to the Grammar School but whose parents have the necessary funds to take their kids out of the new comprehensive mainstream.
