ESC transforming education system for the worse
THE document 'Transforming Education' shows that the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has ignored the wishes of parents, the needs of children and the requirements of employers. Instead, the committee has opted to bring forward proposals that their civil servants favour and that teachers will be comfortable with. Secondary education in Guernsey will be controlled by civil servants who need have no knowledge of education and delivered by teachers who have no incentive to raise standards. Entry to each of the new secondary schools will be determined purely by geography. Since all the schools will be within a couple of miles of each other (compared with the 260-mile round trip that friends of mine in Africa had to make to take their children to school), there is no logical rationale for determining entry on the basis of address alone.
Because parents will have absolutely no say in the choice of school to which their children will be sent, teachers will have no need to deliver a standard of education that satisfies the parents. They will be accountable only to civil servants within the department and, as I have said, those civil servants may have no qualification, experience or knowledge of education.
The main reason for getting rid of the 11-plus exam and the Grammar School seems to be that they were elitist because they divided children into two groups, the more or the less academically able. 'Transforming Education' will make education even more elitist, because there will still be two groups of children, the majority in comprehensive schools and the privileged minority whose parents can afford to pay the fees of one of the three colleges.
The ESC seems to have ignored the colleges in its review of secondary education and has certainly proposed no changes to them, in spite of the fact that they are heavily subsidised by the States from tax revenue.
If Guernsey must have secondary education that is the same for everybody, how can the colleges possibly be excluded?
If the current proposals are adopted, there will be no facility in Guernsey that will allow brighter children from less privileged backgrounds to make the most of their abilities and break through social barriers. This will give Guernsey perhaps the most socially divisive education system in Europe.
States members debating this issue need only look around them to see evidence aplenty that Guernsey has a real shortage of the intelligent, well-educated people needed to protect and enhance the wellbeing and prosperity of the island in the future. It is essential that the abilities of all children are developed to the full, not just those from wealthy families.
BARRIE PAIGE,
GY6 8BP.
