The truth about that ‘£93,000’

Recently claims have been made that we were given £93,000 to pursue our investigations. The impression has been created that such funds were made available to us directly to be spent at our discretion. Such claims and impressions are misleading and need to be corrected. We therefore wish to set out the facts, which are as follows.

Some time ago we asked the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture to advise of the implications of our proposed model on both the sixth form curriculum and the existing education estate. Essentially we needed to know a) what would be the effect on the post-16 curriculum of operating a sixth form on two sites rather than one and b) which of the existing secondary school sites could accommodate one of two 11 to 18 schools.

Earlier in 2017 the committee issued a document entitled Transforming Education, which set out initial proposals for the future structure of secondary and further education. The committee stated it had ‘considered the advantages and disadvantages of a school-based sixth form attached to one or two of the secondary schools’ and concluded that ‘it will not be cost-effective to deliver a full curriculum across two or more locations’. The committee further stated it had ‘considered two 11-19 schools both with sixth forms but... two sixth forms are either expensive to deliver (as class sizes for some subjects could be very small) or the curriculum would have to be restricted with not all courses offered at both schools’.

In January 2016, the previous committee submitted to the States a comparison of its view of the advantages and disadvantages of various models of education, including two secondary schools with sixth forms and a separate College of FE. From these statements of successive committees it might have been assumed that they had thoroughly assessed the model we now wished to pursue. However, the committee was of the opinion that it could not provide informed answers to our questions within its existing resources and therefore it – the committee, not us – approached the Policy & Resources Committee to request additional resources (this is where the £93,000 figure came from).

The additional resources approved by the Policy & Resources Committee were made available to the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture. We have no access to these resources nor any authority over how they are spent.

It is not the case that a group of deputies who are considering laying an amendment to the CfESC policy letter towards the end of the year have been granted £93,000 of States’ funds to spend as they see fit. Rather it is that this group of deputies requested information from the CfESC in order to allow such an amendment to be prepared and the CfESC decided that it could not provide such information without obtaining additional resources.

Deputies MARK DOREY, RICHARD GRAHAM, MATT FALLAIZE and RHIAN TOOLEY.