Stick to ESC’s plans

Some years ago you accepted a recommendation put forward to the Education Council by the director of education and an overwhelming majority of educational professionals in the island that selective education should be changed in favour of a non-selective system.

At the same time you instructed the Education Council to prepare a plan, detailing the very best education system compatible with sensible costings, for the future education of the island’s children. Approximately three years ago, the director of education submitted a 300-page plan to the Education Council. The director and his senior team of probably 30 or more professional educationalists, who currently are the experts who administer the island’s education, will have spent, collectively, thousands of hours of research, investigation, debate and preparation before submitting the plan. The director and team will have taken advice from specialist architects in the UK and other consultants in matters such as traffic flow, etc. The Education Council, of course, will have scrutinised and critiqued the director’s advice but, short of finding a massive error, will have followed the advice of experts.

Both in 2016 and 2018, as members of the States of Guernsey, you voted overwhelmingly to support the plan of one school, two colleges proposed by our education experts and supported by the Education Council.

The change in our educational system is complex and there will be, and indeed are, shades of opinion on a mass of detail. Are there sufficient car parks? Are there good enough facilities for buses? Is the refectory large enough? Will the larger colleges encourage bullying? etc. Having read the circulars handed to parents and watched the informative videos released by the Lisia School heads, it is clear that all these matters are under continuous review. The plan is dynamic and, for certain, as further information comes to light, changes will be incorporated in the final delivery, as is only normal.

I have every sympathy with the teaching staff’s concerns. Change is never easy and worries over the individual effects on one’s own circumstances become paramount. I would have hoped by now that most of the concerns raised by teachers relating to car parking and working conditions, etc. have been resolved by a working party comprising the director and staff representatives. None of the teachers’ concerns, though they need to be satisfactorily resolved, negate the general thrust of the director of education’s plan to provide the island-wide benefits of two colleges with the ability to provide the breadth of A-level curriculum to all students and the additional pastoral care that are not feasible in a three-school format.

Seven of your members, however, believe that the plan submitted by the director of education and twice approved by yourselves is mistaken. Much of the public concern seems still to be found in those who are still unwilling to accept the change to a non-selective education system. Most of the fears seem to be in the detail or are anecdotal in nature and no one has, of course, had the time or resources to second-guess the director of education and put forward an expertly researched alternative plan.

Where do you go from here? The education requete appears to be designed to delay a final decision, for a year and possibly longer, for more extensive research into possibly a new plan. Who are you going to ask? If you ask the same question to the same director of education with the same team, will you be surprised to receive the same answer? Surely none of you are suggesting that you try and find another group of such dedicated professionals with such a detailed knowledge of local affairs to produce another plan. Probably no such group exists. What effect would that have on the morale of our existing group of professionals, who would be asked to administer an educational system with which they do not agree?

We are two years into a five-year process to radically redesign our education system. Apart from costing the island millions, where will the delay actually get us? Nowhere, because you are overwhelmingly likely to receive the same advice and support the same basic plan. You will of course have drastically adversely affected hundreds of children’s education. By reducing educational options and offering the extended continuation of sub-standard facilities, you will damage the children’s preparation for GCSEs, A-levels and thereby their further education, which will affect them for the rest of their lives. Hundreds of parents and grandparents, not to say the children themselves, will never understand your logic, at this late stage, in voting for a delay.

You’ve voted twice to endorse your own professionals. This prevarication has got to stop. With respect, you cannot continue to second-guess yourselves, otherwise the island will become ungovernable.

Please, please, deputies, do not vote for a delay.

PETER BACHMANN

peterjbachmann@gmail.com