‘Spin’ mentality pervades Education committee

Upon this revelation, there are two possibilities: (1) Colonel Graham is talking in ignorance or (2) his omission of vital facts was deliberate and designed to mislead. If the latter is the case, this is strangely reminiscent of the actions of a previous vice president of the Education Committee. Deputy Carl Meerveld admitted to planting a fake posting on social media purporting to be by an independent body of opinion in support of his failed committee’s three-school model. This triggered a public inquiry and the resignation of Mr Meerveld.

Deputy Graham has by his comments insulted and belittled local students and their teachers – in fact, with his use of hyperbole in referring to a ‘Stone Age’ system of teacher appointment, is he not implying that many of our States school teachers should never have been appointed? But, as your 7 July correspondent suggests, Deputy Graham’s conduct is characteristic of the ‘spin’ mentality which pervades this Education committee.

If this was a deliberate attempt to mislead, Deputy Graham needs to consider his position. But looking at this in context, he actually scored a spectacular ‘own goal’. He demonstrated how comprehensives nationally (Newham is only one of many) have re-adopted selection as a means of achieving some success.

GEOFFREY MAHY

Saint-Sauveur.

Editor’s footnote: Richard Graham, vice president, Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, replies:

I am grateful to the editor for the opportunity to reply to your correspondent.

I would ask your readers to be aware of the context in which I made my brief speech about secondary education in the States meeting of 1-3 July. The speech was subsequently reported in the Guernsey Press and elicited a response – published on 7 July – from a correspondent to whom I then replied separately in person.

The broad context of my speech was a States debate of a green paper from P&R, ‘Revive and Thrive’, which was meant to convey the high level concept for our recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. The green paper made only a passing reference to the role of education in that recovery and it did so in terms that were wholly lacking in the ambition which will be required if revival is to lead to a thriving post-Covid Guernsey. The narrower context for my comments was a remark by one States deputy at the end of his speech in relation to the review of secondary education. He said, ‘I don’t care what they are doing in East Ham’, and then added words to the effect that this is Guernsey and we will do it our way.

Now it so happened, purely by coincidence, that I had been in contact only a day or so before with a former student of our own Grammar School and Sixth Form Centre who is currently vice principal at the comprehensive school in East Ham to which I then referred in my speech. That school is Brampton Manor Academy, situated in the East End of London. I made a number of factual points, including the school’s impressive achievements in getting high numbers of its students into Oxbridge (51 this year, 41 last year) and into Russell Group universities. I also revealed that on average over the last five years, Guernsey students gained an annual total of three Oxbridge places shared between the Sixth Form Centre at Les Varendes and the sixth forms of Elizabeth College and The Ladies’ College. I commented directly from the East Ham school’s outstanding Ofsted report in 2018 (which I recommend readers to read online). The report shows that amongst its 2,260 students, the school has above average numbers in the following four categories: those with English as an additional language; those from minority ethnic groups; those receiving support with special educational needs and disabilities; and those eligible for support from pupil premium funding.

I took care to point out to my States colleagues that good schools are not all about securing places at Oxbridge and Russell Group universities, and I also stressed that I was not advocating that we should apply an East Ham template onto Guernsey. What I was saying, in the clearest possible terms, was that it is damagingly complacent to claim that we have nothing to learn from the success of others elsewhere. The school in East Ham was clearly doing something right, and if we ‘don’t care what they are doing in East Ham’, then we jolly well should care.

It is true that I did not go out of my way to advise States members that Brampton Manor Academy has a selective sixth form, but it was not – as your correspondent rather unkindly claims – because I didn’t know that it has or because I had dark motives in cunningly hiding the fact from my unsuspecting colleagues in the States. I assure your readers that States members are not as gullible as your correspondent suggests. The explanation is quite simple: it is common knowledge, almost certainly shared by all States members but clearly not by your correspondent, that all sixth forms are by their very nature selective. Your correspondent’s reference to Brampton Manor Academy as a ‘selective and sought after sixth form which has no catchment area’ is an apt description of our own Sixth Form Centre at Les Varendes. Admission into Year 12 at our Sixth Form Centre is selective and is dependent on students achieving the required GCSE grades in Year 11 at the four States secondary schools, with a smaller number of students being admitted on a similar basis from the three grant-assisted colleges. What distinguishes the East Ham school is that its Year 11 students achieve higher GCSE grades in sufficient numbers to enable the school to set higher admission standards for the sixth form. In common with the best 11-18 comprehensive schools, Brampton Manor feeds its own suitably-qualified Year 11 students into Year 12 of its sixth form, and then recruits students from elsewhere in order to maximise the efficient use of teaching resources and to bolster its income. There is nothing revelatory in this phenomenon and I would be amazed if all States deputies were not aware of it without my telling them. In short, there was no point in my stating the obvious.

The purpose of my comments to States members was to encourage them to accept that if Guernsey is indeed to thrive after reviving, we will need to raise our game in our provision of secondary and post-16 education, whatever the outcome of the ongoing review of models, and that in doing so we would do well to learn from successful examples elsewhere.

I made the point that our students and their teachers are not helped by a number of local factors, which include a Stone Age system for teacher recruitment. Far from insulting and belittling our students and teachers – as suggested by your correspondent – I was simply echoing the opinion of the many primary and secondary school head teachers with whom I have discussed the matter here in Guernsey; namely that they are seriously handicapped by our highly-centralised, over-bureaucratic and ponderous process for recruiting our teachers. One of them recently said to me only last week that it is worse than it has ever been. The result is that some GCSE subjects in some of our secondary schools are being taught by teachers who are not specialists in those subjects. That is unsatisfactory and should not remain hidden from public knowledge, however unpalatable.

Which leads me to a related issue, that of openness and transparency. Some readers will recall how in 2011 Deputy Jane Stephens caused the then members of the Education Department to offer their resignation by revealing that, for some years, the GCSE results of two of the high schools were far worse than the public had been led to believe.

Even more shocking, it emerged that the veil of secrecy had also enveloped the political members who had been kept in the dark by senior officials on the basis that exam results were an operational matter and of no business to the political members.

I remember clearly that the then editor of the Guernsey Press was outraged as much by the lack of openness as by the poor results themselves.

It is therefore ironic, even somewhat irritating, that nine years later when the current ESC committee tries openly and honestly to make the public and political colleagues aware of not only the strengths but also the weaknesses of the education provision in Guernsey, there are those who rush to accuse the committee of insulting our students and teachers and indulging in spin. It is overwhelmingly in the best interests of students that the community should be able to have mature and honest conversations about education without throwing wild accusations around.

The situation has improved since 2011, but my overall message to States deputies and to the wider community is that we still have some way to go if all our students are consistently to reach their full potential. The notion that ‘it ain’t broke so why fix it’ is the sort of insular complacency that suffocates the ambition required for a reviving and thriving Guernsey. We could do much better and our students deserve nothing less than our determination to do so.

Deputy Carl Meerveld replies:

I welcome this opportunity to set the record straight again. I did not plant ‘a fake posting on social media’ as the writer has stated and some deputies have tried to insinuate.

In the absence of my president, I authorised a planned social media advertising campaign to go live, having reviewed the content. I assumed that the Education committee branding, requested from officers several times, would be attached. However, officers had not sent the requested branding, and the advert went live without it.

This error caused considerable embarrassment to my committee, for which I took full responsibility by resigning.

The campaign was only live for a few hours and was viewed less than 100 times before being taken down at my instruction.

I took on the financial obligation for the campaign, so there was no cost to the States or Guernsey taxpayers.