Teachers are being set up to fail
We are concerned by the ESC’s plans and how they will affect the education of our own children. The policy letter, published the day before the summer half-term, set out plans to close La Mare De Carteret and cram those children into the Les Varendes and Les Beaucamps sites with no investment to accommodate them. Unlike in 2015 and 2018, accompanying the policy letter was no leaflet drop to all houses to explain the model and no email out to all parents through the schools’ network. To understand what is proposed parents need to actively seek out information. If passed on 8 September, the States will delegate authority to P&R to release the money to put ‘spades in the ground’ with no further debate in the chamber. Why are parents not being actively briefed on such an important decision? Why the change of approach to communication?
The closure of La Mare, while not unexpected, is a sad outcome for that school’s community. What seems to make that heartbreaking upheaval pointless is to then spend £44m. building a new school, a sixth form centre, at Les Ozouets. Where are the cost savings in transferring from four schools to four schools? The sixth form centre is not viable as a standalone institution – only a very small number of teachers will be based there full time and the majority will be expected to spend each week commuting between the sixth form centre and the other three schools. It seems that only a handful of teachers currently at the 11-16 schools will be able to teach at sixth form. Insufficient detail has been made available to determine the logistics or their impact on subject choice or running costs, but it’s safe to say it doesn’t look simple, inexpensive or good from an educational perspective.
ESC has already increased the tipping point for secondary school intakes from 26 to 28 saying that that is required to accommodate the recommendations of the SEN review. This apparently will have no impact on our children because teachers will be able to deliver lessons more effectively if those who need additional help are able to receive it through the new SEN facilities. Tipping points are hard to compare to pupil teacher ratios, they aren’t the same thing and a tipping point of 28 means higher sets with much larger class sizes. How can a teacher get to know over 30 children and create that valuable personal connection? These are classrooms with 11-18-year-olds not university lecture halls, the needs are different.
There is so little detail in the policy letter about how things will actually work as to make it very difficult to assess, critique or compare. The teachers are telling us that this model doesn’t work. We need to listen – we need to provide the details teachers are asking for and properly inform and engage with parents.
With teachers commuting between sites, facing classes of potentially well over 30 children and operating within a model they do not support, what’s the outcome on our children’s education?
Apparently, that’s not for ESC to measure, it’s teachers and school leadership teams which deliver educational outcomes and not buildings. So whose fault will it be when our children feel disengaged with school because teachers don’t get to know them, when no one notices them struggling because their form tutor spends half their time up the road, when that little motivational boost is missing, when they can’t sit the subjects that interest them? I can’t see ESC putting their hand up and admitting any fault.
Adele Gale