New education system will stratify our society further

Obviously Deputy Ferbrache is well aware that he is far from being the only Guernsey man or woman to have benefited from 11-plus selection.

Many Guernsey lads and lasses from less than wealthy backgrounds had similar opportunities. Some 66 years ago that included myself.

There is a strong irony running through Matt Fallaize’s article, since the States has now closed off the route to private schools for the less well-off in Guernsey, which so benefited Deputy Ferbrache and many others, and which also gave access to an excellent Grammar School.

There will always be people of more academic orientation, and there will always be those with more practical skills.

I don’t really like the tone of this article. In 2023 are we really still talking so much about class consciousness?

It was always wrong to think of the 11-plus as an exam which you could pass or fail. It was a selection process, and in my working life as an accountant I knew many self-employed trades people who were hard working and financially comfortable.

There are many individual attributes which can make for a happy and worthwhile life, and a higher level of formal education is not necessarily one of them. But of course the benefits to our society of having an education system which plays to the strengths of all our pupils are incalculable. Well, we did have that to a considerable degree, until the States decided to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

And now the previous system has all but been destroyed, and far from enabling greater social mobility, I believe the new system will stratify our society even more, at least judging from the take-up of fee-paying pupils by the private sector schools.

‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley’, and I’m afraid that in this case the law of unintended consequences seems to be coming into force with a vengeance.

Bob Perkins

Les Corneilles

Rue de la Ronde Cheminee

Castel

GY5 7GD