There are so many unanswered questions

Strong words which have at last been written, by Tony Gallienne in his book Guernsey – How We Live Together, echoing the thoughts of many islanders, including many who have departed, who predicted the oncoming train crash and tried in their own way to head it off.

This week, the States Assembly, in its final throes, has the opportunity to start putting education back on an upward slope, which is vital for the lifeblood of our island’s future and to those wanting to look forward to a better 25 years.

Mr Gallienne’s book, which hopefully all our present and future States members have read, continues saying: ‘Every society includes education as a central part of its social contract. That part of our social contract has been broken.’

Quite rightly, education has featured extensively in the recent pages of the Guernsey Press, providing an insight into what has gone wrong, and what should or should not be done to find a better way forward. It is encouraging that the future is open to compromise.

Ironically, the timing is such that it coincides with actions from both sides of the Atlantic to tackle bureaucracy which bears comparison as we seek to overcome our shortfalls and arguably tackle the way forward and make efforts to break down silos.

What is the common denominator between our States schools and our colleges? All of them are undoubtedly trying – many will argue with mixed success – to maximise the opportunities open to their students and the standards they achieve. This includes preparing them for post-16 education and training. It is also good to see progress on the long-awaited redevelopment of The Guernsey Institute, which has a big future as part of the post-16 landscape, alongside sixth form education of course, which has become one of our major challenges.

Decisions made by the current States have set us on a course of having three high schools, plus St Anne’s in Alderney, to ‘feed’ a States Sixth Form college. Each of the three grant-aided colleges – Elizabeth, Ladies’ and Blanchelande – now has its own sixth form.

One can only imagine the hours of debate and thought which has gone on, and is still going on, in each of the colleges to strengthen its sixth form offering.

Some collaborative working takes place, but clearly we have a high number of sixth form institutions given a population of just short of 65,000 and falling school rolls. It is interesting to look at this from the perspective of comparing Guernsey to other not dissimilar places, such as the other Crown Dependencies.

Added to this you have the conundrum of the long-term future of the States’ Sixth Form. It relocates to La Mare de Carteret in September but is still in need of a permanent and suitable home.

One fears some of this may have been filed in the ‘too difficult’ category, including the issue of many teachers wanting to teach across 11-18 education, at a time when pressure on public finances and housing shortages are adding difficulties to recruitment. There is little doubt the local teaching fraternity had a major influence on the education debate which at the last election led to the demise of the then ESC committee.

School governance has also been a widely-debated issue recently. As always, you have to read between the lines, none more so than in some of the submissions leading up to the colleges’ funding debate.

It is clear that little notice has been taken of the Tribal Helm report commissioned by the States in 2009, which was followed a few short years later by a damning report into the then Education Department by nationally respected head teacher Denis Mulkerrin.

After some years affiliated to the Scottish education inspection philosophy, the bullet was bitten and the result is Ofsted inspections for our primary and secondary schools. What is obviously lacking is a similar report on the operation of the body which governs and oversees the States’ schools, the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture and its civil service arm, the Education Office.

There are so many unanswered questions.

In the colleges’ funding debate which starts at this week’s States meeting, cynics will point to the inevitable amendments and accuse them of trying to ‘kick the can down the road’. But perhaps this may be what is best, particularly if this provides the basis for a pragmatic solution, opening the door, solving a plethora of issues, while also addressing capital expenditure and the independent sector. Time moves on, Covid has had an undoubted influence, and who can gauge what effect AI will have on the island’s educational future?

Education is likely to be an evolving picture, and not far from the headlines, for some time to come.

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