Education was recently presented with projections of an ongoing reduction in the number of pupils, but the committee has little clarity about the scale of the decline.
After submitting questions about the size of year groups projected in 2030 and 2035, the Guernsey Press was initially provided with numbers many years out of date and full of glaring errors, and then a week later with revised figures dealing with some of the errors but retaining others.
The initial set of numbers projected that 600 children would start school in 2030 despite fewer than 420 births last year. The revised figures included an increase of nearly 30% in States sixth-form students at a time when year groups are continuing to shrink.
These and other anomalies made the full set of data too unreliable to print in today’s paper, as originally intended.
‘We are very aware that this data will be updated once official population statistics are restored later this year, and we expect the number of pupils to drop further. This assumption has formed part of the committee’s discussions,’ said Education president Paul Montague.
‘The committee has been working with interim data to look at the big picture of trends and direction. With only 419 births registered at the Greffe in 2025, even the interim numbers we have shared need to be treated with real caution.’
The States’ small data and analysis team has been heavily disrupted by IT problems and the publication of various key statistics has fallen well behind.
The latest published population figures relate to 2023 but even they are feared to have overstated the number of people living in the island by up to 2,000. Statistics on the island’s recent economic performance, as well as household income and poverty indicators, are similarly unavailable.
The outdated population figures inevitably have some bearing on pupil projections supplied to Education members. But pupil projections are mainly determined by other factors already known, such as the number of births and the size of existing school year groups, and assumptions about migration and the buy-out rate to the colleges which are unaffected by the ongoing data collection problems.
The Guernsey Press asked for the latest pupil projections on 6 February. Education replied on 13 February with the first set of numbers containing several obvious errors. After being invited to recheck its numbers, revised figures were sent on 18 February which reflected more accurate birth rate data but retained some anomalies.
The committee defended providing the first set of numbers when it had been asked to supply the latest figures.
‘They were the only numbers we had been told could be put in the public domain. That data was the latest formal census data available to the committee and they were marked as out of date,’ said Deputy Montague.
‘We are cognisant that confusion or alarm could be caused by publishing informal statistics which have not been officially verified and which we know will change once official data flows are restored.
‘However, we are also very aware that a data set is unhelpful when it shows the opposite trend to what we know to be true, and so officials have worked to provide an updated, informal set of projections until the flow of official date is restored.’
Education undertook to publish new pupil projection figures once reliable population statistics have been collected, which the States hopes will be later this year.
