Friday 31 January 2020
Approving the Requete on education submitted this week would inevitably lead to years of further uncertainty for children and parents and waste millions of pounds, the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has said.
Deputy Matt Fallaize, President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said:
'It would leave hundreds of students in substandard facilities stuck in a system which is unable to provide anything close to equality of opportunity across all schools and colleges in secondary and further education. It would also disregard the pleas of all school and college leaders to allow the current reforms to continue.'
The Requete proposes to stop the reforms agreed by the States in 2018 and 2019, which are now in the second year of a five- to six-year transition plan. The Requete contains no new ideas or recommendations for what should replace the current reforms nor any principles which should guide that decision. Instead it directs the States to return to work carried out between 2015 and 2017 and to re-examine multiple models for how to organise secondary and further education.
As well as stopping the creation of two 11-18 colleges for secondary education, the Requete would also stop other elements of the education reforms now under way.
This includes stopping work to integrate further and higher education in The Guernsey Institute and provide it with purpose-built facilities, the redevelopment of La Mare de Carteret Primary School and the co-location of students' health and care facilities at secondary schools.
Deputy Matt Fallaize said:
'The Requete is based on a fantasy that a short pause in the current reforms could be resolved neatly by the next States a few weeks into their term. The Requete is presented as if it is free of consequences. The deputies who have driven this Requete - Deputies Dudley Owen and Meerveld - should explain its very serious effects on students in all phases of education over the next few years. They are conveniently gathering the objections of everyone who would rather have any one of numerous other education models but they are desperate not to talk about which particular model they want instead. That is because they know they would then face lots of objections to their plan - as they did when their own proposals were rejected two years ago.
'The Requete does not set out a realistic way of allowing this States or a future States to decide the structure of education. The next States would essentially start with a blank sheet of paper. Based on the experience of what happened between the last States and this one, everything would be back on the table from selection at 11 to non-selection with varying numbers of schools in various locations. In the meantime children who currently know where they will be at school in future years will suddenly find that there is no space for them there. They would also be stuck in the current system which almost everyone agrees cannot provide the same opportunities or similar quality of facilities to all children nor adequate breadth of curriculum despite being the most expensive model to run by several millions of pounds a year.
'The first cohort of non-selective students are already in secondary education. Hundreds of Year 7 students have been promised access to a broader GCSE curriculum when they all join together at the two new colleges in September 2022. If the timetable for the reforms is not retained, those students and potentially many more students in following year groups will have more limited GCSE opportunities. If the requete is successful the whole transition plan for students will have to be reworked at a time when the States will have no idea of the final model to be adopted. The signatories to the Requete need to explain now how they will address these immediate serious problems if their requete is successful and they have to take on the responsibility of developing a new education model.
'I respect that some colleagues led by Deputies Dudley Owen and Meerveld have been consistent and are sincere in their opposition to the current reforms. I never expected their scrutiny and challenge to cease and I respect them and their views. What I do not respect is that five years after this debate started and when we are already well into delivering the current reforms they now want those reforms ripped up without having the ideas and the courage to put forward their own alternative plans.'
Deputy Richard Graham, Vice-President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said:
'The practical impact of such a decision is that all current secondary students, and most likely several year groups of primary students, could be faced with completing their secondary education in a model that does them a complete disservice in terms of GCSE curriculum choice and sub-standard facilities for many. I say this as, even if the States relatively quickly agreed a new model after the election, it would take years to reach the same stage as we are now with our reforms. Additional years would then be required for implementation. This also assumes, of course, that the phantom new model is universally popular with staff and the community, which will never happen give the large number of permutations to the various ways in which you can structure education.'
A new short film has been released by the Committee today, in which the senior educationalists who will have responsibility for delivering secondary education across de Saumarez and Victor Hugo colleges give their views on the impact of delay and risk of further indecision.
The film can be viewed on the new Lisia School Twitter and Facebook accounts. It can also be viewed at www.youtube.com/statesofguernsey or by clicking here.
