Children have not had a say - teacher

Friday 14 February 2020

The children at the heart of the proposed transformation of education have not been given enough of a voice, a Le Murier teacher told a public meeting.

According to Emily Tostevin, the mainstream secondary schools and Grammar have each had two student representatives involved in discussions with Education over the committee's plans for one 11-18 school split across two sites.

However, none of the primary schools have had student representatives and neither have Le Murier - which is on the St Sampson's Site - or Les Voies. 

"The involvement of the children's voice so far has been inadequate," she told the 300-strong audience at last night's public meeting on the "pause and review" requete. 

Question from a teacher about student voice and the lack of engagement in the plans to date - met with loud support in the room

— jon buckland (@jondwbuckland) February 13, 2020

Pictured: Former ESC Chief Secretary Jon Buckland attended and commented on last night's meeting. 

Lead requerant Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen agreed with her assessment.

"The kids need to have their voice in this and I am not entirely sure that has happened."

Deputy Rob Prow said the teaching unions had met States members yesterday to discuss their concerns. 

"One of the key issues is the lack of stakeholder engagement - that includes teachers but also parents and the public," he said. 

"What the unions are saying, almost unanimously, is that they are not happy with the level of stakeholder engagement. They want to have the opportunity to input into what the options [for the future of education] are."

Deputies Dudley-Owen, Prow and Carl Meerveld said that given Education's plans had a design life of around 50 years, pausing and benchmarking the committees model against others was the "responsible thing to do".

"What we are driving for is for ESC to actually present their homework to be marked," said Deputy Meerveld. "There has never been a presentation with the full details of how this will be implemented, it has very much been a dripfeed of information."

Pictured: Deputies Dudley-Owen, Prow and Meerveld were on the panel at the meeting. 

He said one year was a realistic delay, saying that he believed from being on the committee previously that a lot of work had already been done looking at different two school and three school models.

"I would hope this work has already been done, it just hasn't been presented," he said.

Another St Sampson's Teacher, who asked not to be named, does not think ESC's plans should go ahead.

"How is Mr Fallaize able to do what he is doing when it is clearly not the will of the people?" 

Pictured top: The public meeting held by the Deputies behind the requete at the Grammar School.