Deputy fighting for education review ‘transparency’ faces tough criticism of amendment

Friday 26 March 2021

A move to publish the the review of future education models is being resisted by the Education, Sport & Culture Committee, who have called it a back door to the two-school model - an argument that has seen others in the Assembly criticise ESC for attempting to "cloud people's judgement".

Deputy Tina Bury has laid an amendment allowing Education, Sport and Culture the time to produce a like-for-like school model comparison; it would give the States chamber a chance to revisit the two-school model and compare it to ESC’s preferred option.

Deputy Bury’s amendment, seconded by Deputy Adrian Gabriel, would adjust existing resolutions in Policy & Resources ‘Government Work Plan’ forcing ESC to review all school models before the committee lays its Education Policy Letter on 10 May.

ESC revealed its preferred school model earlier this year and its intention to “clear the decks” of all States’ resolutions before them.

Pictured: Deputy Bury delivered a passionate speech in yesterday’s chamber, saying she comes to the debate with some “parental scars” after accepting that her daughter would never benefit from any school model decision due to constant delays.

The amendment was the focus of a political statement from ESC which assumed that the intent of the amendment was to “re-insert the much-maligned two-school model front and centre to the debate."

Despite this, during her introductory speech Deputy Bury said the intention was not to “bring back” the two-school model, but to give transparency to the process and allow like-for-like comparisons between different systems of education.

“The motivation behind this amendment, is quite simply, transparency, good governance, informed decision-making and choosing a decision-making process that will prevent further delay.

“We all know there is no silver bullet – whatever we go with, there will be trade-offs. But we need to be clear and honest about those trade-offs from the start. Give our community, the key-stakeholders and ourselves, as the decision makers, the opportunity to assess those trade-offs and decide which ones are acceptable,” she said.

Pictured:  ESC Vice-President Deputy Bob Murray spoke on the amendment first, vehemently opposing it.

Arguing against the amendment, Deputy Murray focused on the supposed intention to bring back the two-school model, which is the benchmark against which his committee was asked to explore three other named education models. 

“Let me turn to the nonsense of maintaining a comparison with this theoretical education experiment as a benchmark – this is a defunct model as expressed by 24 members of this assembly in their manifestos. I ask members of this assembly to vote against this amendment.”

Deputy Bury did have support from a number of fellow Deputies, including Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller and Deputy Steve Falla who both stood to speak on the amendment in the early stages of debate. 

“This amendment is a no-brainer, it’s not a move to bring back the two-school model, that’s a kind of smokescreen that’s being used to cloud judgment today,” said Deputy Falla.

The States Assembly will resume debate on the amendment at 09:30 this morning.