Education decision "must be based on like-for-like comparisons"

Friday 05 March 2021

Two deputies are seeking a commitment from Education, Sport & Culture that all the educational models they are bound to review by the previous Assembly will be presented to the States.

Unlike the States' currently-approved policy - which ESC wants to rescind - the amendment by Deputies Tina Bury and Adrian Gabriel would enable the committee to add its own secondary education set-ups to the review.

The latest Education, Sport & Culture Committee wants to take complete ownership of the review, consigning any previous States decisions to the past and bringing its own report to the Assembly in May. 

Pictured: The current Assembly's predecessors failed to make much progress towards a new comprehensive system of education last term. The States first decided to scrap selection almost five years ago, just prior to the 2016 General Election, before the decision was re-affirmed later that same year. 

The last States term ended with the previous committee in the middle of a 'pause and review' process - instigated by Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen - of the currently-approved one-school-over-two-sites 11-18 model.

With just one member of that committee remaining in the States post-election, Deputy Dudley Owen became its president in October. Her committee wants to 'clear the decks' of the policy straitjacket she feels her board have inherited.

To that end, ESC has taken up Policy & Resources' invitation to propose the rescission of unwanted resolutions, in order to narrow government's policy focus in a milestone debate later this month. 

Pictured: Under current policy, ESC is bound to review three different systems of education - detailed above - and benchmark them against the two 11-18 college model.

If ESC's proposals succeed, Deputy Dudley-Owen says her committee will be unencumbered in its bid to find the "very best solution" to long-awaited educational reforms. 

Deputies Bury and Gabriel have identified what they believe establishes common ground between ESC and political colleagues opposed to a bonfire of current resolutions. Their amendment would guarantee that all work done to date will be published, while releasing the shackles on the current committee by enabling them to include any additional education systems on a like-for-like basis. 

“We need to make an informed, evidence-based decision, aided by a like-for-like comparison, and to avoid further delays on such an important debate,” said Deputy Bury. 

“This is surely the most robust way of ensuring that un-researched comparative models aren’t brought in to the discussion later down the line, as we’ve seen previously, leading to further delay.”

Pictured: The Education, Sport & Culture Committee announced its intention to submit its policy letter on the future of secondary and post-16 education on 10 May 2021, in a joint press release with the President of the States' Senior Committee Peter Ferbrache. 

Pictured top: Deputies Tina Bury and Adrian Gabriel.