Education counters "lack of detail" in reorganisation plans

Tuesday 13 July 2021

Education has sought to quash suggestions of a "lack of detail" in its secondary school proposals, saying that alternative proposals "are completely lacking in ambition" and will be like "throwing money down the drain".

The Committee in charge of developing a new comprehensive secondary and sixth form system has faced a raft of amendments from colleagues and fierce criticism from unions.

Education, Sport & Culture President Andrea Dudley-Owen is fighting back, saying that much of the opposition to her committee's proposals is not borne out. 

"Of the consistent arguments being used to oppose our recommended model [...] One is an apparent lack of detail. I really want to reassure the community on this. Comprehensive proof-of-concept work of the overall model has demonstrated that it can - and will – work.

"There won’t be any surprises for staff down the road, because there will be plenty of opportunity for them to get involved in influencing the detail of how schools operate, but none of that work can start until the States has agreed the model at a strategic level, and released development funding – and that would be the same for any model."

She continued: "There has been a lot of speculation about the physical space in the three Secondary schools, especially in Les Beaucamps, and whether there is enough space to run one of the three 11-16 schools there without us building an extension. The answer is emphatically yes, there will be more than enough space on each site. 

"Two independent reviews, in 2015 and 2019 confirmed that St Sampson’s and Les Beaucamps were built bigger than was required at the time. The second of these, a comprehensive report in 2019, identified that Les Beaucamps could accommodate up to 825 students and St Sampson’s up to 900 students."

Pictured: There remains uncertainty about which school sites will be used in the future education models, ahead of what is expected to be a close-run debate this week. 

School staff have condemned Education's three 11-16 and single sixth form plans in recent weeks, with only 12 out of 194 teachers expressing support in a school survey. 

It follows repeated calls from school reps and unions for the review of different models to be renewed and completed. 

Deputy Dudley-Owen said teaching staff are not the right ones to decide the future model.

"They are our greatest resource and the quality of our teachers is arguably the number one influencer of educational outcomes. Their focus is, quite rightly, on the daily delivery of excellence in the classroom.

"We need to ensure that this part of our workforce is valued, that we listen to their views on operational issues and that we invest in their continual development so that they can excel in their chosen profession. But we also need to accept that teachers are not the right group of people to design the model."

She added: "The Committee has been incredibly well-served by very experienced senior educationalists. These are staff who are experienced in classroom teaching, running schools and overseeing whole education systems."

Of the amendments proposed by States colleagues, she said: "While the Committee acknowledges that a “do minimum” option may appeal to specific school staff groups for different reasons based on their current circumstances, we believe it is completely lacking in ambition and does nothing to tackle the inequity in the current system - it retains one 11-18 site alongside two 11-16 sites - or to future-proof our system for the changing economic world 

On the amendments by Deputies Mark Leadbeater and David De Lisle, she said: "There is also a move to keep the current system going for a few more years, until the first students who didn’t sit the 11+ have taken their GCSEs. We simply cannot see the value in any more delay, which is costly, because we would have to do more remedial work at La Mare de Carteret to keep that building in a habitable condition, and also serves only to prolong the uncertainty for staff, students and their families which is simply unacceptable."

"And finally, there is an amendment that, on the face of it, seems to wrap all the other amendments into a single set of proposals to make the debate easier. But on closer inspection I am a little concerned that it doesn’t quite do that.

"It also offers the “back stop” position of completing the review started by the previous Committee which the current States voted not to complete. In the last three or so years we have spent close to £6 million pounds of taxpayers’ money trying to come up with a solution to this problem. The Committee cannot get behind any proposal to delay once again and throw more money down the drain."

All of the proposals for reorganising education will be debated at the States meeting starting on Wednesday.