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Education, Sport and Culture would require more resources to safely and appropriately provide future education in Herm.
The concerns were raised in an amendment to an upcoming Requete on the temporary closure of Herm's only school.
ESC revealed its intention to run a pilot scheme in May. The scheme would see the Herm school shut for a year while primary-school aged children would travel to Guernsey for education.
The decision received substantial backlash, including from Deputy David De Lisle who has since submitted a Requete to force debate on overturning the decision.
The Requete is set to be debated next week and it’ll now include an amendment lodged by Education.
The Committee wants to recognise the concerns expressed by the Requerants, while also highlighting the financial implications of keeping the school open.
It has offered the States three options to consider, while only supporting the first one. Propositions two and three will only be debated if the first proposition is thrown out.
The Committee argues that it cannot maintain the current education provision in Herm without additional resources, both from a safeguarding and educational point of view.
It also asks those who want to be informed on the debate to read a report developed by the Committee that can be found ONLINE.
“The Committee made its decision to run this pilot scheme because we are committed to ensuring that children living in Herm are afforded the same educational opportunities as their Guernsey peers, to support their social integration and help prepare them for the transition to secondary school,” said Deputy Sue Aldwell, Member of the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture.
“Learners attending the education provision in Herm are entitled to receive the same broad, rich curriculum as their peers in Guernsey, and it is the Committee’s responsibility to ensure this entitlement is realised.
“In the new academic year there are four children who would be educated in Herm, across three year groups. When you’re educating such small numbers across several year groups, there are many barriers to successful teaching and learning. There are 18 areas of learning as part of our broad curriculum, which cannot possibly be delivered across diverse age ranges as well as they could in single age groups.
“If the States is determined to continue providing education in Herm without the evidence from the pilot to inform that decision, they need to understand that we will need to invest resources so that the provision is more equitable with that received by children in Guernsey.”
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