Select a region
The ESC President says she was left "impressed" after a recent tour of the La Mare de Carteret High School facilities and says it will offer a "good interim temporary home" for the Sixth Form Centre.
Sharing photos to Facebook that she took, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen said it "needs little in the way of technical upgrades to make it ready for (the) sixth form and is a good interim temporary home for them to make their own, whilst we secure their long term accommodation at Les Ozouets alongside The Guernsey Institute in our visionary Post 16 campus".
Her tour took place last October, but she shared the photos after the States had agreed funding for the higher education parts of the new campus, but not the sixth form centre or any sports facilities.
With La Mare de Carteret High School due to close fully next year, the site will be vacant and it is intended to be ready for use as a sixth form centre by September 2025.
When La Mare was first suggested as a temporary location for the sixth form centre it was intended to be for just two years, but Deputy Dudley-Owen has confirmed it will now be for four years.
Deputy Dudley-Owen also addressed concerns about the state of the building itself and its amenities in the post to her Facebook page.
The deputy said the decision to allocate funding for the development at Les Ozouets was "great news, but tinged with disappointment" with the development of a new sixth form centre now in limbo until 2029.
Acknowledging the wide spread concerns about the condition of the high school at La Mare de Carteret - which was due to be demolished and rebuilt nearly 20 years ago - Deputy Dudley-Owen said her tour of the building left her and colleagues "impressed with the investment in much-needed maintenance, decoration and repair in recent years".
"It's often times that people are understandably concerned that the narrative has been that the school has been for years no longer 'fit for purpose'," she wrote.
"Whilst it's not part of a long term solution, there is no 'collapse date' on the building and it is certainly fit for the purpose of delivering education in the short to medium term with continued good levels of maintenance.
"It is a functioning building at the moment, safe and secure and walking around is enough to see that it is a bright, airy, and comfortable learning environment with good teaching, study, social and circulation space."
Deputy Dudley-Owen also wrote that she was "impressed by the renovation that had taken place and what a good feel there is to the school.
"It is spacious and needs little in the way of technical upgrades to make it ready for sixth form and is a good interim temporary home for them to make their own, whilst we secure their long term accommodation at Les Ozouets alongside TGI in our visionary Post 16 campus."
Pictured: One of the classrooms at La Mare de Carteret High School, taken in October 2023, by Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen.
As President of the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen has ultimate political responsibility for delivering the transformation programme which includes the delivery of a new post-16 campus at Les Ozouets which was intended to include the Sixth Form Centre but is now unlikely to, for a while at least.
Alongside her Director of Education; Nick Hynes, and other senior staff, she is keen to have a new Sixth Form Centre built within the grounds of the further education campus at Les Ozouets but just last month the States agreed funding for some, not all of the work.
The bits which are being left out include all of the proposed sports facilities and the sixth form centre, although its foundations will be built as part of phase one.
With only the foundations for a sixth form centre to be built at Les Ozouets and the size of the Les Varendes high school population expanding beyond that of the former Grammar School, there remains an urgent need for the current sixth form centre to vacate its home at Les Varendes.
With La Mare de Carteret High School due to close completely next year plans are progressing for the sixth form centre to move there, on a temporary basis.
That plan was first announced shortly after the contract for building the new Les Ozouets campus was torn up in December 2022, and despite opposition to the plan from some deputies, staff and parents, it is now looking increasingly likely to happen - for four years rather than the originally stated two years.
Education member fears long sixth form stay at La Mare
La Mare de Carteret 6th Form Centre
La Mare Sixth Form plans prompt talk of education rethink
Further delays likely for new 6th form centre
Deputies “honoured” and “pleased” to meet with sixth form students
Comments
Comments on this story express the views of the commentator only, not Bailiwick Publishing. We are unable to guarantee the accuracy of any of those comments.