What's in a name?

Monday 29 October 2018

With two new campuses planned, under the one school/two sites model of secondary education, one of the questions being asked is what will they be called.

The plans released by the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture refer to the sites as colleges - and it's been explicitly said that they won't be called Les Beaucamps and St Sampson's, despite those two schools currently occupying the sites.

Many people will mourn the loss of the Guernsey Grammar School and La Mare De Carteret High School, which are both planned for closure by 2023. However, plenty of other secondary schools have come and gone in recent and longer term memory in Guernsey.

While the planned closure of two school sites is undoubtedly sad for the students, teachers and island community, it also gives a chance for a trip down memory lane to see which other secondary schools we can remember: 

St Peter Port Secondary

The decision to close St Peter Port Secondary School is directly linked to the current situation, as it was during those States debates that a wider decision was made to retain the 11+ and to redevelop three of the secondary schools; St Sampson, Les Beaucamps and La Mare de Carteret in that order, and to close St Peter Port Secondary, merging students from that school with those at the three remaining schools. 

St Peter Port Secondary Modern was just over 40 years old when it closed, having educated around 4,000 pupils. 

Les Ozouets Campus is now used by the College of Further Education, the Schools Music Service, the Youth Commission and houses the Princess Royal Centre for Performing Arts. 

Pictured: St Peter Port Secondary School. 

The Girls and Boys Grammar Schools

Long before the Guernsey Grammar School opened its doors at Les Varendes in 1985, Guernsey had a girls and a boys grammar school on near-neighbouring sites at Rosaire Avenue and Brock Road.

The boys school opened first of course, in 1883 at Granville House, with 120 students by the time it moved to Brock Road in 1894. The Girls' Secondary School opened in 1895 at Granville House, before moving to Victoria Road in 1918, by which time it was called the Intermediate School and had 157 students, before moving to Vauvert and then Rosaire Avenue.

In what may be a sign of things to come, a debate on the future of the Intermediate schools saw a States decision, in February 1977, to amalgamate the two schools. That decision was finally approved n 1982 when the then States decided to build a new school. They then moved quite quickly as the two schools ceased to be separate intsitutions in August 1983 and moved to the new school in July 1985.

St Josephs 

Having been the home of Notre Dame infants school classes since the late 1980s, it was not so long ago that the Catholic Church of St Joseph and St Mary had a secondary school in its grounds. It closed in the early 1980s due to dwindling pupil numbers.

Pictured: Vimiera College. 

Vimiera College 

Now the site of St Pierre Park Hotel, Vimiera was a college in the early 19th Century, and again in the 1970s, before it was redeveloped in 1980 as the hotel we now know.

Parish schools

Pre and post WWII Express understands many students were taught at their parish schools, with Vauvert, as an example, taking infants and secondary school age pupils, with children moving to Amherst for their junior school years.

This situation is believed to have been replicated in a similar manner at other parish schools, including at St Sampson's where the infants school only closed in 2014, and the secondary school which closed when the current St Sampson's High School opened in 2008. 

Which other schools can you remember? Comment below and let us know what you would call the two new colleges too!