Select a region
The Guernsey Building Trades Association Employers Association has said the island should be ashamed of the state of its educational estate:
We often hear people say education is about teaching and learning, not about buildings. That’s a lovely sound bite but is a totally flawed statement when your buildings are in such a poor state, they are compromising teaching and learning, and demotivating learners and staff.
The uncertainty surrounding secondary and further education in Guernsey, and particularly the lack of investment in our further education facilities, is having a significant detrimental effect on recruitment and retention of education staff.
The condition of Guernsey’s further education facilities is an embarrassment. Because of the States of Guernsey’s political flip-flopping and inept handling of this topic over the last decade, all the island’s further education estate is now well past its design life. These buildings were not intended to still be in use, consequently, substantial sums are having to be spent patching-up old buildings which should have been demolished years ago. Some of the facilities, particularly Countanchez, are in extremely poor condition.
Pictured: The list of States projects considered too late to stop ahead of last month's crucial tax and spending debate.
We should be ashamed we’ve let the education strategy of this island, and some of the facilities we provide our young people to learn in, get into this state. Yet, following the Funding & Investment Plan debate last month, we are faced with the absurd situation of having an agreed programme to finally transform the structure of secondary and further education, and construct the requisite facilities…. but no funding to do it!
The GBTEA represents 127 local building and allied trades employers. There are currently 313 apprentices in the Bailiwick, of which 70% are employed in the construction industry.
The vast majority of these are employed by GBTEA members. Together with all the other students studying the range of technical, vocational, and professional courses provided by the Guernsey Institute, these young people want to learn how to provide many of the essential services our island relies on. They are an important part of our demographic and the vast majority stay on island positively contributing to our skills base, working age population profile and economy.
However, they tell us the state of the facilities, and the knock-on effects that has on staffing and morale, make them feel like second class citizens.
Pictured: The Les Ozouets campus was due to be demolished this year.
We have no doubt the island’s secondary and further education leaders and staff do their absolute best in the circumstances and we are grateful they find the motivation to carry on with such high staff turnover and terrible facilities. The awful irony is that in the pursuance of delivering a model of education which provides equality, we have – through the States of Guernsey’s own prevarication – blindly staggered our way into eroding the equitability of post-16 education in the island. For those young people suited to an academic post-16 route (and crucially, able to afford it) the private colleges have continued to provide a stable educational offering unencumbered by the effects of politically driven uncertainty. A gulfnow exists between that offering and the experience of those going through our state-provided secondary and further education routes. In saying that, we make absolutely no judgement on the rights and wrongs of private versus state-funded education, we are simply pointing out that a gulf exists, it is only getting larger as time goes on, and the States of Guernsey caused it.
There can’t be many failures of government worse than one which compromises the education of our young people. Take a step back and ask yourself what must our young people think of us, the adults of this society? We’ve been arguing with each other for so long we have compromised (and continue to compromise) the quality of their secondary and further education. The clock is ticking every day for these young people. Forget arguments about selection, how many schools we should have, or where these schools should be located. We need to get on with delivering the plan. Our young people only get one shot at this, but we’ve been deliberating for so long we are almost at the point that an entire generation of young people will have gone through their education in a state of flux.
We say it again, we should be ashamed of ourselves.
Pictured: ESC are hoping to amend the Budget to enable the building work to go ahead at Les Ozouets.
The need to deliver the new model of education and modern facilities is desperate. We need to fund the Transforming Education Programme and get on with it. We don’t doubt all the arguments have been well-meaning. However, in a desire to find the optimal solution these well-meaning arguments have caused so much time to pass, the current provision has become wildly sub-optimal. We have got to the point that any marginal benefit which anyone perceives could be gained by spending more time talking instead of doing, is irrelevant.
Urgent action is required because even if we start construction tomorrow, the TGI faces another two years of operating from sub-standard facilities. It will take years to repair the damage we have already done; we cannot delay any further.
We urge every politician to support ESC’s amendment in this week’s budget debate to fund the TEP programme and give their full backing to every aspect of this programme being urgently progressed.
LETTER: "If the States deliver a clear plan, the construction industry will deliver that plan"
