Wednesday 18 October 2017
General update from the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture
Sir, I welcome this opportunity to update members on progress and developments across all areas of our Education, Sport & Culture mandate.
I will do my best to cover as much as possible within this statement - to steal a phrase from Deputy St Pier, I would hope this update offers no surprises, or at least only pleasant ones!
I would like to start by congratulating all our staff and students for recording a fantastic set of public exam results again this year.
Our GCSE and Level 2 results were the second highest ever recorded and although they haven't published their final results yet it looks like we are performing way ahead of both England and Jersey.
Our students also maintained very high pass rates at A Level, International Baccalaureate, BTEC and other Level 3 courses again this year.
Our primary progress and attainment data shows that we are maintaining our high standards and improvement of recent years.
And before members ask why we need to change the system if our results are so good, I would just like to say we can always do better and our transformation proposals are absolutely based on improved educational outcomes.
Of course performance in public examinations and assessments is only one measure of our success. After all we have committed within the Policy and Resource Plan to be a place where 'everyone has equal opportunity to achieve their potential'.
So what are we doing to make that a reality? Well I'll give members a whistle stop tour of the main headlines.
September saw the start of the implementation of our new Bailiwick of Guernsey curriculum - the Big Picture.
Our new curriculum has been developed by our teachers for our teachers with a view to preparing our children and young people for the opportunities and challenges of living and working in the 21st century.
We are extremely lucky to have been able to capture our on-island expertise to create such a forward-looking and exciting opportunity to ensure we meet the needs of all our learners and of course provide that equal opportunity to achieve their potential.
We have made great strides in developing a more inclusive education system. We have been working closely with third sector partners and parents and carers to create an environment where children and young people feel valued and listened to, where they are knowledgeable about inclusion and equality and have access to learning which meets the needs of all, whilst exploring and celebrating diversity.
We must remember that retaining and recruiting high quality staff is perhaps the most important requirement of a successful education system.
Even with the attraction of our new curriculum, this continues to be a challenge, especially when there is a national shortage of teachers in certain key subjects such as English, maths and science and also when the cost of living in Guernsey continues to be high.
High quality staff need to be paid, and this is one of the major challenges facing us with regards to our 2017 expenditure and our budget limit for 2018.
More than 75% of the Committee's budget directly relates to pay. We need teachers and lecturers in front of learners, we need specialist staff in our education support services and special needs services, we need learning support assistants to ensure that our children are able to successfully access the education opportunities that will help them reach their full potential, we need caretakers to look after our school premises, we need school attendance officers, educational psychologists, careers advisors, development officers, the list goes on.... And we need the best we can get if we want to truly aspire to provide an excellent education service to all.
Sir, members, we do take the opportunity to reduce our staff numbers whenever possible, we have combined roles, deleted posts, done things differently, yes our predecessors have even closed schools to try to bring this wage bill down. But all the time our children and young people's needs are changing and growing; they require different levels of support, our staff and services are under pressure to ensure that we can provide that support and of course equal opportunity for our children and young people to achieve their potential.
I thank P&R for recognising in the budget report that these so-called 'business as usual' pressures impact on our pay costs.
I would like to reassure members that the Committee takes its budget responsibilities extremely seriously. The main opportunities outlined within the PWC benchmarking report could potentially generate substantial budget reductions in the medium to long term and indeed most of them are intrinsically linked to our proposals for the transformation of secondary and post 16 education.
We agree that sustainable savings are best realised through the transformation of services rather than simply cutting or reducing them. Decisions taken by this assembly at the end of the year could help us unlock some of these savings opportunities, as long as our proposals are supported by the majority of members and implementation is not delayed further. And of course we must make sure that whatever structure we agree, it does not prevent us from achieving our stated 20 year vision to be a place where 'everyone has equal opportunity to achieve their potential'.
The Committee is continuing to carefully scrutinise the additional opportunities suggested by PWC for realising further savings in the long term and welcomes the support from Policy & Resources by way of the proposed oversight group.
However, I can't deny that even with P&Rs support 2018 is going to present a real challenge for us - many of these long term transformational savings won't come through that quickly, the new funding agreement for the grant-aided Colleges won't have kicked in, it's difficult to address pupil teacher ratios mid-way through a school year without making staff redundant; even the idea of local management of schools, which we generally support, requires us to agree a structure before we can design an appropriate governance model.
One area of success that has also put additional pressure on our budget is the implementation of the States-funded entitlement to 15 hours of free pre-school education. The entitlement is now in its third term of operation having been introduced in January 2017 and is proving extremely successful.
Members will be aware that I will be responding to a series of questions from Deputy Fallaize shortly so I won't steal his thunder but I would like to confirm that the Committee has agreed to make no changes to the current scheme during this academic year. Good news I hope you will agree Deputy Fallaize.
I would just like to touch on progress with our plans for the transformation of secondary and post-16 education.
We launched our proposals at the beginning of July and have received some excellent feedback from staff, students, parents, the wider community and States Members. Parents have generally reacted positively to our proposals being mainly and quite rightly concerned with knowing exactly where their child would be going and what sort of education they can expect within our new structure.
Our staff are also looking for some level of certainty with regard to their jobs and future career options. As a direct result of staff feedback we are now finalising a new staff transition plan which will allow us to appoint staff to our new secondary and post-16 structures at the same time, addressing one of their main concerns.
We've also changed some of the language we use which we think led to some of the initial confusion about our proposals, particularly for post-16 education - I can confirm we are proposing a sixth form college, along with a further and higher education institute, we are proposing tried and tested structures, this is no experiment, our proposals are based on solid evidence of which structures will deliver the best educational outcomes for all our children and young people. We believe our proposals are also entirely appropriate for the Guernsey context and support the States of Guernsey's priorities as set out in the Policy & Resource Plan.
I don't believe this statement is the best vehicle for me to provide any further detail on our proposals. However I feel it's important to keep members and the wider community up to speed on some of the political developments. As members are aware, the Committee's officers have been instructed to provide support to the group of deputies wishing to see a two 11-18 school model which would require the creation of two large schools of between 1300 and 1450 pupils each, more than doubling the size of our existing high schools or adding several hundred more students and staff to the current Grammar School site.
The Committee's view is that the community would not be in favour of two such massive schools and all the implications that might mean for the areas where these schools would be sited and more importantly the impact on the curriculum that could be provided in two small sixth forms. Policy and Resources has granted us an additional £93,000 to pay for experienced school staff to model curriculum options for these two schools and to engage architects, mechanical and electrical engineers and traffic consultants to review at a high level how and where we could site such large schools, what size buildings they would require and the possible impact on the surrounding area as well as the transition for pupils and staff.
This work is progressing well and we anticipate these deputies using the information to construct an alternative proposal to bring to the States by way of amendment. To allow additional time for this work to be completed, we are now proposing to bring our proposals to the States for debate in December
This same group of officers are also busy completing the final detailed modelling of our preferred three-school plan and ensuring that enhanced educational outcomes remain at the forefront of our proposals.
I think we all agree that we cannot delay making a decision. What our children and young people, our parents, our staff and the wider community need now is certainty. We are working hard to ensure that States members have all the information they need to make the right decision. We want to continue the dialogue, keep answering members questions and addressing concerns.Work with us, share your ideas, make sure any alternative proposals are given the required level of scrutiny over the next few weeks. Let's not have last minute 'back of the fag packet' amendments on such an important issue. No surprises please - or at least only pleasant ones!
With such a large mandate it's difficult to decide what else to update members on.
I had a very positive meeting with my Isle of Man and Jersey counterparts a couple of weeks ago where we looked at post 16 education, pre-school, primary schools, secondary provision, safeguarding issues, sport and activity; we touched on higher education and shared our experiences, issues and solutions. These meetings provide an excellent opportunity for the three islands to learn from each other.
Closer to home, officers have started discussions with Sark around how we might be able to support their education system and we continue to work closely with Alderney on some of the challenges we face with falling numbers of children and young people in St Anne's school but still wanting to afford them equal opportunity to achieve their potential.
What about the Sport and Culture elements of our mandate? - and I would like to reassure members that we do not consider these to be our Cinderella services, in fact in many ways they are the jewels in our crown.
Members will be pleased to hear that work has begun on the development plans for Castle Cornet following the decisions on capital expenditure that we made here in the summer. As one of our most important heritage assets, one could describe it as the biggest jewel in our crown, a project of this size presents many challenges and we are currently developing the detailed project plan that will enable much needed maintenance and enhancement to take place over the next five years.
Members will be hearing more in the coming months as we consult about the plans we have been developing to ensure that Guernsey French is a part of the Island's future. We will be bringing proposals to this assembly early next year.
We have also been pulling together the beginnings of the Island's Sports Strategy, working together with internal and external partners.
Our new Healthy Lifestyle Centre opened at Beau Sejour recently, the culmination of really successful cross-Committee working between staff from our own Committee and the Committee for Health & Social Care.
Members will have heard via the Island Games Committee that things are gearing up for 2021. As well as supporting the work of that group, we have re-aligned our property maintenance and development plans to ensure that our sporting infrastructure is ready for the start of the Games.
So, to finish, I would just like to say that I am immensely proud to be President of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture and be giving members this update today; it's not always easy and you need a thick skin to deal with the sticks and stones that come flying your way on an increasingly regular basis. But I am amazed every day when I see the fantastic work going on across all areas of our service, I am humbled by the determination of our dedicated staff to always be doing their best for our children and young people and our community as a whole. I am privileged to meet so many wonderful children and young people and I am determined, and I know my Committee is, to continue to do everything possible to ensure that they are all happy and healthy and that they all have 'equal opportunity to achieve their potential'.
