Tuesday 28 January 2020
The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture has written to staff in schools with an update on changes made in recent weeks to the plans for the new 11-18 colleges.
These changes follow ongoing feedback from teachers and support staff.
Further discussions are planned soon between the Committee and unions. While the States have set the financial boundaries for the reforms to education, the Committee has told unions it will use whatever flexibility it can find to make reasonable adjustments to the plans in order to reassure staff.
Deputy Peter Roffey, Member of the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture, said:
"We received a lot of feedback from staff at drop-in sessions held in each secondary school towards the end of 2019. Feedback was also received from workshops held between the Committee's advisors and staff groups in schools. We wanted to go back to colleagues in schools to keep them up to date with how we are responding to their feedback. We have identified changes made following their feedback, changes still being explored, and changes which are not possible within the policy and financial boundaries set by the States or which cannot reasonably be justified. This work is an ongoing process of refining how space is used and will be subject to further discussion between the Committee, officials and school staff in the weeks ahead.
Where it is not possible to make changes at the present time, the Committee remains keen to continue discussions with teachers and support staff and their union representatives. Through these discussions we can establish where there is common ground between the collective ambitions of staff and the Committee and discuss opportunities for review points to be built into the transition plan, which will run for a few years and during which time the number of students and staff at the 11-18 colleges will gradually increase."
