Call To End 'Depressed' Talk About Education

The president of Education appeals to deputies and islanders to stop 'talking it down.'

Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen has used a lengthy statement to appeal to people in Guernsey to:

"Stop with the negative narrative and start working with us to build Guernsey's education system up."

Deputy Dudley-Owen says "too much of the political and public discussion has focused on buildings."

She says this "narrow focus ignores the substantial and highly significant changes being introduced' across the Secondary and Post 16 sector."

The ESC president details a range of areas where there have been successes.

These include the Secondary School Partnership, which allows each 11-18 school to keep its own identity while leaders work jointly to develop areas where all schools can improve. Senior leaders have visited schools in England to look at best practice.

New staffing structures are providing more support for students and reducing admin for teachers. The initiative also gives staff certainty over their future roles for the first time in a decade, she says.

Deputy Dudley-Owen says work to integrate the College of Further Education with the GTA University Centre and the Institute of Health and Social care Studies is progressing well.

Staff and students will soon be working together as a design team on the creation of a new school on the existing Grammar site.

The digital transformation is underway, with improved connectivity across schools promised by the end of the year.

And, deputy Dudley-Owen says we can probably expect news on a builder for the new Les Ozouets campus next month. She says the committee has been talking with appropriately-sized firms in Guernsey, Jersey and the UK.

She says there's lots to celebrate:

"It is time that we changed the tone of the conversation around education in Guernsey and Alderney.

We owe it not only to our students but to our many staff to be far more celebratory of the many successes.

We must create a positive and constructive conversation, acknowledging where we need to do better, but doing so with support, warmth and due concern."

This week, the largest teaching union in Guernsey, the NASUWT, will ballot its members on industrial action over pay and workload.