One criticism often leveled at the idea of having three schools offering sixth-form education in Guernsey is that the numbers at each school would be too small to offer a wide curriculum.  For this reason, the two-school model is currently favoured by CfESC, as two 1,500 pupil schools are said to be capable of offering a broad curriculum at each site.

Yet many smaller schools do manage to have a sixth form and offer a broad curriculum successfully. For example, if two of the three schools specialised in specific academic areas, and combined with a consortium approach, as many UK schools do.

This allows students to have a main school but optionally take an option from another site, and travel once per day by shuttle bus. It enables smaller schools to offer a wide curriculum. Locally, the colleges also take a similar approach – EC and LC have a combined 6th form, so it is possible to run with a smaller cohort – EC has only 123 students in their 6th form.

The distances between the three schools sites (LMDC, SSHS ad Les Varendes) are actually quite small (around 10 mins by road) less than in this UK example:

Central Sixth – Moseley Park – Wolverhampton, West Midlands

And here too, where coincidentally Laurie Ann Baker worked, Guernsey’s on / off new Director of Education:

4H Consortium – London Borough of Hillingdon

And also here in Islington, which has the benefit of tube transport to move between four schools with small sixth forms:

iC6 – Islington Sixth Form Consortium

In comparison, the travel distances for Guernsey are relatively small, as shown here with straight-line distances and travel time for the closest actual route by road:

Secondary schools in Guernsey have been part of a federation since 2014 where timetable times are synchronised, allowing teachers to move from one school to another.  A consortium, on the other hand, is for sixth-form students to take an additional option that is not available at their school.

These as examples help to show how 6th forms can potentially be viable at smaller schools and still offer a broad curriculum, it’s not intended to create a carbon-copy of an existing consortium that exists elsewhere in the UK.  There are a variety of size school, as one comparable example Ruislip High School, has 1,066 pupils and is rated Outstanding by Ofsted, at about the size an 11-18 school in a 3x 11-18 model in Guernsey would be. Moseley Park in Wolverhampton has 980, and is also rated Outstanding.

Running costs would likely be somewhat higher that with two schools, but if it’s approx. £20m cheaper for construction costs of the 3x 11-18 model, even allowing for CoFE refurbishment costs to LBHS there would still possibly be enough change left over to break even compared with two schools for a few years – and maybe altogether, as some costs (such as “active travel”) would not be required when more people live near a school.