It takes just four steps to a better education model, but the models listed by CfESC are all one move solutions.  The three options listed in the policy letter all have problems, but this model ends up with all three 11-18 schools, costs less, and offers the widest choice of A-levels and vocational options by linking the schools together.

Step 1: LMDC Students move to existing estate

There is spare capacity within the existing estate to accommodate all LMDC students without exceeding the design capacity of the remaining schools:

• SSHS can take 720 right now
• LBHS can take 660
• Les Varendes can take 800 + 400 in Sixth Form.

There’s capacity of 2,180 in KS3/4 and this year there are ~2000 students. There’s a predicted bulge in 2023 of 2,271 students which would go very slightly over that mark.  No extensions required, no portacabins.  For the LMDC construction period only, a 1x 11-18 school plus 2x 11-16 school model is temporarily adopted.  This arrangement is currently recommended by teachers as the most workable.

Step 2: Rebuild LMDC

With the site vacated, it’s possible to build in the less flood prone area occupied by the existing school.  The existing school building is used to create a “flood bund” saving on costs both to transport material in, and disposal of building rubble.  The old school becomes the flood protection for the new. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in action.  The new 960 capacity school has enough space to accommodate a small sixth form in addition to KS3/4 but would need to rely transport links to Les Varendes to offer a wide range of options.

Step 3: Move LBHS students to LMDC, and FE to LBHS

Students from Les Beaucamps would need to say a fond farewell to the building, but for some it would be merely “au revoir”, as the building would be repurposed for further education.  This provides a prestige building for the new Guernsey Institute.  This option has been previously investigated by ESC and confirmed as viable.  There is space on site for the main teaching area, but workshops would need to be built from scratch.

Step 4: Join it all together

Consortiums are tried, tested and working. Schools get Outstanding ratings. Students get to mix vocational and academic qualifications. The widest possible selection of qualifications from a single 16-18 offering, joined together by a 10-minute bus ride for some options only.

I was quite horrified when I learned on 20th January that teachers who had wanted to voice their concerns about problems with the planned expansion at St Sampsons and Les Beaucamps were treated to replies that included the advice to “be a radiator, not a drain.”

This charming piece of management newspeak doubtlessly intends to convey the idea that people can be easily divided into two groups.  Drains are negative types, while radiators are positive.  Business coach and consultant Paul Beesley explains the metaphor:

I feel you can roughly divide people into two camps – i.e. drains and radiators.

So what do I mean by people being described as drains and radiators? Do you know people that always seem to be down? Have you worked alongside someone who always sees the glass half empty? What about someone who consistently takes and never gives back? I refer to these people as drains. The more you get to know them, the more they drain your energy.

How about the other types of people? These people seem to turn on the light when they enter a room. The kind of people who are warm, full of life. I guess that you know these types of people too. These people radiate warmth and energy.

So having neatly categorised people into being either drains or radiators, which ones do you prefer to keep company with? Is it more exciting to be with a drain or radiator? If you have people working for you, will a drain or a radiator be your greatest ambassador? I think you know the answer.

It sounds a little more sinister and divisive when it’s delivered by those with responsibility for implementing major structural transition in our schools, and not by a just a business coach.  Even more so if it’s followed up darkly with hints about possible disciplinary action or job losses.  Then it doesn’t sound warm and friendly, it sounds a little cold and threatening.  No wonder then, that serious problems with the new schools about to be built were not flagged up to parents, taxpayers and voters until the last minute.

But with apologies to friends who are actual plumbers and heating engineers, it’s also a terrible metaphor.  Radiators are not always the warm and comforting things people would have you believe.  In fact, when you think about it, they often have many problems that aren’t immediately apparent.

For one thing, they’re astronomically expensive to install and run.  They’re costly to maintain.  They’re very difficult to adjust, and fearsomely complex to balance.  They are usually attached to complicated, multi-zone, staggered timing systems, that nobody really understands.  They’re inefficient, and responsible for large amounts of unnecessary carbon emissions.  As a legacy of old ideas about how things should be laid out, they’re often poorly cited, in the most inconvenient locations, making them difficult to work around.  And they’re nearly impossible to re-locate once they’ve been put in place, sometimes requiring the whole system to be ripped out and done again properly.  They are also very unreliable.  And when they break down, which they surely will, in the middle of winter, they leave you feeling cold, shivering, miserable, and cursing they day you ever agreed to install the damn system in the first place.

On the other hand, drains are easy to overlook, but they’re actually one of the most vital components of the infrastructure we rely on.  Their creation is a modern miracle.  As a society, we take for granted how lucky we are to have them in place.  Often out of sight, and out of mind.  In a bygone age, and tragically still today in parts of the world much less fortunate than our own, people suffer all kinds of problems without them.  We are lucky, we depend on them every day to wash away the stuff we don’t want, to keep us and our families safe and thriving.  We need them to reliably drain away that which we have no use for.  It’s not the most glamorous function.  They have to take a lot of stuff we’d prefer not to handle ourselves.  And if they’re not looked after properly and maintained, they can get a little stinky!  But without them, everything just doesn’t really work as it should.  If they weren’t there, when you think about it, everywhere would be overflowing with… effluent.

We shouldn’t really divide people up, let’s keep the drains, and turn down the radiators.

TO THE TEACHERS, ASSISTANTS, PETITION ORGANISERS, PROTESTORS, DOUZENIERS, DEPUTIES AND EVERYONE WHO HAD THEIR SAY:

THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE.

In some places, people care about their built environment and actually make a neat feature of the drain covers 🙂

I found debate last week so frustrating.  It’s clear 1S2C is wildly unpopular with the community & teachers but attempts at finding alternatives on the debating floor didn’t get the investigation they deserve, so the session ended up as a talking shop.  Genuine compromise 3-school models do exist, and some configurations that deserve a proper evaluation are being overlooked.  One in particular seems to have great potential to work very well, and deserves a closer look.

The proposal would be a hybrid of the De Lisle/Le Pelly amendment with Le Tocq/Brouard amendment for a 3×11-18 school model, but crucially include an element to recover costs by moving the FE institute build to use Les Beaucamps School premises, with suitable alteration, allowing the sale of the valuable SPP school site, e.g. for affordable housing. In contrast the current proposals, which end up with vacant LMDC (playing fields too marshy, low disposal value) and LV (States don’t own playing fields) do not make good use of the available opportunities in the estate and so are not good value for money overall.

I suspect this would be cost-effective and could attract majority (at least lukewarm) support across all stakeholders, and community, and teachers, if properly investigated and if parties were willing to compromise from their “ideal” positions to a position that addresses all the identified issues, at least reasonably well.  Saddening to see the States floundering around and missing important elements.

Rebuilding LMDC gives an automatic transition plan, as the remaining three schools (LV, SSHS and LBHS) have spare capacity.  So, during the build La Mare students would temporarily move to schools in the existing estate: SSHS can take 720, LBHS 660 and LV 800 + 400 in Sixth Form.  For a couple of years only, we’d be running with a 1x 11-18  + 2x 11-16 model.  All within design limits of the schools, no Portacabins needed, and no students have their education damaged.

But with a rebuilt LMDC, a project so expensive it begat the two-school model, there’s space for a sixth form.  Original plans exist for a secondary school, primary school on site creating an “all through school”, preschool, autism unit, community centre and sports facilities that could be used outside the school day.  It improves drainage for the whole area and makes good use of otherwise troublesome land for playing fields.

SSHS with a reduced catchment to similar to the old St Sampsons school could almost accommodate a sixth-form unaltered.  Reduced catchment size has another benefit, reducing traffic congestion as a greater proportion of students would live close to their school.

Three 11-18 school model ticks many boxes but does require some specialisation at KS5.  That is poorly understood, even within the teaching profession, let alone the community, or politicians.  Not surprising really, as our current schools are built around a selective UK model from the 1970s, frozen in time as Guernsey hasn’t kept up with developments in UK school building policy since then.  Why would we, it doesn’t affect us?  Except it does when we’re trying to skip forwards 50 years and adopt “latest” practice without any experience of the intervening changes.

Does specialisation in schools mean kids are forced to choose their career path when they’re 10 years old? No!  Specialist schools offer a full, balanced, comprehensive education all the way through KS3 and KS4, the specialisation is on top of that.  Precisely because the policy was introduced by HM Government to a UK system that largely consisted of comprehensive schools.

Would it create a logistical nightmare, with students having to find their own way to different schools just to get to lessons?  No!  Switching campus would be for sixth form students who take options that aren’t available in their school’s option block.  It could be timetabled to a maximum of one per day.  On a scheduled shuttle bus with no stops and a journey time of around 10 minutes, door to door.  You’d spend more time switching airport terminals.  And you wouldn’t need masses of buses, six new buses (electric buses!) would do it all.  The current proposals need around 17 just to get kids in to Les Beaucamps in the morning!  And 1S2C might itself require some switching campus between the two new colleges for some combinations.

None of this was discussed in the States, there’s an understandable fear amongst politicians of approaching details best addressed by educationalists.  It’s sometimes forgotten that education policy is developed by politicians.  Our political system relies on many independent politicians, and with party system up and running has no full-time researchers to help create policy. School specialisation was originally developed by the Conservative party in the form of CTC schools and expanded by New Labour following their “education, education, education” policy initiative that attracted many moderate voters and helped contribute to their 1997 landslide.  There seems very scant understanding of the British politics driving the standards we’re adopting.

What I’d guess quite a few people would like to see, is a pause in the CfESC programme, maybe with a defined time limit, so that the strength of feeling amongst opponents might be gauged and a possible compromise found before construction contracts are agreed and risk attempts to turn around following an election, or an unhappy electorate feeling like they’ve been denied their opportunity for expression on the subject.

Failure to do so risks a democratic crisis.  Voters feel aggrieved that 1S2C was adopted by the States with little mandate.  No manifesto pledges mentioned it, some explicitly referred to a 3-school system.  We had no vote for the Labour or Conservative changes to school building space requirements, obliquely referred to as BB98 and BB103.  But we’re proposing to adopt them here regardless.  If we went into an election with irreversible education policy that has already gone past a point of no return, there might be genuine resentment.

Politicians have struggled to gauge the strength and depth of opposition.  Muted grumblings snowballed into a much larger protest movement with alarming rapidity.  The discourse has been unusual for Guernsey, more grass roots that with those of years gone by, absent the plummy vowel speeches or booming retired colonels that often dominate discussion in the island.  With good reason, families that can afford it have felt obliged to sit this one out, at home counting their pennies and putting some aside for future school fees.  Those most affected are the other 80%, unaccustomed to getting their voice heard.

When the planning designs and transport finally emerged, the optics were terrible.  Gone were the local schools of old, replaced by high volume education factories located in the middle of nowhere, crammed Tory austerity-era designs with insufficient outside space.  Rushed transport plans spelled more congestion, an island wide traffic jam with far away drop-off points and long strides through narrow roads the rain, watching on as rich kids get chauffeur driven to their colleges in town.  And an empty Grammar school building, an institution once held out as a beacon of shining hope to educate the working classes, standing empty and abandoned, it’s future use uncertain.

Ploughing ahead and denying the people a say risks damaging our democracy and the social cohesion of the island.