JCG lays out ambitious expansion plans

Monday 02 July 2018

A combined music centre, new laboratories and a playing field-come-biodiverse cider orchard – these are just a few of the “exciting” projects JCG hopes to fund through visiting foreign students.

According to Principal Carl Howarth, the school is “outgrowing its facilities” at a rapid rate.

More than half of students either now play a musical instrument or are involved in one of the school’s choirs, while science uptake is now at such a high level that some classes are held in classrooms rather than in specialist laboratories.

“These are good problems to have,” Mr Howarth said.

But finding solutions to both requires funding – and the school has come up with a solution that is hoped to help both the wider Jersey and international communities. 

Pictured: Some science lessons have to be held in classrooms, rather than laboratories, because uptake is so high among JCG A Level students.

JCG has partnered with a number of international schools to deliver visits and educational experiences to foreign students. A Memorandum of Understanding has also now been signed by the Ministers for Education and Treasury, pledging assistance in establishing an International Summer School.

Explaining the benefits in a recent States Assembly meeting, Minister for Education Senator Tracey Vallois explained that the initiative was aimed at “broadening island-wide awareness of the global community; heightening the importance of positive international relations; providing opportunities for the students of Jersey to communicate and collaborate across borders; enhancing the opportunities for all students to target global universities; making Jersey more attractive and known internationally; and creating additional income revenue for the JCG Foundation that will benefit JCG and the wider educational community.”

The endeavours should secure an annual income for the school of £500,000 by 2023.

Once that funding – and Planning approval – is gained, the school hope to set out on their ambitious expansion journey.

Part of that will see netball courts beside the current science facility knocked down to make way for three additional laboratories, bringing the school’s total to 10.

Pictured: The school hopes to broaden its international links through a summer school.

“Our students have a real love for science and more and more are studying it at A Level and wanting to study it at degree level. For JCG to play its part in addressing the numbers of women in science generally, we need to expand and extend our science provision.

“The best place for studying science is through laboratories where you can bring the science to life,” Mr Howarth told Express. 

With music another “real strength of the school”, JCG is also eyeing a new music centre featuring individual practice rooms and an “acoustically excellent” performance space to be built on the site of a former caretaker’s house, which would be shared with both JCG Prep the wider community.

“It would be a combined centre to be used from four-year-olds right up to 18… I think performance space is much needed and we’re hoping to provide a facility that can be used by other music groups in the evenings. Jersey is blessed with many choirs and they’re often looking for a place to rehearse,” Mr Howarth explained. 

He added that the school also hoped the facility would bring the Prep and secondary schools closer together, and “extend role modelling of how music is important in being a cultured, civilised person.”

Pictured: Plans to transform a nearby potato field into a playing field, cider orchard and ecological area for the school.

But the school’s expansion plans are not just academic, but ecological too.

With a lack of green space, JCG wants to repurpose a potato field east of the Prep campus to be made into a playing field on one side, and a biodiverse space for study on the other side. If the project is successful in securing Planning approval - part of which will depend on whether the site is found to have any archeological significance - the school hope to be able to work with the island's biodiversity experts.

Mr Howarth commented: "We’re looking to level off the top half to provide a much-needed playing field and green space because we have no green space available to us as a school, and need to ensure our facilities are supporting both the mental and physical health of our students.

"Also we want to develop an orchard and make it a ecological biodiverse area that our students can use for biodiversity surveys and to bring more flora and fauna to this area."

Finally, looking beyond capital projects, JCG is hoping to use £140,000 of the funds made from visiting students to fund five new bursaries over the next four years to increase social mobility and inclusion. The money will also be used to expand their holiday revision programmes, which are available to all Jersey students, with a target of a fifth of places being under bursaries.