A sixth form centre for Les Quennevais?

Saturday 15 April 2017

“Serious consideration” should be given to creating a sixth form extension to Les Quennevais secondary school to help “future-proof” the Island’s education system, a States politician has said.

Plans to rebuild 50-year-old Les Quennevais School have long been on the States’ agenda, but hit a fork in the road in February when the Environment Minister, Deputy Steve Luce, refused a planning application to construct a new 800-pupil school on design and traffic grounds.

But Deputy Montfort Tadier, whose constituency houses the St Brelade-based school, says that the knockback should be viewed as an “exciting opportunity to relook at the plans” and consider whether a sixth form centre could be added.

At present, all five sixth form colleges are located within the same catchment, with only one out of the five – Hautlieu, a selective school – non-fee-paying.

Pictured: Selective school Hautlieu is the Island's only States sixth form college.

According to the Reform Jersey politician, basing a higher education centre for 16-18 year olds in the west would not only offer a logistical alternative, but greater flexibility for middle earners’ children too.

“In the future, there might be a shift from the fee-paying schools towards the State sector, especially if the subsidy for the schools is reducing over a period of time. If the ‘middle’ of Jersey are being squeezed and people have got less money, then they might start looking at whether they can afford to pay school fees and that would put an extra burden on the State sector, so I think we need to be prepared for that,” Deputy Tadier told Express.

He added that a western A Level centre would not only allow for chidren in the area to enjoy “more continuity” in their education, but could provide a solution to some of the pressures on the education system likely to be incurred by Jersey’s rising population, which is expected to hit 128,800 by 2035.

Pictured: The entrance to the current Les Quennevais secondary school, which currently caters for pupils up to GCSE.

The idea has already received good support from constituents, who had raised concerns over the current post-16 school provisions during Deputy Tadier’s regular “parish surgeries”.

He will now be posing a question on whether such an option has been considered to the Minister for Education, Deputy Rod Bryans, in Tuesday’s States Assembly, in the hope that it will lead to a more general debate on the issue.

Deputy Tadier explained: “I’m going to consider whether or not it’s something we could debate in the States as an in-committee debate and I need to get a feeling from members. I think there are several compelling reasons as to why we might want to do that… We need to future-proof the school for the next 40 years, but we also need to future-proof our education system.”