With the current States meeting for their final session this week, the ESC President has faced questions on various controversial topics that her committee is involved with.
Primarily, Deputy Andrea Dudley-Owen faced questions over the interim use of La Mare de Carteret as a new base for the island’s sixth form centre and the temporary pausing of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme.
Les Varendes v La Mare de Carteret
Guernsey’s sixth form centre is moving from its existing home at Les Varendes to La Mare de Carteret this September.
The long term plan is still for the sixth form centre to move to Les Ozouets but the funding hasn’t been agreed yet for those new buildings.
ESC has long said that the closure of La Mare de Carteret High School and the resulting increase in students attending Les Varendes High School means there isn’t room for the sixth form centre to stay at its current location.
However, it was also recently announced that several staff offices are moving to the sixth form centre’s building at Les Varendes, including the Music Service, SHARE, Careers, and Youth Commission staff.
Yesterday, Deputy de Sausmarez asked about the work to refurbish both premises ahead of these changes coming in.
Those supporting the plans say they’re driven by a desire for cost-efficiency and optimal use of taxpayer-owned property, and follows the Sixth Form Centre’s relocation to La Mare de Carteret to accommodate for the Les Varendes High School expansion, but Deputy de Sausmarez raised concerns on the temporary measures.
She said there are concerns that the temporary sixth form usage could become permanent.
“Now that is indefinite, and looks to be considerably longer,” she said.
ESC President, Deputy Dudley-Owen didn’t disagree on the long-term aims, highlighting the aspiration for a permanent solution and acknowledging that the current situation is not ideal.
“Obviously, the sixth form needs to have a permanent home, and I hope that the next States is going to be able very, very early in the term, almost immediately, to provide funding for the building of the sixth form as originally planned on the Les Ozouets campus site”.
Deputy Dudley-Owen also spoke of an independent report which provided the financial justification for their temporary solution, “…should the sixth form centre be co-located at the 11-16 school, they found there will be a shortfall of teaching space, and financial analysis then found that the cost of addressing this was materially more, the cost of using La Mare de Carteret as an interim option”.
Pausing the International Baccalaureate
Deputy John Gollop wanted clarity from ESC on the decision making process for pausing the International Baccalaureate Diploma within Guernsey from this September.
Deputy Dudley-Owen gave their reason for the pause, which was recently announced.
“The decision has been made to pause at this stage and to do more further work, and hopefully to encourage a greater uptake within the IB diploma and and then to see how that works out into the academic year 25 to 26.”
Deputy John Gollop questioned the lack of proactive marketing of the course, as the President of ESC had claimed that they don’t tend to market for a specific course.
“Why does the committee consider it not desirable to promote or market, one course of study and to not necessarily aggressively recruit students, but proactively recruit students to specific courses, because that implies to committing to not necessarily particularly selling the IB option as a good way forward for students?”, he queried.
In response Deputy Dudley-Owen said they don’t want to push one course over others and aim to give students “balanced information about all post-16 options”.
She said ESC see their role as informing students, not aggressively recruiting them to specific courses like might happen in the UK.
Questions then arose on teachers who had trained to teach IB’s, with concerns they may have to undertake extra training.
However, Deputy Dudley-Owen said that wasn’t necessary, as to teach IB requires training, not the other way round.
“Those staff members who teach IB actually have to undertake in an additional qualification to teach IB, so they wouldn’t need any training in order to be able to assist in any other teaching in the secondary environment.”
