I made this speech in the November 2016 debate on selection.
Sir, Declaration of interest. LC Governor – very proud to be so given the latest ISI Inspection report that rated it excellent in all categories. Also pleased that Post 16 team not only beat Elizabeth College but was the Guernsey winner of the de Putron Challenge last week, I have to declare a personal interest in the latter too. Btw what I am about to say are my own views and not those of the College, whose stance is neutral on this issue.
Now, I wasn’t looking forward to this debate. Not so much because I knew I would just hear all the same arguments as 6 months ago and in some cases, the same speeches as 6 months ago, at times it’s felt like groundhog day but greatest reason I’ve not looked forward to it is more personal. I rarely bring in family into my speeches, but I feel I need to today because it explains why for me the whole debate around selection is not an easy one.
A month before the last education debate my Mum was admitted to hospital and she died just over a week after it. Her funeral was a day after the SE hustings, so the election was quite bittersweet for me. She was a teacher, a highly respected teacher I might add and, like many others, whether they are a majority or not, was against selection.
Incidentally, she was in the first year to take the 11 plus. It gave her the ticket to leave the family home where she had been expected to stay and look after her parents and strike out as a professional woman. She was one of the first to start tapping on that glass ceiling. 70 years later the cracks are appearing but it hasn’t broken yet.
Now When I went to visit my Mum in the evening after the Education debate I told her that the States had voted against selection as I knew it would make her happy and, in one of the last times she was able to manage speech, she said, ‘Oh good’. Of course, I couldn’t tell her I voted to keep selection. In her prime we would have had a robust exchange of views about it and she would probably have convinced me I was wrong. She was a woman of strong opinions, feisty and independent as Deputy Roffey would say. So perhaps members will forgive me when I say I have not been looking forward to going through the same debate all over again. The associated memories are still quite raw.
I had pondered whether to say anything at all as, despite everyone making a speech, most if not all of those of us sitting here now had already made up our minds before we entered the Chamber. In fact, I think everyone, has had a script in front of them. I am no different of course.
Because in the end I succumbed, if only to vent my frustration that we are having the wrong debate at the wrong time. How, whatever we decide today won’t make a jot of difference in sorting out the problems we wish to solve.
We should’ve had this debate 6 months ago of course. This delay hasn’t helped anyone. The debate should’ve been a dim and distant memory now and we should have the Committee for Education Sport and Culture looking at the really important stuff, the stuff that goes far beyond the structure of secondary education.
We should be debating the quality and level of teaching resources. I was surprised that, during the budget debate that no member of the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture mentioned the likely impact of savings of 3, 5 and 5% over the next 3 years. There is a strong correlation between the resources put into education and the results achieved. You can see that from what happened at La Mare. Which has made great strides and which Deputy St Pier highlighted in his speech yesterday.
We should be allowing headteachers more autonomy. One of the biggest frustrations for the school heads is the fact they can’t manage their own schools, particularly with regard to recruitment. I’ve been told of numerous errors made by the centre and the inordinate amount of time it takes to recruit. I want to hear from the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture about what they are doing about that.
We should be looking at how we reverse the growing mental health issues of our schoolchildren.
Members of the Committee for Health and Social Care visited the Communities teams on Friday and during the visit we met the school nurses. They spoke of the increases in mental health issues they are experiencing now – spread between all schools, girls and boys. They expressed their concerns over the increase and the role social media is playing. That is what needs to be looked at – how can we support our children – what should schools be doing? We focus on secondary schools as places to get GCSEs, they are all judged on how many 5 GCSEs A* to C they get, but education is more than that. We need to support the whole child. I want to see schools bringing in the award winning Decider Skills, created by 2 amazing HSC staff. If you’ve never heard of it, see me afterwards, as they say. That is what should be looked at.
Changing the structure of schools won’t change those issues and if we decide to get rid of selection, time and resources will be diverted from where they are most needed. And you really don’t have to take my word for it. I’ll get on to that in just a minute.
There are 2 phrases used in this debate that have got me worked up and they are, ‘equality of opportunity’ and ‘social mobility’.
This obsession with ensuring everyone gets the same academic education is contributing to the problem. We should be debating what we are doing about technical education, why there are only 22 apprentices registered at the College of FE this year.
One size really does not fit all. I have some great friends who are the most skilled craftsmen that you will ever find, can turn a piece of metal or wood into a thing of beauty. Does, sticking them in a classroom doing the same work as someone with an IQ of 120 make any sense? Of course it doesn’t. And that’s the point. We are totally missing the point. The whole selection debate is completely missing the point. Selection is not about elitism it is a means of helping kids get an education that suits them.
Equality of opportunity isn’t about giving all kids the same academic opportunity. What is being missed is supporting and enabling our skilled young people. Those creative people, those for whom learning For Mice and Men is a complete waste of time. To be honest I think FMAM is a complete waste of time for children who are academic, but that’s another matter and for another debate. Those that get so worked up about selection are those that just don’t get the fact that we are all different and should have an education that fits who we are. Let’s not forget that those who are highest paid in our society include sportsmen, actors and musicians. Not being academic doesn’t mean having the lowest paid jobs. It is a problem of our society if we don’t value those jobs.
And that leads me onto the issue of Social mobility. Well, I’m sorry but this is a complete red herring it is nothing to do with the system of secondary education. We hear there are few children in the Grammar school who live in social housing and none in the Colleges. Well, honestly, isn’t that a symptom of problems elsewhere, not the cause?
The problems of social mobility are well recognised in the UK. Social Mobility Commission report published 2 weeks ago said that those born in the 80s have less social mobility than their parents, this despite the fact the vast number of children attend comprehensive schools.
They state that and I quote, ‘Successive governments have focused on reforming school structures, with mixed results.
The Commission hopes that the Government will move on from an over-reliance on structural reform to a new and relentless focus on improving teacher quality and fairly distributing teachers to the schools that most need them. Sir Michael Wilshaw said just that on the Today Programme this morning.
So, whilst the anti-selection lobby generally have been quick to quote the sentence where the Commission asks the government to consider whether they should bring in Grammars, it is not to do with their belief it will make social mobility worse, but that politicians should put their ideological viewpoints to one side and get on and focus on what really matters – the quality of teaching. That’s why, if I were in the UK I would not support the re-introduction of Grammars.
Issues around social mobility start well before a child reaches 11. It’s why 1001 days initiative which Committee for Health and Social Care is fully behind and wants to see traction on, is needed as part of suite of measures to give children the best start before they even start school.
At the other end of the education system, why is it that so few State educated children go to the supposedly top universities compared to those in private schooling? Five times as likely to get to Oxbridge if go to private rather than state school.
And why should social mobility be set by what academic qualifications you have reached by 21? Surely that is what lifelong learning is about? How sad, if we think we can’t strive for a better and more fulfilled life for as long as we are fit and able to do so? Given today’s schoolchildren are likely to live beyond 100, surely government must help that happen. But we aren’t, we’re obsessing as we have been doing so for years and years and years on just one small period of time in a person’s life. We currently have the longer working lives initiative, but if we don’t learn when we are older, what opportunities will there be for us? Jobs are no longer for life. Lifelong learning will be essential.
Now, I went to a Grammar School but didn’t particularly enjoy it, but that was the UK in the 80s and it wasn’t a great time to be at school, either as student or teacher for that matter.
But, for years I supported all-ability schools. I’m still not ideologically opposed to them.
But I have a real issue about bringing in such a system here because I don’t see that we have a broken system, quite the reverse and I have real concerns about what the alternative will mean.
Firstly, there can be no doubt that the Grammar School is a top performing school. I do not want to get rid of a school that is a top performer. In fact, why get rid of any of the schools as they currently operate, if, as may well be the case, they are already outperforming. Deputy Stephens said in her speech how great they all are.
So, the alternative.
Members will be aware of an email we received recently from someone in our community who attached a paper on how Hampshire comprehensive schools perform compared with Guernsey in terms of the percentage of pupils achieving five or more A* to C-grades at GCSE or equivalent including English and maths, the Gold Standard as it is described. The purpose of the information sent was to demonstrate how average Guernsey’s State secondary schools were, having an average percentage of 61%.
Well, I thought I’d look more into that, just to get a better idea of the schools in Hampshire. Now, I looked at the best performing schools and found that the average number of pupils in those schools achieving over 70% was 1,400 pupils. None of them had less than 1,000 pupils. Conversely, those with less than 40% had on average half that, under 700. None of them had more than a 1,000 pupils.
So, the smaller the school, the worse they perform. At 61%, based on the size of school you could in fact say that Guernsey schools were outperforming. Whatever. The Truth is Comprehensive schooling does not work unless you have large pupil numbers. We are told that you can still have selection within an all-ability school through setting. Deputy Roffey says he doesn’t believe in all-ability schools without setting. Well I get that. That is the one reason why I am not opposed to all-ability schools in principle. I really am not.
However, setting requires a large enough cohort to ensure that you can stretch the best and focus on the most challenged. Deputy Leadbetter says he wants to see the end of selection but retain 4 schools. Well sorry, but you can’t have both!
Of course, those against selection want to separate this debate from the number of schools, but in reality you can’t. With all ability schools at least one school will need to close. That is if we really care about giving our children the best education and are not just doing so for ideological reasons. Bigger really does mean better, and of course that was always Ed Dept’s motto, certainly for primary schools. To get to anything approaching 1,400 pupil schools we would need to get down to not 3, but 2 schools, even then we’d only have 1,300 pupils. And that might work in the UK, but how would that fit on this small island? What schools should be expanded? Can they be? How much will it cost? Is that where money should be best spent – or teaching resources?
That’s it in a nutshell for me. It is all very well having ideological fancies, but you have to think of the practicalities.
The reality is, changing to comprehensive schooling won’t sort out the problems we think it will solve and quite frankly, to make it work at all will need major upheaval not only of the education system but the estate.
With no guarantee it will make a jot of difference.
And as an aside I’m really sorry for Deputy Le Clerc, who says that she felt a failure, scarred for life, in reality she should be telling kids that the system has enabled her to be a success. And Emotional blackmail is not the basis for making change. Hard cases don’t make good law.
Back to the alternative.
We hear Deputies Fallaize and Stephens say that those pro-selection haven’t got an alternative to the 11+, but the truth is, when we say all-ability schools, we don’t actually know what that means. Deputy Roffey spoke about how we shouldn’t slavishly follow the UK. So what is the answer then?
So finally,
I want the Committee for Education Sport and Culture looking at quality of teaching, mental health issues, getting more students into the top universities, lifelong learning, increasing the number of apprentices and through all that, provide equality of opportunity and social mobility.
Selection or non-selection won’t do any of that. At best it will be a distraction, at worst it could be very destructive.
As we get closer to the end of this debate, I would just like members to think on this. No we don’t have a perfect system. Neither is the system broken. Equality of opportunity does not mean the same size fits all and just changing to a new system of education will not improve social mobility. In fact, this is the point. Spending years putting a new system in, and believe me it will be years, re-organising schools, the need to recruit more teaching staff, are years where the real issues in our education system, our wider society, will not get the full attention that they deserve.
We hear a lot about experts in this debate, pedagogical insights abound, but what we really need is just a bit of common sense. For that reason, I will be supporting the amendment.