THREATS to close St Andrew’s Primary and St Sampson’s Infant schools came under fire at last night’s Island People’s Meeting. At the fifth and best attended meeting since their resurrection, the lack of will shown by Education to keep the schools open was heavily criticised.
Audience member Steve Falla contrasted the department with Health and Social Services.
Mr Falla said that Health minister Peter Roffey had fought tooth and claw to improve its budget, while Education seemed to accept what it had been given.
Panelist Deputy Sam Maindonald agreed and said the department was not putting up a fight for education in the island. She also feared it had deliberately allowed the matter to become an election issue so it could avoid making a difficult decision.
‘They are not doing their job properly and, as I called for after the student loans debate, they should have resigned.
‘I do feel this is the wrong way to have done it.’
She agreed with others that they had only succeeded in creating uncertainty for teachers and distrust and concerns for parents and pupils.
Deputy Maindonald was joined on the panel by fellow deputies Mike O’Hara, Hunter Adam and Geoff Mahy, as well as architect Jamie Falla and the youngest-ever prospective election candidate, Lee Van Katwyk.
Mr Van Katwyk, 20, was also critical of the department.
‘Education should be fighting to have smaller classrooms and having more smaller classrooms built. The education of young people should be put first.’
Deputy O’Hara, a St Andrew’s resident, said he was dismayed to see the island’s successful education system being tampered with.
‘Our education system works well, so why change it? For me it doesn’t make sense to take children out of one school and to put them in another. Yes, it’s a difficult scenario but it doesn’t need changing.
‘We should stick it out. ‘Education minister’ Martin Ozanne hasn’t fought hard enough for the budget and I hope in the next House that Education will stand its ground.’
However, Deputy Adam, a member of Education, insisted that the figures showed that a closure was the most sensible decision. He said that school rolls had fallen and there were now 420 vacant places in the primary sector.
Another element of Education’s reasons for saying that two schools could close was falling birth rates, but this too was challenged by a number of the audience, who had also accessed records from the Greffe.
The way the department had gone about compiling its report was also criticised.
But former deputy Roy Bisson said this was not just a fault of Education but of the States as a whole. He said government was doing things in the wrong order.
‘We should be doing the consultation first. Not doing the report and then asking the people.’
Article posted on 24th January, 2008 - 12.00am
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