This Is Guernsey

By Gemma Hockey

EDUCATION member Hunter Adam’s maths have been challenged by the mother of two children at closure-threatened St Andrew’s Primary School. Lois Falla, who is a qualified accountant, said that Deputy Adam has got his sums wrong.

She said his claims that there were 420 empty desks in the island, that class sizes would not rise with any closures and that the department was going to save money by closing schools were contradictory.

‘There is a potential 220 places in 10 schools using the current classrooms and filling classes to the minimum of 24 children in each,’ said Mrs Falla.

‘La Mare recently dropped Years 1 and 3 to single-form entry as eight children returned to the UK or moved to other schools.

‘If it was to return to two-form entry throughout the school, the number of empty desks rises to 269, still nowhere near the 420 which Deputy Adam keeps quoting,’ she said.

‘To find 420 desks they would have to build and spend on capital development, so there would not be any cost saving.

‘If Education closed St Andrew’s and St Sampson’s, the over-capacity would drop to 12 places after which class sizes would rise above 24 and that’s with a birth rate which fluctuates by between 100 and 200 each year.’

Mrs Falla, who has children in Years 2 and 5, said the uncaring threat that schools could close affected the whole island.

‘In order for Education to move our children they will have to redraw all the school catchment area boundaries.

‘Education has set a new island-wide minimum class size of 24 pupils, according to Deputy Adam, because this is what they are basing their calculations on and we can only hope that their maximum is set to stay at 30.

‘There again with economic restraints and an Education Department that is not prepared to fight for the money our children need to protect their education anything is possible.’

Mrs Falla questioned how popular a minimum class size of 24 would be with parents.

‘It is ludicrous for Education to keep saying that class sizes will not rise as a class of 20 will rise to at least 24. To accommodate 208 pupils from St Andrew’s and St Sampson’s Infants, many classes would rise to above 24.’