ONE of the predictable consequences of the Policy Council report on reducing the States subsidy to the island’s three colleges is that the £1.11m. clawback proposed over the next seven years has been criticised as too little, too slow.

Equally easy to foresee was the other emerging theme that the issue of support is the toffs’ schools somehow riding off the back of the ordinary working taxpayer.

As we argued last week, one of the benefits of the Policy Council presenting the funding report is that it is a clinical document looking at financial aspects rather than trying to steer a course between those who  believe – for whatever reason – that the colleges should not receive a penny from the public.

The situation, however, is not that clear-cut. Elizabeth College was founded on the instructions of Queen Elizabeth I in 1563 to meet island needs and was actually one of four what might be termed island schools.

Land was granted to establish a building and what today would be States revenues were assigned in perpetuity to support it. Some 260 years later the States restructured the school and invested heavily in a new building and meeting annual running costs. In other words, the situation today exists because previous States and what preceded it decided that it was in the island’s best interests to do so.

Clearly, that can be undone by a later Assembly but what the Policy Council report does is to encourage reflection on what happens if it did so.

The States schools have around 300 spare places while Elizabeth College currently has 750 pupils. Factor in the students at Ladies’ and Blanchelande colleges and which critic of the funding arrangements would wish to set a reduction in subsidy knowing that to get it wrong could trigger a mass exodus of children to a States sector that could not accommodate them?

Scrapping the grants would save £4.16m. by 2018 but require a new school costing £37m. or having to ‘nationalise’ one of the existing colleges.

No one would create the current system if starting from scratch today but – whatever islanders’ feelings are about this – centuries’-worth of States involvement with the colleges cannot be stopped overnight.