All education cuts are potentially damaging

All education cuts are potentially damaging

IT came as no surprise that the new Minister for Education Patrick Ryan found himself beleaguered in the press when he announced cuts to sports funding, a proposal which he had to quickly back track on due to public pressure.

This is becoming the norm for any announcements to cuts in any areas of education.

Everybody realises the value of individual and team sports and the impact they have upon young people’s ability to go into the workplace with the valuable skills in discipline and team building they instil. Not to mention the increased levels of fitness reducing the burden on health services and the proven reduction of anti-social behaviour among young people.

In fact the Jersey curriculum places great emphasis both in and out of the classroom on Island pupils learning these skills.

However, CSR has demanded that the department for Education, Sport and Culture finds savings alongside other States departments.

In this era of unprecedented unemployment it is worrying that the unforeseen consequences of these cuts have not been more rigorously thought through.

With an ageing population who will be reliant upon our young people sustaining them, education should be an area for increased, not reduced, funding.

Investment needs to be made in increasing the employability skills for young people in the areas relevant to Jersey.

Teachers and lecturers are already working hard on such initiatives as the Trident Work Experience programme, the 14-16 vocational programmes and 16+ work experiences in order to prepare young people for the workplace.

Highlands College has invested heavily in offering excellent on-Island degree courses which allow many young people and adults the opportunity to study at a level previously denied to them. This was clearly forward thinking given that university costs in the UK have increased so dramatically and it is fortunate that Jersey was already equipped to begin to meet this challenge.

With all of these initiatives already underway and with an already constrained budget we need to put more money into education not less.

If we are to sustain a viable local workforce we should allow the Minister and his officers to concentrate on finding solutions through increased educational opportunities for adults and young people to help tackle unemployment in the long term.

This should be facilitated by increasing their resources instead of requiring them to find the least damaging areas to cut.

All cuts to education are potentially damaging to the whole Island community whether it is by increased costs for adult education courses or by decreasing opportunities offered to young people.

We hope that the Council of Ministers will appreciate that in the long term you reap what you sow and reconsider their position about funding for education and their requirement for savings to be found by this department.

We cannot allow future generations to be unable to sustain their Island due to a lack of foresight by the current custodians.

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