The panel’s chairman, Deputy Rob Ward, has said that they hope to publish a report towards the end of next month and, until that time, they will be reserving comment.
However, the topic of funding has been a key theme in the review hearings so far, most notably with Highlands College.
Speaking to the JEP, Highlands principal Steve Lewis said that the college had now reached a point where they are ‘just about keeping the lights on’ but are struggling to do much more than that.
‘The Island needs to grow skills. It is one of the Council of Ministers’ stated goals,’ he said. ‘But in order to do that, the government needs to invest in training for the workforce.
‘We [Highlands College] are at that tipping point. We are just about keeping the lights on but our newest computer for students is about four years old. If we really want to be world class, we need investment in new technology and in the right learning environments.’
He explained that Highlands’ particular pressures resulted from the range of services they had to provide and the need to contend with an estate of ageing buildings.
‘To run this institution costs about £3.5 million, before you even pay for anything else – that is just the infrastructure cost,’ he said. ‘We have got a very ageing estate. Half of it was condemned as a secondary school in the 1970s, and yet we’re still running it. And just those running costs are half a million.
‘Obviously, we are working really hard with Treasury to get our capital project through the system and lined up for the future, because if we have a purpose-built campus, it would cost less to operate and it would be more efficient. But these are all long-term goals.
‘We have invested in students and infrastructure but, as creative and full of money-raising ideas as we have been, we’re kind of running out of them now.’
One of the specific funding areas identified by Mr Lewis was a pilot last year of the Jersey Premium scheme, which extended £73,000 of financial support normally confined to 5-16 year-olds to the college’s post-16 students. Mr Lewis said the funding demonstrably helped their post-16 students but that the Jersey Premium money had now been withdrawn.
‘What that trial identified is that, if students are coming through the 11–16 schools, with Jersey Premium, then it is quite likely that the majority of them are going to end up at Highlands College,’ he said. ‘And their problems do not disappear overnight, and neither does the support they need.
‘Now that we have the evidence, we can demonstrate that those students who benefited from Jersey Premium performed slightly better than those who did not. The interventions that we used that money for have certainly helped those students.’
However, a States press officer said that the funding was only a one-off trial, and so could not be considered to have been ‘withdrawn’.
‘Pilot projects were then established in all four post-16, non-fee-paying providers – Highlands, Hautlieu, Mont à l’Abbé and La Sente – to explore the value of extending the Jersey Premium beyond the age of 16,’ she said. ‘The funding was never allocated on a permanent basis and so has not been withdrawn. The impact of these projects is now being assessed.’
Another reason that the Jersey Premium funding was so valued, Mr Lewis said, was that overall pressures on the college meant other funds, which could be used to target 16-19 year-olds.were having to ‘subsidise other areas’.
‘We have done more for less, we have used the funding as best we can, but we have also identified that money that should be targeting 16-19 year-olds has been subsidising other areas,’ he said. ‘We run a substantial examination service that is not for the benefit of our students but for the benefit of the Island. We do exams for about 70 different awarding bodies, whether that is for the finance industry or whatever, but we have done the analysis and have not been charging sufficient fees to do more than break even.
‘If you talk to anybody in education in Jersey, they would all say the same thing, but I think Highlands College is different because we have to be all things to all people.’
