Medium Term Financial Plan Review - Minister for Education, Sport and Culture - Transcript - 26 July 2012

STATES OF JERSEY

Education and Home Affairs Scrutiny Panel Medium-Term Financial Plan Review

THURSDAY, 26th JULY 2012

Panel:

Deputy J.M. Maçon of St. Saviour (Chairman) Connétable M.P.S. Le Troquer of St. Martin Connétable S.W. Pallett of St. Brelade

Witnesses:

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture Director, Education, Sport and Culture

Also Present:

Professor M. Oliver (Panel Adviser, Corporate Affairs Sub-Panel) Mr. M. Robbins (Scrutiny Officer)

[14:05]

Deputy J.M. Maçon of St. Saviour (Chairman):

Welcome  to  this  hearing  with  the  Education  and  Home  Affairs  Scrutiny  Panel  looking  into  the Education Department's proposals on the medium-term financial plan. Just to make clear for the recording, joining us today, we do have the adviser from the Corporate Affairs Sub-Panel who is joining us today to provide assistance to the panel with our questioning of the Minister and that is Dr. Michael Oliver. He will make himself known for the transcript in due course. So if I can start for the transcript, I am Deputy Jeremy Maçon, Chairman of the panel and we have

Connétable M.P.S. Le Troquer of St. Martin : Constable of St. Martin , Michel Le Troquer.

Connétable S.W. Pallett of St. Brelade : Constable of St. Brelade , Steve Pallett.

Mr. M. Robbins (Scrutiny Officer): Mick Robbins, Scrutiny Officer.

Professor M. Oliver (Panel Adviser, Corporate Affairs Sub-Panel): Michael Oliver, adviser to the Corporate Affairs Sub-Panel.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Mario Lundy, Director of Education, Sport and Culture.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Deputy Patrick Ryan, Minister for Education, Sport and Culture.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Good afternoon, gentlemen. May I begin by thanking you for the responses to the questions that we posed to you earlier? The panel was delighted to receive the response. I am sure you are aware that the time pressure and scale that Scrutiny Panels are working to at the moment is great and we are always grateful for timely responses. If we can, our proposed method this afternoon is to work through the answers which you provided to us so that we can delve a little bit deeper and have a greater understanding in some areas. If I could jump to question 2, the growth bids which you have put forward in the M.T.F.P. (medium-term financial plan), the overall spend in 2012, the proposed bids we see are £3.6 million roughly. Just for the record, we wonder if you could break that down for us, what the components of that amount are.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay, thank you, and good afternoon everybody. Clearly, I was not either a States Member or the Minister for Education, Sport and Culture prior to 2012 when the plans for the 2012 Business Plan were formulated. So I think it is probably better if my Director, who obviously was involved, were to answer some of those questions principally to do with the previous business plans to 2013, 2014, and 2015 or rather prior to the M.T.F.P. He has more technical knowledge of that than I do. Clearly, when I came into this job, I wanted to concentrate on the future because I could not do a lot about the past anyway so that is where we are.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay. I can provide you with the detailed figures for each of these bids should you require them but the main bids for us in 2012 were around teachers' terms and conditions of service. This was relating specifically to lunchtime supervision. It was a concession that the teachers gained at the end of their period of industrial action in 2010, I think 2011, that period. So teachers no longer have to do lunchtime supervision, which means that we had to make provision for teaching assistants or lunchtime supervisors to be employed and paid so there was a growth bid in place there which, if I recall, was in the region of £300,000. It cost more than that in the end. We also had a growth bid in for time for planning, preparation and assessment, particularly for primary school teachers. All teachers in the U.K. (United Kingdom) have a guaranteed 10 per cent non-contact time to plan for lessons, to prepare for lessons, and to deal with the bureaucracy in the administration around pupil assessment. We were able to deliver that for the most part in the secondaries because of the way they are structured but not in primary schools. In primary schools, there were not enough staff for them to be able to relieve teachers for that period. So the introduction of 10 per cent for planning, preparation and assessment in primary schools cost us a significant amount of money. I think that may have been in the region of £500,000 but I will confirm those figures for you. The Skills Board initiatives were a number of initiatives really around some of the work that they commissioned, the research work, but primarily the money that they spent on the 14-16 vocational initiatives in the secondary schools. What was good about that was the governance arrangements because clearly it was not the department passing the money directly on to the schools. The Skills Board was in there ensuring that was properly governed and the schemes were going to deliver what they were expected to deliver. On top of that, we did bid for funding for our I.C.T. (Information and Communication Technology) strategy. I.C.T., we are just about to develop our fourth strategy. Before 2012, I.C.T. strategies were effectively funded out of capital so every time we developed a new strategy, we had to come back and make a bid, which would be in the millions, to be able to develop and deliver a strategy over 3 to 4 years. For about 3 years, we had been discussing with the Treasury an alternative model where funding would be put in the revenue budget, I think it was £682,000, or something like that, would be put in the revenue budget annually and we would use that to develop any strategies in future revenue but in the first year that it came in, we had a challenge in underwriting some of our C.S.R. (Comprehensive Spending Review) savings so it was deferred. The money came in but it was deferred and given back for the year as a C.S.R. saving with a view to the strategy starting in 2013. Then we were given additional funding for higher education in 2012, I think it was about £1.5 million. This was because we expected the changes in the U.K. in higher education to be implemented from 1st September 2012 - well some changes from 2011 and the main changes from 2012 - and we were fortunate enough (a) to be able to negotiate in that first year a discount and (b) to have the change deferred for a year. So the growth that we were given for that year was not needed in the year so we gave it back.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay and for 2013 then, the growth proposal relates to C.S.R. savings. Is that the I.T. (Information Technology) strategy of £150,000?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, that has sort of been overtaken by events. The original I.C.T. funding will be in there but there is a new sum which we expect to be made available in the M.T.F.P., certainly in the capital aspect of it, for a one-off I.T. strategy that is linked to Digital Jersey, Gigabit Jersey, et cetera, and all the changes that we are seeing in the delivery of I.T. in the U.K. Essentially, the I.T. curriculum is pretty boring and not really fit for purpose. It is developed in the U.K. The Examination Boards are in the U.K. and the feeling is that it is not meeting the needs of students and it is not meeting the needs of the economy. So there are massive changes underway there and we expect a significant proportion of the funding that was secured in the M.T.F.P. for I.C.T. to go towards that. Indeed, the biggest challenge will be probably the retraining of teachers to be able to deliver a more sophisticated curriculum.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

When is that I.C.T. strategy likely to be available because obviously with some of the initiatives that E.D.D. (Economic Development Department) are putting forward, it is going to underpin many of those strategies in terms of providing skilled young people to go into those industries because obviously they have got a timetable and I presume you are working with them on that.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The big factor in this for us is what happens in England. Although we will modify the curriculum, we do not have our own Examination Boards so certification will be done over there and certification will be done on the basis of the curriculum that is devised. There is a tremendous amount of work going on there and it is anticipated that the curriculum will change for September 2014 because developing the curriculum itself is the easy bit, that part of the strategy. The difficult part is when you have to train the teachers in the delivery of it and then prepare the schools to implement the changes.

[14:15]

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I do understand you have obviously got to work with the U.K. in terms of the type of courses that you are going to offer but considering that Economic Development are looking down a specific route in terms of high skills, might we at some stage have to look down our own route in terms of providing courses and specialised courses because some of the industries they are looking at are very, very specialised.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. There are 3 aspects to this really in a strategy like this. There is I.C.T. for learning, general enhancing learning and skills. There are the I.C.T. skills that you would expect individuals to come out of school and college with to be able to make an economic contribution. Then there is the high level skills which the industry themselves are looking for, which is more of the coding and people getting into working in

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Programming and that type of thing.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

in those highly skilled industries and the strategy has to tackle all those issues. So the first strand really has been completed. I have not seen it yet but the Skills Board have undertaken a survey of businesses that use I.T., and indeed I.T. businesses themselves in Jersey, to see what they feel are the required skills. So I think that survey is due to come to us within the next 2 to 3 weeks. That is the starting point because you have got to know what it is that you are working towards and then there has got to be a fair amount of stakeholder engagement. We have to go back and talk to these businesses again; we have to talk to the schools. We would hope to have a clear pathway before Christmas to be developing our strategy and this is loose at the moment depending on the, one could say, consultation. We would hope to have something by around about Easter.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Well, obviously you are looking to feed that into the following year in terms of the next school year.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, which is just one element of it. The examination is just one element of it. Some stuff has started already. Coding classes have been developed after school in some of the secondary schools with the input of local businesses but I think this is a strategy that will not be able to be delivered by government alone because we will not have the skills, nor will we have the infrastructure and I think one of the ways to if you go to Highlands College and you walk into the Plumbing Department, you have got a house on a wall. There is everything in there that a student will need to be able to know how to plumb in a house. I think we are looking to the point where that is likely to be the same with I.T., where there would be a significant infrastructure in a school or a college that will teach youngsters and train them to handle some of the more complex aspects. Now, where they sit on our 14-19 curriculum programme is quite simple. You would not have 4 11-16 schools each having those facilities. You might have them at Highlands College and then have them shared by the 11-16 schools or you might have, you know, one school specialising in technology, another school specialising in something else and that is the way we are looking and we have got commitment from the 11-16 schools from September 2013. There will be one day a week common timetabling, which will enable the pupils in each of those schools to go to any one of those schools to follow whatever vocational programme it is that they wish to follow so that way we will make best use of resources. So it is complex and if we can pull all that together by Easter, I will be very happy.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

It has already been mentioned that there is going to be a closer relationship between Hautlieu and Highlands. Is there any connection between that and some of the I.T. strategies in terms of obviously a lot of brighter people do go to Hautlieu and a natural resource for I.C.T. would be from a school like Hautlieu.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Absolutely. There will be opportunities in there and I think the first challenge for us is to change what is the public perception of vocational education. If you are training to be a doctor, it is vocational education. If you are training to be a lawyer, it is vocational education and I think we need to adopt a broader view of that because we would not want to be running high level I.C.T. courses in Hautlieu and in Highlands but there is absolutely no reason why, for example, a young person who is on a mainly academic route could not say: "Well, I want to do some of the more vocational aspects of technology. In Highlands College, you have the opportunity to study 2 disciplines alongside each other." That is what is lacking in the system at the moment, the opportunity to study academic and vocational subjects together.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

One last question from me. Are the resources that you are putting into it, and it is £1 million a year over 3 years, do you think that is going to be adequate to provide the sort of skill base that we are going to need running up into some of the quite big changes we are looking to make within the economy?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Or if I can modify that, how did you arrive at those figures?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay, let me answer that. That is as much as we could get. I have to put it absolutely bluntly, that is as much as we could get. The trouble with I.C.T. is it is one of these things, how much do you want to spend because it can be huge. You could spend huge amounts of money but are you getting value for money? We think that £3 million is a very good start but as in all things to do with I.C.T., you should be looking at the next M.T.F.P. You are not just going to spend £3 million, £1 million a year over the next 3 years. If you really want to build I.C.T. into something really special in the Island, you will have to keep investing in it and it is going to be in the next M.T.F.P. as well because you will not do it in 3 years to get to the kind of levels that we would all like to achieve but it is a good start.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What are you expecting to be delivered then every year with £1 million?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That is a bit too early for me to be able to answer in detail, Jeremy, because we are working on that strategy and I cannot prejudge what the outcomes of that strategy will be. We have got to do a lot of work, talk to a lot of people and work out what is going to be the right way to go and how to spend that money in the most cost-effective way over the next 3 years.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Given that it is such an unknown then, how will you manage to budget over a 3-year process?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

What we have learned from previous I.C.T. strategies is you are not going to spend much in the first year. Your first year is mostly about consultation. It is about trying to develop what you are going to do. It is complex and when you think about it, and people often miss this, we are running the biggest single network in the Channel Islands and that includes within finance in the Education Service. So when you start to change things, they have to be properly programmed, good programme management. There has to be all the technical expertise and often we get in and do the big work in the summer when the schools are out. So that first year there does not tend to be a tremendous amount spent. Then the second year you start to spend and in the third year, you are really up to the full implementation of the strategy which is why it has always been easily managed out of capital because it has been there to draw down and that is the way we will use this. We will draw it down according to need and what we have got to be cautious with with I.C.T., and the Minister is absolutely right, you could work up a shopping list pretty quickly and it does not make a big difference. You have got to be very clear at the outset, what are the outcomes that you are expecting from this and then work back from those outcomes as to how you are going to deliver them and the biggest single challenge for us in the next 3 years will be training teachers to deliver high level I.T. courses because, and this is not unusual in Jersey, often in schools it is not someone who has been trained as an I.T. teacher who is delivering I.T.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I think what I am trying to get at is Economic Development have got some fairly positive forecasts as to growth over the next 3 or 4 years and I think what I am trying to say is can we catch up in terms of or have we got off the starting blocks quick enough to provide that skill base without us ending up having to import large numbers of skilled staff to back up that. I think a lot of it is going to be based on the education that we can provide and the skills that we can provide in-Island, that we are not going to end up with another migration problem. I think what I am trying to say is can you see us pushing forward quick enough within the department and is it funded enough to be able to move on quickly?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, I think not from a political perspective obviously but from an administrative perspective, I think we can make good use of this funding to deliver something that is effective pretty quickly.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

The bit I picked up, you got the funding and you said about working backwards. Do you know how many people we are trying to train to the high level? It is all right training people in I.T. but if we are training the third group, the high level abilities

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Which level are you talking about here?

The Connétable of St. Martin :

The high level ability. The ones who

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

You are talking about people. How old are these people because our I.T. strategy starts at sort of 3 or 4 years old.

The Connétable of St. Martin : Yes, and goes through the schools.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

And goes right the way through. We are not just talking about all of the schools, primary schools and secondary schools. We are talking about then on to Highlands and in the A level.

The Connétable of St. Martin : So funding goes into all that?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It is going to be an I.T. strategy which we hope will be fit for purpose into the future. Now that implies all the way through the system. It is a kind of a root and branch review that we are doing of what we do with I.T.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

So we get to the end of it. How many people have we trained? I can see your difficulty because you do not have the examinations now that are going to be required because that is changing, you said.

The Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

That is a really good point that you make because the challenge is when you look at the number of students who, for example, go off and do Computer Science at A level, there are not a lot and what is perceived to be the issue is that the curriculum much lower down in the school is not inspiring students to go off in that direction. It is like students going to school to be taught to walk. They are coming into school with very sophisticated I.T. skills that they have learned at home and we are not capturing that and building on it and inspiring young people to want to go through and take Computer Science at G.C.S.E. (General Certificate of Secondary Education) and then Computer Science at A level. I do not think there is any intention in this to, for example, say we need 20 I.T. technicians or I.T. specialists next year so the school has got to train them because it is very difficult to gauge the demand a year or 2 in advance when students start a course. You could end up training students for a discipline in which there are no jobs when they get to the end of it. So what we try to do is to import the generic skills, start low down, try and get young people to take a bigger interest in I.T. as a career and to develop higher level skills earlier on. That will give them an interest to pursue it maybe through to A level in university or another vocational realm.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

All these things are linked. You cannot just take one thing and ask a question and get a simple straight answer on one area. They are all interrelated and linked. It is all quite complex, as a lot of things are in life. If you take I.T., part of the problem is that a large part of the I.T. curriculum itself is not only based on older kind of technology and older thinking, it is boring as well. So it is not very interesting to a lot of students so they do not tend to take it up. So that is why I think the U.K. is reviewing its I.T. curriculum because, at the end of the day, if you are going to take a career in I.T., an employer prospectively wants to see some proof so it has got to lead to some kind of examination qualification so that is where the curriculum comes in. So you start there and if you can try to make I.T. "sexier" to young people, then you stand a much better chance of getting children interested in it and taking it up as a vocation and as a future career and a job and then from that comes your economic growth strategy hopefully. It is all there.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Given the importance that I.T. will play, not only in a potential Gigabit Jersey but just generally anyway, will there be a move in Education to make I.T. a core subject such as with English or Maths?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I.T. is not a compulsory core subject but it is a compulsory subject, in a sense, across the curriculum. There is an expectation that subjects will utilise I.T. so you would expect to see it in the delivery of Mathematics, you would expect to see it in the delivery of English and other subjects. We do not expect that I.T. will become a compulsory subject, for example, at G.C.S.E. or indeed at A level, but we would still expect students to be studying it or to be using it in other subjects.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

So this is another one of the links in the strands. What you are talking about is fundamental computer skills to be able to access the rest of the curriculum for everything else, which is the way education is going, internet-based, online-based, learning resources of all kinds. So what you are talking about Jeremy now moves away from the Highlands and the A level kind of highly skilled people. You are now moving right back into the primary school level and what we are finding, as Mario said before, is that there are many children, particularly if they come from slightly wealthier economic backgrounds in their homes, they will be coming to school at 4, 5 and 6 years old well ahead of the teachers who are trying to teach them. I mean, they are teaching the teachers. You have got that kind of scenario going on now. They are well ahead with their I.T. skills. We want to spread that kind of skill base right across but it is in the primary sector and we would have thought I mean I do not want to prejudge or presuppose what is going to come out of our new strategy but I suspect that it will focus in core skills in the same way as numeracy and literacy in the primary areas so that by the end of primary, we should have children that are highly skilled in their ability to access all of the kinds of I.T.- based and on-line based or whatever resources that they need to access everything else in their teaching.

[14:30]

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

One of the things that the next M.T.F.P. will present us with is basically a real opportunity to have the Business Plan developed, et cetera, and completed before you get to the M.T.F.P. What we are trying to do at the moment with this first M.T.F.P. is to predict what you are likely to need in these areas over 3 years but you have not developed all the business cases. You have got outline cases but you have not done all the research, so I think the next time around you will see probably very clear bids coming in at the outset because people will start now.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I just ask one question before we move on? How was the I.C.T. money that was was it classed as a C.S.R. saving? How was it then deducted and then given back if it was classed as a C.S.R. saving?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, it was deferred for a year to underwrite savings that had been taken but had not been made so if there was a commitment to make a saving, I cannot give you an example off the top of my head but I can certainly furnish you with one in due course, if, for example, a good one would be the Instrumental Music Service. So the saving was taken from the budget but the charges were not introduced for the Instrumental Music Service at that time so there was a shortfall there. So in order to make up the shortfall, we deferred the use of the I.C.T. budget for that year in order to give us time to implement whatever needed to be implemented to make the saving.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Thank you. If I can move on to the next question. The staffing levels that are proposed, which were not allowed for in the 2012 Business Plan, you predicted an increase of 60 staff, I presume full-time equivalents, by 2015. Is that cross-referenced with the growth for manpower bids that we have at the back of the document that was provided to us?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Which ones at the back?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

The table Growth Bid for Manpower.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Well, the first thing I should say is it should be.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay and then in which case

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

But of course the growth bids will be net growth bids so if we, for example, have done some restructuring within the department or changed some posts or loss of posts, and if we have not given those posts up, we might not put in a bid for the full quantity because we already have some F.T.E. (Full-Time Equivalent) available to us so you may not see a direct correlation.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

All right, okay. I am wondering if you can just take us through some of these posts and what they relate to, in particular looking at some of the larger allocations.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay. Well, the biggest one there is quite clearly the Highlands College and particularly in student growth which is quite simply related to increased numbers. The college has gone from something like 780 students, I think that is what we funded for, to nearly 1,000 students and as we have said before, the last time we had a recession, we have seen a step change in numbers. We did not see a drop after the recession so there seems to be a change in pattern. We are not expecting the numbers to go back down to 780.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Are you expecting the numbers to grow?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We are expecting them to at least remain consistent but there is a likelihood that they will grow because there is a sort of self-regulation in all this. Young people come up to the age of 16 and they cannot get job. A lot of young people will think: "Oh, I cannot get a job I need to be better trained, better educated. I will go to Highlands" and Highlands has been very, very good at accommodating that. So that is where the majority of your growth goes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just while you are on that, in terms of the capacity at Highlands, are you at capacity at the moment and

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If we are not at it, we are tight. It was not built for 1,000 students. It is managing 1,000 students but that will have a different impact on different departments at Highlands College depending on the resources that they have available to them, particularly on departments that use workshops and things like that. So, yes, they are able to manage it at the moment but if numbers were to continue to increase, we would probably need to make some significant capital investment.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

None of that has been factored in though into this financial plan, has it?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It has not been factored in at the moment because our numbers for the next 3 years are based on the numbers that we know are in the system. So we are anticipating they are going to be around about the 1,000 mark for the next 3 years.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Have you got some scope within the buildings at Highlands at present to I mean, for example, if we talk about I.C.T. strategy, to implement some of that within the current buildings?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

There will be different views on that. If we take the management team at Highlands, they would probably have a slightly different view than I on that one but let us put it like this. We do not have an independent analysis of that at this time but we could do that. What we do know is that the last time we had an independent analysis of Highlands College by Ben Johnson -Hill, I think was the company, that they said that at that time that for some subjects and disciplines, the space was tight so it stands to reason that it would be tighter now.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

When it says you have got 23 new members of staff in terms of student growth, what would they be involved in? Is that just to assist with the current numbers?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It would be primarily an increase in lecturers.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Is this 16-plus education?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: This is 16-plus.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Sixteen-plus and are those courses then to cover the ones that were covered by fiscal stimulus or are they new courses?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

That is pretty much it, yes, to cover the courses that were covered by fiscal stimulus. It is an increase in numbers not necessarily an increase in the breadth of the curriculum at this time. But one of the reasons that we have looked at the closer working between Highlands and Hautlieu is to make sure there ... there are 2 ways to manage growth; you can keep putting money into it or you can make sure the resources you already use are being used in the most efficient way. So it is making sure there is not undue duplication across the 2 institutions. If there is a possibility to work closer together to use the money to support the students in a different way, broaden the courses, then that is all a good thing. But I would say with this growth is that we normally fund all our 6th form providers, including Highlands, on the basis of what we call a 6th form A.W.P.U. (Age-Weighted Pupil Unit). We have discussed the A.W.P.U. before, the Age-Weighted Pupil Unit. Highland's funding is pretty close to the same amount of funding per student that we would have at Hautlieu. We have reduced that for these additional numbers on the basis that the fixed costs are already being met for the most part, there must be some economies of scale and, quite frankly, we do not have all the money that they would require in any case. We have really cut back on that so they are getting less for those students.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

We have also put a couple of bits in which will affect Highlands and have an implication on staff members. One example would be the apprenticeship scheme that we are looking to start because we have something like a pupil mentor ratio of is it 20 to 1?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I think it is more than that for Advance to Work but we are reducing it. I do not have the ratio in my head. We reduced the ratio for the new apprenticeship scheme based on the fact that we think many of the students that would go on to that apprenticeship would be pretty well motivated in any case.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, but suffice to say the apprenticeship schemes work well if you have adult mentoring of young adults and advisers and organisers of all kinds. So, an apprenticeship scheme comes with an overhead for some F.T.E.s. Are they in the second line then?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The second line is around higher education. That is just the development of new education courses. While there is an additional F.T.E. as far as that is concerned, one would hope that once you develop a new course that within a couple of years it is washing its face because the funding that comes from our higher education grant goes to the student, goes to the college, eventually pays for the course. That is what one would expect and that has pretty much been the experience to date, give or take. The next one, Highlands College zero hours conversion, 23, that is people who have already been there on zero hours contract. As you know, it is not perceived to be good employment practice so

there is modification and conversion there that we have to go through. So, to a large extent, what we are showing there is people who we have not shown before but have been working for us.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Are they in specialist areas that come in and just do part-time?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Let us talk about zero hours contracts at Highlands. There was a discussion and there were some questions in the States about the number of zero hours contracts in the education system. When we carried out a review, which we promised to do, we found the majority of them were at Highlands and it was historic because the funding for those members of staff to get paid was through fiscal stimulus. So because it was effectively short-term funding, we were not in a position at Highlands to be able to give staff full-time contracts. Now that fiscal stimulus funding has become permanent funding at Highlands College, which it has from this year onwards; it is not appropriate to keep certain members of staff on zero hours contracts. We still have some. It is by no means the whole lot and there are times when zero hours is appropriate for members of staff at Highlands. The result of the review was that 23 members of staff should go on to permanent contracts and that is the 23 that you see.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Right, so the 2 23s are separate numbers?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, they are.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The others are fairly straightforward. The A.S. (Additional Support) Strategy is additional support to make that happen. Primary is down 2 additional classes at Samares and Rouge Bouillon that we have had to open this year as a consequence of additional pupil numbers. You can see that we are losing some staff from secondary in 2014-2015. Some of that will contribute to the C.S.R. saving. That is because of a decline in secondary numbers. We have made provision for an additional professional partner in 2013 to support our programme, though the funding for that did not come through the M.T.F.P. We are looking at ways to restructure the department to see if there is another way we can do that. So it is important that the post is in there. Non-teaching staff uplift is pretty much just matching the need for teaching assistants to the demand and C.S.R., 2 posts which we have given up.

How many of those what looks like 46 staff at Highlands are full-time? Are they full and part-time staff?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

These are full-time. These are F.T.E.s. They may not be full-time. There might be 40 or 50 staff in there on 23 F.T.E.s. It just depends on how Highlands College decide to use them and to recruit them. Often they will recruit people on a half-time or part-time basis because they do not need them all the time.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That will obviously form part of Lesley Toms' review of the joint working between Hautlieu and Highlands. That will fall under that category.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I just ask, given the growth that is happening at Highlands College, while obviously there has been a lot of demand from the fiscal stimulus and how that has managed to carry on, can you just tell me though what type of analysis has happened about how successful these courses are and the end result? Are people being taken up or are they having to then go on to get another course?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, we have just had some stats through the Back to Work Task Group. We will not of course know about success rates until examination results, et cetera, come through but at the end of this particular summer break we would be in a very strong position to look back. We do know that we have a very significant number of students coming up to leaving but a lot would depend on what your definition of what success is. We have committed to do a piece of work around dropout rate, examination successes, success in securing a job, and also re-interest in education because some of the youngsters will go through a level 1 course and think: "Well, I can do this, so I think I want to do a level 2 course" and they go on to the next standard. Indeed, some will have done a level 2 course and then gone on to a level 3 equivalent of a degree course. So we are hoping that there will be some conversions there. We do not expect to see or to enable students to just to hang around Highlands for 2 to 3 years because there are no jobs out there. We would expect them to be pursuing valid courses with a qualification at the end of it. Whether they come out of the college having studied a particular discipline and then find a job in that discipline is another thing altogether. The education system has been built around trying to help people develop generic skills, recognising that they may have to be flexible in their employment in later years. So somebody may go in and do, for example, hairdressing and beauty care but get a job not in that area but another area where the customer

service skills have been useful, the attitude skills, et cetera, the commitment to work, has all been developed through that particular area but they go off and do something else. That is perfectly valid.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

So in answer to your question then, what assessment has been done, you are still waiting for the analysis?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We have the numbers who are in there but we do not have the success rates yet.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Okay, thank you.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

I feel a little bit sorry for Education really; 1,000 students, is that full-time or does that include day release at Highlands?

[14:45]

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If you include the day release it will be slightly higher than that, but for the most part that is what they are catering with. We fund them for the equivalent of 780 full-time faces and that has gone up to 1,000. Now, some of those might be part time.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

So in fact really, Highlands or the department are helping to hide the figure of the problem that we have with young people looking for work or not just necessarily young people. You are talking them away from being unemployed.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I would not describe it that way at all. I would put it that if you take the United Kingdom it is compulsory to be in education until ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It is becoming compulsory, yes.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It is about to become compulsory to be in education up to the age of 18 or in training in any case. We are not doing that. When we did our Green Paper consultation exercise earlier on this year and at the end of 2011 that was one of the questions that was asked of all the consultees. The general feeling was that it was not necessary to make it compulsory for young people stay in education or training until they are 18. However, the fact is that over 90 per cent of our young people do in fact stay in education voluntarily until that age. So, okay the other 10 per cent that you are talking about, some of them will have jobs, some of them may be on the apprenticeship scheme that is still being run at the moment by E.D.D. (Economic Development Department), some of them will have gone travelling around the world, I suspect. Others that have not done any of those things perhaps you will see either in the unemployment figures or in the Advance to Work schemes, which is getting quite a lot of success in moving young people into work. I think just to sum up, I would completely disagree with you that training for 16 to 18 year-olds is a waste of time and is there to kind of hide the unemployment rate.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

I did not say it was a waste of time, sorry, no.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Choice of words. I think it is absolutely crucially important to the future job prospects of young people that they continue in training or education after 16.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

It is cheaper to be at Highlands than it would be to go to university, for a family ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Not if you are doing a higher education course. It is actually going to be a similar price.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

What do people pay to go to Highlands?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, they do not if they are up to 19 years of age and they are studying full-time in further education and they are locally qualified. They are not paying for that because you would not be paying for that if you were at Hautlieu or you would not be paying for that. You would be paying for it obviously at a fee-paying school but if you were at Hautlieu you would not pay. You would go to the age of 18 without having to pay for it. Once you get to the age of 18 or 19 then people will start to pay for higher education courses. If a student wants to apply for a degree, for example, at Durham University or at Highlands then, regardless of which, they apply for a grant to the department. We provide the grant to the student and that is the way we fund those courses.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: On a means-tested basis.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

So there is no additional funding going in. There is seedcorn funding to get the courses up and running. The expectation is that those courses will be funded by the grants that are provided to students.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

That is for higher education courses. What about vocational courses?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, if you are working with employers, employers will make a contribution, students will pay for certain courses at Highlands College and, of course, all the adult education stuff is completely paid by the applicant.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Some 19 and 20 year-olds, although they are still in the vocational kind of area, they will perhaps be doing a level 3. Can they access university kind of grants?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If they are doing a level 3 course they can access a university grant, but there is an important concept here because when the I.C.T. policy changes in the U.K. we think it is a good thing to adopt that. But when they developed a whole new approach to 14-19 curriculum their whole approach was based on the fact that they had so many people out of school, out of education, out of training and out of work in that age group. So their strategy was geared to get more people to stay on in education and training and it was, in fact, a failed strategy; the diplomas, et cetera, that went by the wayside. The reason that we did not need to have this was because we already had over 90 per cent of students staying on post-16. Now that is perceived to be a good thing because if you have better qualified, better educated young people coming out of college, et cetera, you have a better qualified, better educated workforce. Of course, all the other externalities around better health, better education, and better community, et cetera, flow from that.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It builds work ethic as well and it builds attitudes towards the workplace, which is one of the criticisms that is aimed at some of the young people that are perhaps on the unemployed list.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Can I ask something slightly off that subject? Professional partners, you did mention it before, and there is one post that you mentioned before in the area growth of manpower. Will that give you all the cover you need for professional partners certainly rolled out around the primary schools? There is a bid that you did not get funding for, for £120,000 to provide professional partners. One of the comments that has been made is that obviously it would reduce the risk of these schools falling into difficulties which may result in a future cost to the States of Jersey. So is there provision to roll it out?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The Minister was specifically referring to the potential for us to roll professional partnering out to some of our private schools should they wish to avail themselves of it and obviously, as part of their responsibility, the States were providing funding to them. So if we do not get the resources to do that, yes, we have more than enough to do the State schools and in fact some of the private schools voluntarily already but we would struggle to roll it out to all of the private schools. We would have to have that discussion with them in any case. There are other things that we can do.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So not having that does not affect State schools?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: It does not affect our public schools.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

If I can just ask what because there will be 2 funds in the sense of you will have the contingency fund, which we have centrally, but what I am interested in is what inbuilt contingency funds the department will have internally and what has been built up?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We maintain a couple of contingency funds which we have to maintain. One is our primary reserve and the other our secondary reserve. These are essentially for managing things like teacher absence, sometimes through long-term illness or even indeed short-term illness. In Education it is quite like Health, you know, if a teacher is off you cannot just leave a class on their own all day. So you are paying the cost of that teacher who is ill and you have to pay the cost of the replacement. If you were in the U.K. individual schools would have insurance schemes to cover this. We essentially insure the schools for this. It would be more costly if we put it out to insurers. So we have those reserves, which is specifically for that purpose. We maintain a contingency for what we would term one-off pressures and that contingency changes each year. It is really built up from maybe slippage on projects, posts where we have not been able to recruit so the funding is there. We try to pull that into a central contingency to help us manage unforeseens, not to fund growth because it is a fundamental mistake to start funding growth from contingencies, unless it is for one year and you have other funding coming in. That is what we tend to use that contingency for. So at the moment, we are trying to make sure that we have as large a carry forward as we possibly can for next year because we will be expected to manage any increases in higher education for next year from our existing budget because there is no funding for it next year. There is not additional funding.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So what you are saying is that contingencies are carried forward? Or are you holding specific contingencies within the ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, our higher education contingency, yes. We carried forward £800,000 last year, which we have had to dip into significantly this year and which we will need next year because the M.T.F.P. we do not have growth for higher education for next year. We have it for 2014 and 2015. So we need to be able to manage next year and it is prudent to put a contingency away for it.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I just ask, in that when talking to the Home Affairs Department they have said while they will be able to manage through things like contingencies in order to cover costs, come to the end of 2015 into 2016 there will be a department shortfall of £200,000 or £600,000, something like that. So effectively, they will be robbing Peter in order to pay Paul in order to cover themselves. Is Education going to be in a similar situation?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If the policies do not change in relation to higher education, probably not. That assumes that the policies are appropriate, in other words that students have an appropriate level of support. If you change the level of support then we might have a challenge. We anticipate that we can manage. The big difficulty for us at the moment is getting some certainty around student loans.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Although that was not specifically directed to just higher education, it was education in general.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

That is where the biggest pressure is. Based on our projections and the numbers that we have at the moment, we are okay. We put in for additional funding in nursery education and we got it, additional funding for primary education and we got it. Secondary numbers would be expected to reduce. Where we would be in difficulty is if we end up with more children that that in nursery and more children that that in primary and the numbers do not drop in secondary. In other words, if something comes out of the woodwork in relation to demographics then we could be struggling to manage that. Based on our current productions, we have what we need.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Unlike Home Affairs, although I am sure that Home Affairs as a department has certain variables that they cannot control, but I do not think that they would fall into the same degree of magnitude as the kinds of variables that we have that we cannot control, things like demographics. We are subject to what the U.K. do and what U.K. universities do with higher education fee costs. So we have these kinds of scenarios where we could be exposed. We think we have done as much risk management as we can and we think we know where we are, and we think we have enough money but I do not think anybody could guarantee it. I have some concerns around, as Mario said, the question of primary school demographics. I have some concerns about the kind of escalations to higher education costs. Again, as Mario said, we have growth bids in 2014 and 2015 to come up. A lot of the higher education increases we think. But I cannot be absolutely certain until we get there because as we have said before, U.K. universities are in a completely free and open market now. They can charge what they believe what the market will stand at any time.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can you just explain what I suppose the Treasury's reasoning was for not granting the increases in the educational threshold and maintenance in 2013 but then providing them for 2014 and 2015?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Are you talking about the increase in thresholds for are you getting confused there? The growth bids that we have in 2014 and 2015 are for fee increases in higher education. That is not to do with changing the means-testing thresholds

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, you are quite right. I did get those confused. In which case, can you explain the Treasury's reasoning for rejecting those 2 component parts then?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The process was that all growth fees went to the Corporate Management Board first. So, all of the officers were there and I am afraid they did not support those 2 bids that you are talking about. They also did not support the increases to the professional partners.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, I mean essentially it is about prioritisation. The bottom line is there was only so much for the medium-term financial plan and the growth weights across all the departments far outweighed the money that was available. So something had to give. Now, we have managed to carry over funding from higher education for the last couple of years and £800,000 from last year. We have not used that funding for anything else. We have always ring-fenced and said it was for higher education. We are anticipating in our projections that we will have a carry forward for this year so it seems fitting that we should use that carry forward to manage that pressure for next year and then when we absolutely need the growth that the growth would come forward in subsequent years, so that is effectively where we are.

[15:00]

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay, so what you have is that higher education, university education, is not a statutory requirement. It is discretionary as far as parents and students are concerned. So we are very firmly in the realm of politics. When you start talking about grant levels, the amount of money that we subsidise a student for, it is a kind of political call on what is felt to be right. Clearly you know where I stand because I put in the growth bids in an attempt to reverse the fiscal drag that had taken place since roughly 2001 or 2002. That is as far as I can go really.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I understand why you put growth bids in. It is really just a question just on record. Are you supportive of the use of the central contingencies for the growth bids that have been put in? It is a question that has been asked in the media and public now is that

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I cannot talk for other Ministers. I am worried. It is not all of the contingencies. There is still contingency money left within the Treasury. I am assured by the Treasurer and the Minister for Treasury and Resources that they still have sufficient contingency money available. That is really the kind of question that you should ask of the Minister for Treasury and Resources.

I am just interested in your take on

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Then in the concern that your department is dependent on receiving the contingency funding from the Treasury and hoping that the priority does not change within the Treasury and also

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The Council of Ministers as a whole has agreed those growth funding bids and it is supported by the Council of Ministers as a whole. It is not the Minister for Treasury and Resources' decision. It is the whole of the Council of Ministers operating together.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So we have a whole government approach at long last.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: I would suggest that you have, yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Moving on then, we note that while the pressures which you have presented to us, while we accept, do on the other hand think, in a sense, they are a bit woolly. Also, in the sense of how they are going to be managed or how they are going to be dealt with is a bit woolly as well, in terms of service reviews, improved efficiency and a continual review of the effectiveness and efficiencies

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Which number are you on?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Number 7. If I can pin you down a bit further, when you talk about service reviews, over the next 3 years in particular, what service reviews have you identified that you will be looking at?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

At the outset, these are not overall reviews, major reviews for general publication; this is us internally looking at the way we do business. So, one of the big areas for us at the moment is to make sure that the significant amount of money that we currently spend on special needs, for example, is spent in the best possible way. Now, this may not result in any savings but it may result in greater efficiencies and a better service. But just that one area is extremely complex. You have educational welfare, educational psychology, et cetera. We have a major review of educational psychology going on at the moment. It is a major internal review looking at how the educational psychologists, for example, work with schools developing service level agreements. You know, getting some sort of understanding of what a school expects from that type of service and what that service expects of the school. That will also happen with our special schools, with our outreach services from Mont-à-l'Abbé, from what used to be St. James is now Samares and from the alternative curriculum. So there is a lot of work going on there. We would expect to be able to pretty much guarantee - because it has not been done for a while - that at the end of it that we are using the money to best effect and if we are not to change the way we use it.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Noting the amount of reviews that the department has to do or is ongoing or through the past years was doing, is there enough officer support at a policy level within the department?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

That is a challenge. It is tight and the department is restructuring at the moment with the loss of a number of posts this year. There have been quite a few retirements which is good for those people, not necessarily good for the department. We have taken the opportunity to develop a slightly modified management structure for September. That will give us access to a new data management team. Before education became so politicised it was easy enough for one person to manage the statistics, et cetera, off the side of a desk. We now need a statistics team if we are going to make properly informed decisions. Where we have a real shortage is in terms of project management. So we have released some senior management posts, restructured in order to build those 2 components. So we will be better fitted but clearly we are a small department and 2 management reviews have basically confirmed that under the control of an Auditor General and one from an independent the ex-director for education for Kent. So it is tight.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

There is an absolute requirement for communicating statistics better and more extensively. That is the demand from the public to go into the media from all directions. So to do that in itself does take a little bit of resource and that is what Mario was talking about. I would just like to add the communication of that statistical data properly and effectively and efficiently and in a timely way would be a challenge under the old existing regimes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes and I think one of the expectations is that you will be able to come forward, bring the changes forward in education and implement them in a couple of years' time. It does not work like that in education. We have a lot of stakeholders out there; you have pupils, you have parents, you have teachers. When you make changes these people all have an opportunity to express a view. So, reform in education takes time and you have to put a lot of time and effort and a lot of resource into communicating with those stakeholders. That is essentially where we are challenged most when it comes to going out and communicating with stakeholders.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

About 2 months ago I asked Mario to produce principally for me a Gantt chart of all of the reviews that were ongoing and all of the work streams that were ongoing at a high level within the department. I think it is nearly completed. We could let you have a copy of that Gantt chart.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

We would be grateful for that.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That puts everything down on paper. So at least it gives me some level of kind of assurance that all of the things we talked about and a lot of the initiatives that we have started are known and are being planned from a project management perspective. Even if they are in the future, at least we know where they are in the future and where they are in the pecking order. So, you might find that interesting.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

You mentioned stakeholders and obviously parents are big stakeholders in education and obviously your department has pressures but parents have pressures. Can you just explain what the thinking of the Council of Ministers was by not increasing thresholds and maintenance grants thresholds because obviously parents are struggling at this present time, and I think there probably is an opportunity there to assist them in some way. What was the thinking behind what is now considered to be a very low priority? I am sure it is a very high priority for parents. It is 11 years since it has been reviewed.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Not enough money. Not enough money available.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Would you agree though it is a low priority?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Can I reserve comment on that please? I think you know where I stand on this but there was only so much money. Life is all about choices

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Middle Jersey has taken a real hard hit in recent years.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, but there are all sorts of areas. I have managed to get more money into the non-fee-paying sector, into Highlands, into vocational training, an expansion of the vocational quality. I have managed to get a considerable amount of money to be invested in the new apprenticeship scheme, the details of which you are going to see come out fairly soon. I have managed to avoid something like £3.5 to £4 million worth of C.S.R. savings that were prior to now kind of aimed at the fee-paying sector, many of which parents are in the middle income bracket that you were talking. I have been holding school fees down to inflation kind of increases with the State schools. So we have done a lot in 6 months. I did not manage to get

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

No, I understand you are in between a rock and a hard place.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

But I have not given up. There is a commitment from the Minister for Treasury and Resources that we will start doing some work to look at this problem.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I am sure the parents will appreciate the fact that it is still something

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It is a live issue. It has not been something that we have thought: "Well, let us go for some kind of growth plan. We will try that one and see if that works and if it does not we will go away." That is not going to be the case. I would think that over the next 2 years, before the next election certainly, I will be doing more work with the Treasury with a view to the next medium-term financial plan. I do not get it into this one but I will certainly be doing my best to get it into the next one.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

That is what I was alluding before and when we disagreed.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, sorry.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

You are being put into a position supplying more and more with less and less. So you are in a no win situation.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It is a challenge but we have won a lot of the intellectual arguments at the Council of Ministers for Education and we will continue to do our upmost to ...

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Question 8, if we can move on then. We note the £315,000 for Jersey Heritage to be funded from the summer lottery. It raised an eyebrow when I read it, more the guarantees and the successes and the risks around this particular proposal. If you could explain in greater detail we would be grateful.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I kind of share your concern that it is a risk but again we are assured no, let me put it a different way. P.75/2010?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Is there a proposition that said the funding arrangements and the potential for an S.L.A. (Service Level Agreement) to the States

Deputy J.M. Maçon: P.75/2010.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

P.75/2010 is quite clear categoric. So it is felt by the Council of Ministers that there is a good chance that the lottery will find that for Jersey heritage but if it does not, P.75/2010 makes it quite clear that the money has to be found. So I am content to leave it at that at the moment.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: If, just for in theory

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

This has not been talked about at the Council of Ministers.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What is the plan? Say for whatever reason that amount is not reached; would that have to come from the Education budget or would that have to come from somewhere else?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

No, it will come from the Treasury contingency budget, I assume. I do not know. The Treasurer will find it in some source.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

You have an undertaking that that will happen?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Thank you.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, I do not need it because P.75 makes it explicit that it has to be found.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

It has to be found. It does not say where it has to be found from.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: No, it does not. It says it has to come out of

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It does not identify where it comes. It just simply says that the Council of Ministers will underwrite it. So, if there is a shortfall, we would have to meet that shortfall.

[15:15]

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, thank you. Moving on to question 9 about the apprenticeship scheme, and we were having a discussion about where the responsibility lies. You commented earlier that it is currently run by Economic Development. Is there any change there? Is it going to Education or

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That scheme is quite a convoluted scheme where funding goes

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The funding goes from Economic Development to the employer and some of that funding obviously will go through to Highlands College but then the funding goes from the Education Department to Highlands College as well. The apprenticeship scheme is based on a traditional mode. It is mostly trades and only for people who have gained employment. The new apprenticeship scheme that we are proposing is a more modern version of that. Broader, in terms of what people would expect an apprenticeship to be and will be funded differently and may be open to young people who cannot secure full-time employment who can secure a training place with an employer. So the proposals have yet to come forward from the Skills Executive but those are some of the principles that are underpinning it.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

What is the relationship in this regard between Education and Economic Development?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Economic Development are transferring the existing apprentices for us to bring in; to run that scheme down and also transferring the funding for them and they are also transferring ?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

They are transferring the funds which they have set aside for managing this scheme, which is about £120,000 a year from 2014.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Can you just detail the benefits to the employer as well or employers that could come on to the apprenticeship?

The Connétable of St. Martin :

We would hope there would be significant benefits for the employers of the scheme. Obviously they get a change to try people out, particularly if it is a work placement as opposed to them having to commit upfront. That is one of the challenges if you are a business in recession and you are taking on an apprentice; can you afford to keep them?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

We will be able to access training opportunities, work experience opportunities with all sizes of business, which at the moment in the correct economic climate it is quite a challenge to get smaller and medium-sized companies to offer work experience to young people. It is only the large employers that can afford to do that.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Do you believe this new scheme might attract some of the smaller companies?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

That is certainly what my intention is, yes. I want to see comprehensive work experience opportunities for these apprentices because that is the way that they are going to get the best not only experience of work itself but work ethic and attitudes towards working will be just as important, certainly are as important as the technical knowledge gained at Highlands and through their work experience. This is more the French and German model of apprenticeships schemes. We have done a lot of research in different countries on apprenticeship schemes, the success rate of those apprenticeship schemes and they certainly seem to be working in other countries. So we are talking best practice from other areas and modifying it where necessary for Jersey.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Is that a dual scheme where people not only might get a full-time job out of this apprenticeship but will also offer work experience opportunities for youngsters? It might not necessarily lead to a full-time job but is that included in that scheme?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

To allow them to build up that sort of experience that will help them find a job further down the line.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes. I will just give you an example. If they are training as healthcare assistants you might find that work experience will be in the public sector but you might also find that work experience 6 months later might be in the private nursing home sector. Rather like teacher training, when you are doing teacher training certainly in years 2, 3 and 4 of a teacher training course you have teaching practice.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So it is has very much been adapted to the current economic climate in many ways.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Absolutely and the name of the game is that I want to see large numbers of people in time obviously we will have to build up incrementally as we go as we know what we are doing and develop the programme, but I have high hopes for it and it certainly will not be for the want to trying. I want a really good apprenticeship scheme which is valued as well. It has to be valued by parents, employers and the young people themselves so that if they get one of these apprenticeship schemes properly with all the paperwork, and it has to be marketed properly to everybody, and it has to really have to be valued. If it is of value to everybody then I think it will be self-perpetuating and it will grow and it will become

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Where does this fit into with the overall skill strategy?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

This is a programme that has been developed very much in partnership with the Skills Board and as part of the skills strategy. There is a new skills strategy that is

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, it is used to come to the Council of Ministers by the end of August.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

A new skill strategy, so it is very much on-message with the new skills strategy.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of the figures, £380,000 is a fair amount of money. Considering the amount of people that are unemployed at the present time, do you think it is a sufficient amount of money to provide those skills? The other question as well is will it be rolled out to other areas of the economy, which probably Highlands has not normally been involved with? I know that it does do some tourism-type courses but sort of rolled out a little bit wider, sort of wider tourism sector and also the agriculture sector as well. I think it has been ignored very much in the past.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, it will. It also makes a provision in there not just for the apprenticeship schemes but for small training alliance or apprenticeships. Those people who are not able to get a paid apprenticeship but could be a training alliance. So the full detail of it will be coming forward to the Skills Executive very soon.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: We will keep you informed.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So this option is not only for the higher skill but some of the more lower skill type?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: It will be a whole range of opportunities.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is going up. The £380,000 is only for 2013. Does it not go up to £500,000?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Well, the £380,000 plus £120,000 from E.D.D.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

£120,000 from E.D.D., making £500,000, yes. I am always assuming that what we are doing is good and is seen to be good and we can show the evidence of it by the end of this M.T.F.P. I would hope that the next M.T.F.P. would ratchet that apprenticeship up a further notch or 2.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, moving on then and we are delighted that you talked about the next M.T.F.P. Section 11 discusses the C.S.R. savings and how they impact on the service delivery of the department. We note that from what we have received previously, some of them are coming into fruition in 2016 but I wonder if you could tell us how confident you are that the savings now proposed are going to be delivered over the life of this M.T.F.P.?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

One is never over confident and some of these areas will be challenging politically. I would hope that States' Members as a whole will see those that are challenging politically in the overall round, as what I am trying to do with the education department and the sports department as a whole. I would hope they do and I would hope that they will see rather like taxation that you need to look at taxation and how it affects all the people overall. For example, the Instrumental Music Service is only a small part of it. There are little areas that will be politically, I have no doubt challenging. As I say, I have mentioned Instrumental Music Service changes will be one of them I am sure. I think when I bring that to the States I intend to brief States' Members before the States' debate on that in detail so that

they can see what I am trying to achieve and that there is some good news in that charging and it might well allow expansion of the Music Service into areas that at the moment it is not very good at. So there is good news and bad.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Obviously sport funding is a prickly subject at the moment in various quarters of the sports community. One of the savings to be achieved by 2006 was £144,000 and increase of sports income. Can you detail that and what you mean by that type of sports income?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: That is essentially around sports centres.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

That makes sport more expensive to the user. I think that is what I would like

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The charges have been moderate; the increases have been moderate to date and have not shown a fall off. Obviously the sports centres have to remain competitive and they are probably one of the most business orientated sections of the department, so they have been pretty good on the projections in the past. In spite of the recession, they have managed to increase their incomes significantly. So they feel that this income is going to be a challenging target but it is achievable. It should not impact overall on the take up of sport.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

I am just going on to question 17. One of the answers in terms of what changes are likely, in general income charges are increased by the 2.5 per cent States' anti-inflationary rate. The charges may be increased above this to reflect increase cost. Again, I would be worried if that got into the sport side of and what we are charging people to play and use sport facilities because obviously there is the health side of it as well. It is really to try to ask you whether there is a risk that sports users are going to be over and above inflation.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Our total on the income on the sport side is £4.1 million approximately; £144,000 approximately per annum. You are not looking at a huge percentage. What is it I am going to ask, please tell me very quickly?

Professor M. Oliver:

As a percentage now I could not work it out that quickly

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: It is about 2.5 to 3 per cent.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

It is around about inflation. We are not looking to make huge sums of money off people.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

No because we do appreciate that we have to keep sports facilities within the reach of clubs and associations and indeed individuals.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

They have to be competitive to retain their clients.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just regarding sporting clubs and associations, it is something that I was going to come on to a little bit later but I will just throw it in now. You have increased the grants to sports clubs and associations this year, which I am sure they were grateful for, but it is still less than they were getting. I know money is tight but that is putting those clubs and associations under all sorts of pressure. As a sportsman myself, I would be wondering and ask you the question, could there possibly be more money available? I think if you see the level that our sportsmen compete at, not just in Jersey but internationally and nationally we just had a national champion at Ironman, for example, that we are not supporting him in a way that should be supporting him to get to the levels that we know they can. There is also the fact that they do promote the Island in a fantastic way.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

You just hit on exactly the conundrum, which is the purpose of the Department for Education, Sport and Culture is to increase the participation levels of young people, particularly at school age in sports of all kind. You mentioned promoting the Island. We do not have a budget for promoting the Island. Economic Development have, you have seen that with the Jersey ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

For the rugby club, absolutely and I support that.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

So this is the conundrum that we have. Again, you will see it on the Gantt Chart of all the reviews we are doing. A new sports strategy is in the process of being worked up and thought about. We are looking at best practices from other places, including our neighbour island, as to how they managed to get funds into sport. We are looking at other places as well. We think that will be ready by the end of the year, maybe into the first quarter of next year. We will be able to come forward with some proposals for a new sport funding strategy, which will include all the other things. Do not forget that we still support sports and we pump something like £3.9 million a year into sport of all kinds that is either running facilities or providing what we do, albeit reduced levels of funding grants. So we do still spend a lot of money on our sportsmen and women in one way or another.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : So there is some hope.

[15:30]

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: There is.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I ask the question, given the success from the stakeholders' point of view of the cultural strategy in 2013, there is a 5 per cent saving across arts and culture grants. I imagine that excludes the heritage sites, so you are looking at just the cultural side. There is a reduction of just under £60,000. Given that certainly when we were examining the cultural strategy the stakeholders said that particularly at the moment it is the most difficult time for them to find private funding. Can you explain this proposal?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

The proposal was put in place by my predecessor. It has been talked about and budgeted for by the various cultural organisations for some 2 to 3 years now so they have known in advance. My understanding is that they will be able to cope with it. Again, we would all like to spend another couple of hundred or more depending upon one's point of view. You might be at one end of the scale wanting to double that budget and at the other end of the scale you have someone who is not interested in culture at all and says: "Why are we wasting all that money supporting culture?" So it is a political call. It is a choice that we have to make. The States supported a small reduction in cultural grants. I am assured that it should not affect what they do and they have already budgeted for it.

Can I just ask; I know there is a commitment in 2014 which is in the M.T.F.P. which is for the FB Fields running track and the special pitch obviously for the Island Games coming up. We are going to be expecting an awful lot of people to come here and compete here. Is there any consideration to assisting our Island Games Committee in this year coming up in Bermuda, in terms of assisting some of those teams to get there because I think it is not going to look great if we do not go there and we are expecting them to come here? Is that something that has been considered by the department?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It has not only been considered, the money has been ring-fenced and not been reduced at all from previous years on funding assistance for the Island Games.

The Connétable of St. Brelade : What figure is that?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

It is £20,000 that they will get every 2 years. So that is already committed. That was part of the agreement that was made with the Sports Advisory Council at the start of the year when I reinstated part of their large chunk of the C.S.R. I also said that we would ring-fence and look at the Island Games funding separately. So they do know that.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So that is something you are currently working on.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: They will get their £20,000.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

No, I mean over and above that, is that something you are

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

We have not looked at anything over and above that, no, because we have never had to in previous years. You see the problem is that this particular year Bermuda is a particularly expensive place to travel to. It appears that some of the team sports like football when you bear in mind that they might take up to 30 to 40 maybe even more people and it is £2,200 each, which is I believe the latest kind of cost they have decided they would rather spend that money as an association in different ways and get more competition with U.K.-based football teams and can get a better return, you know, value for money on the spend. So that is what they have decided to do and I think there are several

other team kind of sports such as netball and basketball that have decided similarly. We are not alone in this. As I understand it, most of the other competitive teams in the other islands, teams that will be seeded, have also decided that it just cannot be done in Bermuda, so they are not going either. So in a way, they have kind of decided all between them that they are not going to compete.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

So, in many respects you are throwing it back at those sports saying: "You need to organise yourselves."

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, they have decided. Do not forget that the travel grants for Island Games and sports are arm's length from the department. We grant monies to the Advisory Council and they decide where to put those grants out. So it is largely under the control of the Sports Associations themselves as to what they do, but as I say, this will form ... the question of the Island Games will obviously form part of the new sports strategy that we are working up, that we will be able to talk about in the first quarter of next year.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

I presume that is done with the stakeholders themselves?

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Can I just ask directly? Now obviously we have mentioned the Instrumental Music Service, which will have to go to the States, but are there any other user pay charges over the life of this M.T.F.P. the department is thinking of introducing?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Not user pays, no. Not user pays. There is one that falls under the shadow, so to speak, of P.72, which is the question of applying the 25 per cent grant funding to primary schools. There is a primary school that can now ... it is complicated. It is a complicated formula. We have a policy which is that where primary schools do not have a secondary school as part of their overall offering, and if they are in need of funds to assist, to reorganise themselves, then we can fund up to 40 per cent of the A.W.P.U. rather than 25 per cent. There is one particular school who we assisted in that way who is now doing extremely well and with some other arrangements between us and them, are in fact looking to expand slightly, possibly, and no longer requires or is not in need of that 40 per cent. So we are going to be consistent across all of the primary schools at the 25 per cent level and there is a small saving. But that will mean, because it is ... I believe that has to go back to the States.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We need to take advice on that, Minister. We assume it has to go back to the States.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Yes, this is the next question I was going to propose or ask you. Under 17, Source of Income, there is a school fees issue there and I was going to ask whether that had been adjusted in way of inflation and how that would tie into the Senator Ben Shenton proposition?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The fees are set by the governing body and approved by the Minister for each of the provided, in other words, the States fee-paying schools. So, yes there is funding; those fee increases have been taken account of in that.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

So there is that flexibility there?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Yes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

And we would not anticipate having to go back to the States on that because it is not reducing the subsidy ...

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

By the way, I said £3.9 million in the funds for sport, and I stand corrected. It is £3.7 million, I am £200,000 out, apologies.

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Okay.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

We note your answer to question 16, looking at the restructuring provision and at the moment we note that there are not any plans to ... there are no proposals to dip into that fund, though there may be in the future. Are there any plans in process at the moment that will affect the life of this M.T.F.P?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, well, at the very earliest stage we are looking at the potential to support the expansion of the school in order to be able to reduce the subsidy down to 25 per cent. One of the issues that you have with, particularly with the primary school, and one that is not attached to a secondary and therefore cannot benefit from the administration of the secondary, is that you have a form of entry, in other words one class in each year group, it is economical and efficient. If you have 2 forms of entry, it is economical and efficient. But if, because of your premises, you have only got one and a half forms of entry, then it becomes inefficient because if you are a fee-paying school, you have half as many fees coming in for that class but you have still got the full cost of a teacher. So we are looking to see whether we can assist the school in that way in order to be able to increase the numbers.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Okay, is that the only one on the card?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Okay, thank you. Now, just for the record, the issue of demographics that the department is going to face over the life of the M.T.F.P. I wonder if you can give us the department's view on that, in particular reference to the certain spike of students which have appeared going into the primary sector.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, the primary sector is catered for according to our predictions. The spike in the funding for it you have seen is in the medium-term financial plan and that is the additional F.T.E. teachers. So we have had growth in the primary numbers but when the secondary numbers decline quite clearly we would give that money back. We would have given that money back in any case before the C.S.R. because before the C.S.R. more of our funding was determined by people numbers. So they would go up, the funding goes up; they go down, the funding goes down. Really it is going to require some challenging management because it is where the demographics go down that is difficult to predict. It does not happen evenly across the Island. It can affect one school more than another school and in the non- fee paying sector, it is going to affect the 4 11-16 schools. If it affects them evenly, not an issue. If it

affects one school more than another, then you cannot allow the numbers to drop down below the point that the funding you give them does not allow them to deliver a curriculum for the numbers that are remaining and then you have to prop them up. So we may have to make some changes to the way, you know, we organise our matters in order to be able to manage that. Because we would have to prop up any school that was particularly affected and we really do not know and have no way of knowing which school is going to be affected by that at this time. We do know in terms of the numbers that are already in the system. Obviously if the students are in year 7 now, well, we know what it is going to look like in 5 years' time. But we do not know in terms of new students that will start to come into the system for next year.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Just on that, I believe this year the department found an extra 100 primary students that appeared which were not on the record - about that - I am just wondering how, in the future, if there is anything the department can do in order to ... or is it simply to hold contingencies in order to buffer for that?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

You are going to have things like, we hope, Housing and Work Laws and population registers. That will give us a whole new range of statistics that will enable us to hopefully avoid those 100 extras that you mentioned. However, whether it will give us that information quickly enough is another matter, we will have to wait and see. The 100 extra, we do not know where they came from. We are still looking to try and analyse that.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Unless you have a mechanism for registering children under the age of 5 coming into the Island then you are dependent on the parents themselves registering them at the school and giving the school notice or registering them at the department. If they do not do that, you do not know better.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Even the question you are going to ask is: "Do you have children with you?" if you are a recent inward migrator to the Island and the answer is: "No, we do not." And: "Do you have any intention of bringing your children to the Island? Do you have any ...", you know, they might have 2 children still in with granny and grandpa in Portugal or sister or something. Then when it comes to the child being 4 years old in Portugal: "Oh, we have changed our mind" and they are here and then we have to educate them.

[15:45]

The Connétable of St. Martin : But the 100, the same age group?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

They are all primary entrants. They are all in the ...

The Connétable of St. Martin : First year?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, first year intake.

The Connétable of St. Martin : So if we have the same next year?

The Connétable of St. Brelade : Pretty much, we have 100 probably.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

We would expect to see about 30. Over a summer period, when the schools were closed, we expect to see around about 30 additions come into the Island, into the school system at some level. Sorry, the pressure was on primary admissions but of course children coming into the Island go right through secondary school as well, but over the last 5 years, I think we have had 800 children come into the system and net migration, I think ... I need to confirm these figures with you, but I think we were looking at net immigration of about 400 into the school system.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Then can I just ask; what is being done then to further the relationship between what will be the Population Office and the Chief Minister's Department in order that this type of information is flowing freely to the department?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I am not sure that that information will be able to flow freely to the department in time for us to plan, because part of the problem is people arriving pretty much at the last minute, or arriving in February ... when they arrive in February or March, that is the last minute for us. You might think September, but when we are getting the admissions ready and the children are giving school, looking at school places, that is pretty much the last minute for us. Whereas if somebody arrives in January or February and they bring children to the Island, if they choose to register them at that time, they are registering them just when we are doing the admissions, so it is a surprise to us. I think in due course we might be able to refine the information for it to help there, but what we are doing this year is we are working with the Population Office to make sure that they have quality information from the schools about what is already there.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

In terms of new numbers, would that information include going back to the Population Office where those individuals have come from? In terms of whether it is a migration or ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, yes, but when we look at the majority of children who have come into the Island, they are coming from the U.K. In fact ...

The Connétable of St. Brelade : It is a vast majority ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

... a vast majority are coming from the U.K. I mean, you have got quite a range of countries but a lot are coming from the U.K.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Which is where historically Jersey's ... the major migration has come from, so no surprises.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

And some will be returners, not necessarily people who were born in the Island but who have been in the Island and gone and come back or ...

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Any final questions?

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

Just in terms of, well, I suppose contingencies in many ways. Obviously there was a change, we knew you were not going to make your C.S.R. saving targets and they have been revised for the next 3 or 4 years. If some of those targets were unable to be met, what would ... have you got a plan B? Is there anything that you will do to help that along its way?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, as Mario has already said, we have certain contingencies in our budgets, but no, it will be a problem for us. It will be a challenge. We will have to try and find the money from other sources. If the States turn down something as a C.S.R. saving, something else will probably have to suffer.

The Connétable of St. Brelade :

When you re-look at the savings, do you think they are realistic and achievable savings?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Yes, I do.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

St. Martin 's School: what happens if the school is not built? Is it going to cost the same sort of figure?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: What happens if the school is not built?

The Connétable of St. Martin :

Is not built and you have to refurbish, are we talking the same sorts of ...

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, there was a feasibility study done and I think they were - it was before my time - but, as I understand it, there was something like 6 to 8 options. Where to build it, whether to refurbish, what to do, and the most advantageous and best value for money by a long way was the one that was chosen, which was to build on the ... where it is on the playing field. For all sorts of reasons that I am sure you are aware of, Connétable , but for the record, they are to do with the fact that if you were to refurbish the existing school you would end up with a school with classrooms that were too small, with passageways that were too narrow, with huge amounts of disruption to the children while you were trying to do it, with the whole drainage system that you will have to rip out of the whole thing to make it work, and you would save somewhere in the region of possibly £100,000 and you still would not be returning what is a terrific opportunity for the Parish of St. Martin to look after its community in whatever way that the Parish sees fit, because the school building will be returned to the Parish. So huge opportunity lost for the Parish and a saving of £100,000 maybe. But these kinds of, you know ... what is the total budget for the school, £7 million ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture: We are looking over £7 million, yeah.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

£7 or £8 million, what is £100,000 as a percentage of that? You know, I mean anybody who has built any large development project will know that £100,000 can go either way extremely easily.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

If you look at the last project that we undertook, which was a rebuild onsite and account was Grainville School and it is still going on 15 years later. So, you know, the rebuilding has been going on now for 3 generations of school children and obviously it is reaching a conclusion now, but it is disruptive to try and build on a site and operate a school on the same site at the same time. We were fortunate with Hautlieu because we could build behind and then knock the school down. That was not possible and that is effectively one of the attractions of the current plan for St. Martin 's, because you can build the school without disrupting the education of the children who are currently in the school.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

There are a couple of other points that I missed before. Another one is that the size of the playing field for primary schools nowadays, for example, football, the latest thinking on all of the sports development wisdom is that you do not have a full-size football pitch for children in primary school because it does not develop the skills properly. You have a smaller one. So we can still get that, it is still bigger than the regulation size as recommended, as far as a football pitch is concerned, and the other thing that we managed to achieve is to find a new home for the St. Martin 's Football Club, which they believe will be better facilities than they currently have now. And the last point is that the question of the prospective designation of any playing field in Jersey to be a Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee playing field is fraught with difficulty, because, in effect, it means that we would be allowing a U.K. legislative body to have control over some public-owned land in Jersey, and I think the same problem would probably apply for any, even privately-owned land in Jersey. You would be allowing someone outside the Island to have planning control over a piece of our land. So it could be against the Planning Law.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

How does that funding work now. I mean, if it is passed and we start building and we start building in October ...

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

We want to start as quickly as possible, we want to get the outcomes for children in place as quickly as possible for the ...

The Connétable of St. Martin :

When is it paid? It is over the 3 years; I mean, it is just set aside and paid ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

It is set aside in the account and it is drawn down on need. I mean, obviously there is a lot of governance around it, project boards, et cetera, et cetera. The funding is there in total and available to be drawn down.

The Connétable of St. Martin :

And even if some of it is paid after the 3-year term, because ...

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Well, it will all be subject to the contractual arrangements with the contractor.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I am just conscious of time.

Professor M. Oliver:

Just a quickie, did any of your growth bids include a provision for the outcomes of your forthcoming White Paper?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

No, not in terms of the ... in fact, one of the C.S.R. bids, not bids but C.S.R. saving was something like £1.2 million in closer collaboration between Highlands and Hautlieu and you will see that the Minister has withdrawn that and the rationale behind that was to ensure that the impetus for closer collaboration between the 2 institutions was driven by the educational needs of the students, as opposed to making savings. So, no, there are no bids in or around ... well, no, that is not true because apprenticeships are in there and the 14-16 vocational is in there and higher education was part of that, but in relation to secondary education or primary education directly, no, apart from the demographics.

Professor M. Oliver:

Do you think that the White Paper might well lead to any challenges on the existing financial framework in this M.T.F.P. then?

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

A lot will depend on whether there will be a White Paper or whether there will be a Green Paper or what the future strategy is likely to look like.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

If you are asking is there going to be a big all singing, all dancing White Paper on the whole future of education on the Island coming out later on this year, the answer is there is more likely to be a series of smaller White Papers around, with a kind of an overarching plan. You are not going to end up with a big all singing debate, I do not think.

Professor M. Oliver:

The question I was asking in terms of the financing of it.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Any of the options that would be under consideration here are not necessarily options that would require significant funding other than the funding that has been bid for, so around the 14-16 vocational. Now if you establish that, for example, you might start thinking about major changes for the next medium-term financial plan. If you were, say, to develop a new skill centre somewhere, then there would be significant capital investment and revenue investment in that. But you do not have plans that are refined to that level as of yet, so it is pretty much around apprenticeships and 14-16. The higher education, professional partnering was in there around equality, so that was one of the bids, but I think the ... there is, a lot of the stuff that has come out of the original paper, which will be published ...

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Access to statistical data and you know, we have already got that covered with our Statistics Department now and our data and statistics.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

There are a lot of things in there that are just doing, you know, there may not be the necessity, for example. There is a great demand at the moment for apprenticeships. We have sort of done the consultation, nobody is unsupportive of the idea, so do you want to go through a White Paper on apprenticeships, or just do it? So that is sort of the thinking.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Then just one final question from me, looking at your C.S.R. saving, which is due to come to fruition in 2016, is to close 2 primary schools and open a new primary school. What work is being undertaken

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Well that is linked; there are several strands linking that together. One is the demographics that we have already spoken to. Are we going to be able to do that? 2016 is still a long way away and things could change between now and then. In conjunction with Property Holdings, we are looking for the potential for sites to build a bigger school but that has to be in the town area, because that is where the demographics are going to have the demand for the new school. I mean, we are also looking at other options of refurbishing existing schools or modifying existing schools to make them bigger, for example. Turning a one form entry into a 2-form entry is one of the options. We have not got to the point where we know yet. We have got to get on with the work and again it is on the Gantt Chart and the streams of work that we are working on.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

The savings in those areas are relatively small.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: That is mainly about capital investment?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I am just conscious of the time, gentlemen. As always I offer you the opportunity if you think there is anything which we misunderstood, perhaps missed or points that you would like to emphasise to us now is your opportunity.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

I do not think so. Just on question ... the woolly one. Question 7, I think.

[16:00]

Deputy J.M. Maçon: Question 7, yes.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

There is more detail on many of those things, which we can provide you with in due course. That is just a summary of things, but I think the biggest piece of work there for us is reviewing our special educational needs.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

Did you mean that the question was woolly or the answer was woolly?

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

I meant the answer, but you might come around and say the question was as well.

Director, Education, Sport and Culture:

Yes, but it is just a summary. We were unsure of how much detail you wanted.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Well, like we say is we like as much detail as we can possibly have, but thank you for that. Minister, are there any closing points you would like to make?

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture:

No, I am fine with that. Thanks very much. I mean, a lot of what we are talking about, you know, they all have challenges as they will do for all departments, but with co-operation and consultation all around, I am sure that we can ... our hearts are all in the right place on education, I believe.

Deputy J.M. Maçon:

Then just to advise you of the process from now on, the process is for all the Scrutiny Panels, who have been having these types of hearings, to formulate a report and to submit that to the main Corporate Services Sub-Panel who is looking at the specific issues as well as the overarching issues, which is why we have been working to the timetable that we have been, but that is just for your information so you are aware of the process. In which case, I would like to bring this hearing to a close and end it there. Thank you very much.

The Minister for Education, Sport and Culture: Thank you.

[16:01]