Following last night’s cabinet meeting, it was revealed that Councillor Jonathan Bacon had resigned his position as cabinet member for education.
Today he shares his resignation statement,
“I resigned from my Cabinet role yesterday afternoon (Thursday) at roughly 4.30pm. As such there was not time to produce a formal statement prior to the Cabinet meeting and I did not think it appropriate to attend the meeting in light of my reasons for resigning, which I will set out here.
“I was asked to take on the role of Cabinet Member for Children’s Services in October 2023, primarily to lead to necessary process of ‘School Place Planning’ (or school closures in plain English). This is an essential step to sorting out the problems in our local education system. Less than an hour before the meeting at which final decisions were due to be made, I was informed that the majority of the Cabinet could no longer support the majority of the recommendations. It was apparent this was for various reasons, including political and personal ones, but without any apparent regard to the fact that this process was fundamentally linked to trying to improve educational standards on the Island. This fact has been increasingly ignored by people over the past few months. The decisions made last night do not achieve an improvement. Further they are not just a failure to address matters but instead they have made matters significantly worse. The Cabinet may have avoided a pothole, but as a result the Council is now heading towards a cliff.
“Having been involved in this work for over a year and overseen the efforts of the Council officers, who have laboured hard to take things this far, and to then face such a last minute turnaround was unacceptable. This was all the more so because of the apparent failure to consider the need to do something to improve our woeful education standards on the Island.
“A position has been created where the already significant financial deficits across the primary School system will now increase. Schools will find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet due to the failure to deal with surplus places. The cliff edge arises because the year groups that are currently fullest, namely years 5 and 6, will soon move into Secondary education. The numbers left will not be enough to sustain the primary system in anyway that can allow schools to do their job properly.
“The decisions that have been made will mean that another process will have to be launched as soon as possible. All Schools, including those ‘saved’ on Thursday night, will be back in the frame for potential closure. The failure to deal with the issue this time, and the bigger problem that has been created, will mean that more schools will inevitably be named for closure. The opportunity to deal with the effects of decline in pupil numbers in any sort of manageable way has been lost as a result of what the Cabinet have done.
“I also feel that the proposed Education Strategy, which I have helped work to bring forward, has been totally undermined, as the necessary initial steps it required have not been taken. I do not see the point in bringing the Strategy forward now as the ability to achieve what it sets out has been utterly eroded.
“As was stated at the Scrutiny Committee meeting on Tuesday, while there was plainly agreement that something needed to be done, very few were able to countenance doing what was necessary because they had some sort of link to a school. Once again the Nimby factor has undermined the ability to act for the best interests of the future. It is plainly wrong to say the process was flawed, people just didn’t like the results it led to. I note there are still suggestions that there may be challenges to the closures that have been voted through. I welcome these as I firmly believe they will show that the claimed flaws were not there and will underline the fact that decisions on Thursday were made for entirely the wrong reasons.I realised this was not a popularity contest from the outset, but was something that clearly needed to be dealt with, as well as needing to be done in an objective way looking at the bigger picture. I did my best and I apologise to those in the School system for the failure to deal with matters and the effects it will have upon them. I am however most sorry for those children whose life chances are to be inhibited by that failure. Last night political needs were being put first and the interests of our children last. I could not be part of it.”
