This individual, who has been intimately involved  with the consultant-driven, FTP cost-cutting project from the early days, says he is ‘sickened’ by the way it has ‘betrayed’ the people of Guernsey.

‘Education claims that they want to close the school for the good of the children, because they will get a better education in a bigger school,’ Chris told me*. ‘That isn’t true. It is about hacking money out of the budget. It always has been.’

Chris said that Education’s argument about multi-form entry schools being better than single-form entry, like they have at St Andrew’s, was only added later, to justify the decision.

‘The whole process sickens me, because it is driven by the FTP consultants, who are paid on results, and results for them means cuts. They are trying to close a good, successful, local parish school, loved by parents, children and the community, for the sole reason that it represents a ‘quick win’ in terms of a cut.

‘I grew disenchanted, because if they had the balls from the start to say that they wanted to close the school because they needed money for the FTP process, I would have sympathised with them. I would have been upset, because St Andrew’s is a brilliant school. But I probably wouldn’t be doing what I am doing now, and speaking out about it.’

What Chris says is corroborated by documents which can be found on the States’s own website.

If you search for the numbingly dull term ‘Fundamental Spending Review’ you will find a document which glories in the enticing title: ‘Fundamental Spending Review Phase 2 Annex.’ It was compiled by the high-price firm of consultants who were in on the FTP project at the ground floor. They were called Tribal, which makes them sound like an urban dance collective. But they really aren’t. They have changed their name since, presumably to remove any confusion.

So, on page 18 of this document it talks about ‘the rationalisation of the state-run primary schools,’ and suggests that it can save the suspiciously precise sum of £4.56m over five years. Not surprisingly, it does not show any working out, as our maths teachers always used to tell us to do.

Again not surprisingly, there is no mention of how you can improve education by bussing children to bigger schools miles from their homes.

The date of the report is July 2009, just a few months after  the States’s first, failed attempt to shut the school. Chris said that the ‘evidence’ suggesting that multi-entry form schools are better for children than single-form entry schools was commissioned later, to justify the decision that had already been made.

‘It was utterly cynical, and a whitewash of the truth,’ said Chris.

Of course everyone already kind of knew that this fat-headed, ham-fisted proposal was everything to do with money, and absolutely zilch to do with what is good for children. Chris’s testimony from inside government proves what everyone already assumed. It was also corroborated by a senior Deputy, who is all for closing the schools, who told me this week: ‘Despite what the Education Minister insists, this is all about saving money.’

The truth is that Education are making an arbitrary cut to satisfy a short-term financial target imposed by the FTP consultants. It is exaggerating the savings to be made, and the grand claims of vast sums which can be rescued for the Treasury are already beginning to unravel. It makes no sense in the long-term.

Our children are sacrificed to feed the consultants’ hunger for fees and will cost Guernsey taxpayers more in the long run.

When the youth population of Guernsey ticks up again in a few years, which the sonic wave of demographic change insists will happen, we will have to open another primary, because the new Frankenstein schools won’t be big enough.

Whoever runs Education then will look at a map of Guernsey, and wish they had another school right in the middle of the island. Approximately where St Andrew’s stands now, the same place where a school has stood since 1741, and which they closed for no better reason than it helped a consultant hit a short-term accounting target.

Closing this school will be an unforgivable act of vandalism.

If it goes goes through, it will be the day the States of Guernsey died of shame.

* Not the source’s real name.

The fellow was something of a bloom-judging veteran. After spending half a life-time sizing up hanging baskets at village hall from Alderney to Aberdeen, he had seen the lot.

Even so, his attention was seized by what he discovered at St Andrew’s School. The children took him on a trip through their willow walk; gave him a guided tour of the veg patch; showed him the flower beds, and the water garden. Best of all, they showed him their real pride – the sensory garden. At that time of the year the scent from the mint, sage and lemon balm hung heavy on the air and an inferno of marigolds blazed in the borders.

The wily judge asked if the grounds had been shaped by a landscape gardener, or a professional horticulturalist. No sir, said the children. They had done the lot themselves, with mums and dads helping, as well as a team from the school’s friends at Waitrose.

He let out a slow whistle and said: ‘This school is something special. Please, hang on to it.’

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly what parents and teachers are trying to do at St Andrew’s School. Hang on to it, while some misguided, badly-advised politicians do their best to destroy it. They have a Vision for Education. And the Vision cannot accommodate a small parish primary school. The best you can say about that is: beware of politicians with Visions. It seldom ends happily.

So, the school struggles to hang on. They wear their blue ribbons, and keep the faith for the sake of the generations of children who will be denied the priceless chance of an educational experience that is unique in Guernsey. Unique, but not necessarily better than other schools. Because who is to say what ‘better’ means in education? You can’t put a value on a child’s happiness. It doesn’t show up on a balance sheet. It doesn’t mean it has no worth.

Neither can you enter the value of a school’s place in the community in any ledger. It is something that either happens, or doesn’t happen. And St Andrew’s in so many ways IS the community. It is the school that gives until it can’t give any more.

Shortly after the Britain in Bloom judges left Guernsey (after awarding St Andrew’s a Gold Award), another group visited the school to enjoy the grounds. They were the men and women from the Guernsey Blind Association, the school’s next-door neighbours. On fine days they love strolling through the sensory garden, especially. The one that was designed, planted and nurtured by the children, for no better reason than that it made the surroundings more pleasing. They are always welcome guests.

Of course, if the old school bell rings for the last time, and the building is boarded up, and the gardens are abandoned to the weeds, they will have to find somewhere else to spend their afternoons.

Perhaps there is a provision for it in the Education Department’s Vision. You would have to guess not though.

And so we are left to live with one more in a thousand little ripples of regret which will eddy out from the greater catastrophe of the closure of a school. Another tiny part of what makes Guernsey special will be lost. A little part of the island will have died.

The blind people can see it. Those with the Vision can’t.

They should have another look.

Nor can I write with any expertise on the pluses and minuses of single-form versus two-form entry. It all sounds like a bunch of phoney-baloney Education-speak to me. Although, again based solely on a hunch, I would guess that small children are happier in small schools.

I do know some things about St Andrew’s School, though, which the people who are desperate to close it down might not.

I know that every year they invite a donkey to their Christmas service, and that the donkey leads the excited children in joyful procession to the church for the carol concert.

I know that you can go into the school on any day of the week and will find mums and dads and well-wishers from the community reading with the children. Because they care.

I know that on one special day every May the children dress in wartime clothing, and go to school with homemade gasmasks in cardboard boxes, and remember their predecessors who were sent to safety over the water.

I know that all the teachers know the name of every child in the school.

I know that a child feels about three feet taller after the headteacher reads out their story in assembly, and all the children clap. At St Andrew’s they are like that.

I know that every year a class of older children stay at a chateau in France, gaining a priceless glimpse of life beyond Guernsey, and of independence.

I know that they make an annual visit to Lihou, and sleep in the house after the waters close over the causeway, and in the day they learn all 2about the nature on their doorstep.

I know that it is the only school in the world to feature a hangman’s gibbet on its crest – a gloriously matter-of-fact nod to the parish’s grisly history.

I know that St Andrew’s won’t be St Andrew’s without its school. It will be just another collection of streets, a convenient place to stop for petrol at the Co-op, a dormitory suburb with no identity.

I know that Guernsey will be a slightly less diverse, slightly less special, place to live.

I know that you lose a lot when you throw all of that away, and that when you close a school, you have to be damn certain that what you are doing is the right thing. You don’t dispose of a school because it makes sense on a balance sheet, or because it fits in with the latest orthodoxy of what ‘good’ education looks like.