I don’t know how much is too much to spend on a primary school. You see various figures knocking about for the running costs of St Andrew’s, and it is hard to conclude which one is correct. But let us say that the high-ish figure of £600,000 is right. On instinct, it still sounds like a bargain.
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.