John Rodhouse on Post-War Education in Jersey

Speaking to the Jersey Care Inquiry, John Rodhouse had some interesting background comments on secondary education in Jersey, and indeed the state of education and its disconnection with the wider world in the post-war period.

John Rodhouse on Secondary Education

The introduction of a comprehensive secondary education

When I arrived in Jersey in 1973, I stepped back into the 1950s. Jersey operated in ways that were very different from the United Kingdom, both in terms of its society and its education system. Life in Jersey was somewhat slower and the education service was not well supported by legislation.

I say this as a matter of fact and not as a criticism of Jersey, or of the way the States operated. I believe that some of the problems Jersey experienced can be attributed to the difference in scale between Jersey and the United Kingdom. However, it is important also to remember that Jersey, through its history, differs from the United Kingdom. Jersey has never been part of the United Kingdom, and I do not think that comparison with the United Kingdom is always fair.

When I lived and worked in Jersey, there were around 90,000 people living there. It is not easy for a community of 90,000 people to operate in all areas of governance (other than foreign policy and defence) in the same way as a state the size of the United Kingdom. There was, inevitably, a difference in dynamic and I will discuss this in greater detail later in this statement. I would therefore like to make it clear that my comments and observations are not intended to be critical of Jersey in any way; one cannot make a true comparison. During the course of this Independent Inquiry, I have read many of the transcripts of evidence given and I have been somewhat troubled that, at times, this has not been recognised.

Between April and December 1973 I was Director of Education (Designate). The man I was to succeed, Charles Wimberley, remained in post as Director until the end of the year and for those nine months I was in a sort of limbo. I attended Education Committee meetings but I was not involved in the management of the Department.

My prime task in 1973 was to produce an acceptable plan for the introduction of comprehensive secondary education. The States had approved a decision of the Education Committee to abolish the eleven plus examination. However the Education Committee had no agreed plan to reorganise secondary education on the island.

Jersey had a system of maintained primary and secondary schools, which were funded from the public purse. There was also a number of fee-paying schools, two of which were funded by the States; Victoria College and the Jersey College for Girls. These schools covered the whole age range from 5 to 18

Under the system that was in place in 1973, the children with the highest scores in the eleven plus exams were awarded places at Victoria College or at Jersey College for Girls. The remaining high scorers were admitted to Hautlieu School.

Following extensive discussions both private and public, with teachers, politicians, parents, churches, business organisations and individuals, I developed a proposal that all children leaving the maintained Primary schools at age eleven should move to the local Secondary school. In their third year all Secondary schoolchildren would be assessed by the teachers for admission to a High school with a predominantly academic curriculum and an age range 14 to 18. The assessments should be jointly considered by the staff of both the Secondary schools and the High School and a recommendation made whether the child should transfer to the High school or complete the period of compulsory education in the Secondary school.

In November 1973 the Education Committee finally agreed on the Fourteen Plus Transfer System which was detailed in a report presented to, and endorsed by, the States. Introducing the new comprehensive secondary education system was a significant task that occupied a substantial amount of my time in my early years in Jersey. An equally urgent task was to create a new Secondary school ready to receive its first 150 pupils by September 1975.

Questions and Answers:

Q: "When I arrived in Jersey in 1973, I stepped back into the 1950s." Can you provide a bit more detail of why it was that Jersey struck you in that way?

A. Well, I think we are talking now of the way in which Jersey operated. It had none -- had experienced none of the developments that had gone on in the United Kingdom following the end of the world war.

Q. And I think you say that that was in part determined by Jersey's experience of the war, is that right?

A. Well, partly. I think I would draw attention to the fact that Jersey was occupied by the Germans through the war and isolated and particularly isolated after the Normandy invasion and after, when peace came, Jersey was in no way connected to what I would call the social revolution that went on from 1945 for the decade: the Butler Act, the 1944 Education Act which introduced enormous changes in education, the Beveridge Report and the legislation that followed that, the establishment of the National Health Service, none of those things had any effect whatsoever on Jersey.

Q. Can you understand why? Do you have an explanation for that?

A. Well, Jersey was very conscious of the fact that it was not part of the United Kingdom and it governed itself apart from the United Kingdom and that was a very important -- it was very important to them.

Q. Well, it brings us to page 4 of your statement {WS000612/4} and your account of your role as Director of Education, because between paragraphs 15 and 19 and indeed later on in your statement you set out what I think you would describe as the unique system of government that you found in Jersey.

A. Yes, yes.

Q. And between paragraphs 15 to 19 you provide an account of the oversight of the various services being carried out by committees, that the committees would be appointed by the States and presiding over each committee would be a president. Various questions run from that. How would the president get to be appointed?

A. The president was a Member of the States, elected to the States either on the -- either as a deputy representing one of the parishes, or as a Senator and Senators were elected on an island-wide franchise.

Q. Would the individual who wanted to be president of the Committee put him or herself forward, or was it a question of selection by a body of Senators or Deputies who would say "You're going to be the president"?

A. I think I can only describe it as there was a great deal of informal discussion before the States meeting at which the presidents were appointed and the -- I don't recall in my time any great debate about that, or any contested elections for president.

Q. So there was no transparency in that process as far as you could judge?

A. No, it was just the States Assembly decided that X should be president of Y committee.

Q. Did the selection of the individual have any bearing in relation to the Service to which they were appointed?

A. No, not particularly. Generally a president would have served -- no, that isn't true because if I reflect on it, of the four presidents I knew, two had served on the Education Committee as ordinary members, but the other two had not been members. So no, there was no special connection.

Q. And how long was a presidential term? Was it dependent on when elections took place?

A. Yes.

Q. Right.

A. Unless something happened which caused the president to lose his office, yes.

Q. At paragraph 16 {WS000612/4}, Mr Rodhouse, you provide the names of those you served under as Director of Education, those presidents that you worked with. What sort of relationship did you have with those individuals, was it an entirely professional one, or did you become friends with these individuals? How did it work in practice?

A. It was a very close relationship, professionally very close, and to some extent it was social. Senator Jeune and I were both members of the Rotary Club, but we didn't mix socially in the sense of having common interests, but I was on call to the President 24 hours a day.

Q. How easy was it for you in those circumstances, Mr Rodhouse, to become a critical friend of the Committee?

A. I had to be a critical friend of the Committee. I'm not sure they always thought I was the critical friend.

Q. In the decisions taken by the Committee would the President have the casting vote?

A. Oh, yes, yes. The President having chosen the members of his committee would choose people that he thought -- I keep saying "he", but please accept that – would choose people that he thought generally agreed with him.

Q. And indeed you come on to describe the appointment of other members of the Committee. What criteria would have to be satisfied to be appointed to the Committee?

A. You had to be a member of the States, that was the only -- that was the basic criterion. The president selected his members, as I say, on the basis of his personal choice and also of course those people who came to him and said they would like to be on the committee.

Remember there were no political parties in Jersey -- well, that's not true, there was one, it was called the Jersey Democratic Movement, one Deputy was elected to the States who was a member of the Jersey Democratic Movement. I think the rest of the Members of the States thought that he was a crypto-communist. He was a fine man. I tried hard to persuade the President to invite him to join the Committee.

Q. And did the President of the Committee have the power to dismiss a member from the Committee, or how would that work?

A. Oh, yes.

Q. He did.

A. Well, I'm sure if it there were a real disagreement between a member of the Committee and the President, the President would simply invite him to leave the Committee.

Q. When determining the approach to change, looking back on it now would you have described it as conservative, liberal, forward thinking? Which category --

A. Very conservative. Very concerned to maintain what they saw as Jersey values and Jersey ways. A N Whitehead, who was a contemporary of Bertrand Russell and also a philosopher, wrote somewhere that the strongest single force in education systems is inertia. Inertia was a very strong force in Jersey.