Ensure education funding is fair and proportionate across both academic and vocational pathways.

Education funding is the second largest spend of our General Revenue Income, with the two main departments spending the following;

• Education and Lifelong Learning - £182 million

• Children and Families - £51 million

Source States of Jersey 2025 Annual Report and Accounts.pdf

Spending and staffing has increased significantly over the past ten years, despite now stable numbers of students. We must now ensure that spending is sustainable in terms of finances, but also the distribution of this funding is fair.

Education and Inclusion in Schools

The 2025 SEND Review (Independent Review of Inclusion in Jersey Schools published) and the 2021 NASEN Review produced several findings and recommendations in response to the changing demands on special and additional educational needs in our education system.

There is concern that simply driving additional spend without a ‘clear cohesive strategy’ will put untreatable pressure on our Government finances. We must look at the long term impacts of such spending - should demands for additional money force us in to debt or drive us to an uncompetitive economic (tax) position, we will be damaging the future strength of the island that an inclusive society will rely on.

We must look at models of inclusive education outside the UK (which has struggled to deliver a financially sustainable model of inclusive education) and perhaps place more focus on inclusion at a school level rather than the student. A change in focus would not change that we will still need a system that can identify and provide targeted and enhanced support for those with particularly complex or nuanced educational needs.

Further Education Funding

Following the implementation of the new funding model for university education in 2018 States Assembly | P-33-2018, there has been significant support for those going to university.

The total budget for Skills and Student Finance is over £20 million per year (Page 22 of the Annual Report Annex Annual Report and Accounts 2025 Annex 1 Government Department Annual Reports.pdf), and the sums involved can be seen by this statement in the annex on variation.

The number of students in higher education has been uncharacteristically low in 2025, resulting in an underspend of £3.7 million at the end of 2025.

Some feel there is still inequity, with less support for vocational training, and that the grant system should not have the level of means testing it does. To ensure sustainable financing, we should consider a hybrid grant and loan system for funding.

There has been pushback on loan systems due to administrative burdens, but improvements in digital and AI should mean we can implement streamlined systems.

A loan system would enable those whose parents’ income restricts their access to grants to be independent - and it offers a range of policy ’levers’ to deliver against some of the key themes being raised at this election.

• To encourage islanders to use their skills on island, we could make the interest on the loan element 0% when living on island (this is what New Zealand does with their student loan)

• To encourage and support islanders into essential careers we need on island, we could convert/write off loans where an “essential” skill is brought back on island, such as health professionals (to give one example)

• With a loan system in place, we could extend the offering to enable greater lifelong learning and further education, such as supporting those pursuing Masters, or those retraining in vocational or professional skills not funded by a workplace.

In all cases, I would not advocate for a UK style loan, in the way that interest rates are so high that the student could not escape these. We can still ‘subsidise’ the loan with low interest where it is applied.