ESC: Devolving powers will not guarantee improved standards

It wants interim school governance boards to be made permanent but without legal powers or duties until a temporary States committee has investigated how much control should be handed over to them.

Some politicians hope to speed up devolution and one of them, Peter Roffey, yesterday labelled the Education, Sport & Culture Committee’s plan ‘smoke and mirrors’, claiming it disguised a desire for the committee and its officials to retain a tight hold over States schools.

‘More recent international observations of the relationship between systems of greater autonomy and overall standards of education suggest that an assumption that autonomy leads to improvement is not conclusive,’ said the committee, in its latest policy letter, which is due to be debated by the States next month.

It said it had studied evidence which indicated that ‘any academic gains are modest at best’ when school boards and head teachers were given more control.

‘In England, while the number of schools with academy status has grown exponentially under government direction, evidence that directly links academy autonomy to improved outcomes remains mixed.

‘When the performance of types of school is compared – academies versus local authority-maintained or community schools – there remains little substantial difference in performance.’

ESC said its current proposals included ‘the most relevant elements’ of school governance which had proved successful elsewhere, including creating more distance between politicians and schools, although this would remain discretionary for the time being.

It also said that 96% of school leaders who responded to a recent survey supported interim school governance boards and that ‘a significant proportion’ backed proposals to make them permanent and set up an investigation committee to consider the boards’ future role.

The control and oversight of States schools has been a controversial issue since an external review carried out in 2011 claimed that schools and their children were being let down by outdated centralisation and bureaucracy imposed by the Education Committee and its officials.

In June last year, the States backed an amendment from Deputy Roffey which called on Education to return to the States as soon as it could with proposals for ‘far greater devolution of powers’ to the proposed school governing boards, including over finances and recruitment, although the committee withdrew its policy letter from debate before the amendment could face a final vote.

ESC has instead returned with the recommendation to set up the Education Devolution & Delegation Investigation & Advisory Committee to look into the matter from the start of the next political term and present proposals by September 2026.

It believes the temporary investigation committee ‘will help build consensus and ensure that steps towards further autonomy are deliberate, research-based and align with broader educational and States goals’.

The need for an investigation committee was described as ‘genuinely puzzling’ by Deputy Roffey.

‘Surely that consideration falls squarely within the ESC mandate?’ he said. ‘Indeed, I really thought ESC had been carrying out this task ever since withdrawing its previous policy letter, hopefully bearing in mind the States vote that those devolved powers should be very substantial.’

The school governance proposals put forward by ESC would cost an estimated £225,000, funded from savings elsewhere in the committee’s budget.

In addition, up to £100,000 would be made available from the States’ budget reserve to help fund the investigation committee.