ESC committed to self-governing schools from start

The irony lies in the fact that the success last week of the misleadingly-named ‘pause and reflect’ requete will delay the implementation of the devolvement desired by Mr Dyke by two years or more in the case of Lisia School.

Ever since the current members of the ESC committee took office in February 2018, our express determination has been to grant self-governance to the new Lisia School and The Guernsey Institute. To that end, members of a new ‘shadow board’ of governors for The Guernsey Institute were appointed in 2019 and the intention was to appoint a similar ‘shadow board’ for Lisia School during 2020/21. I do not of course expect members of the public to have read the ESC 2019 Policy Letter from first page to last, so I would refer Mr Dyke to Sections 1.12, 20.1.1 to 20.1.7 and 23 which clearly indicate the committee’s policy intentions about this matter.

Mr Dyke refers to grant-maintained and free school models in the UK. He could also have included the self-governing academies in England, some of which take the form of more than one school within a single over-arching trust. I have visited four such self-governing academies in England, all four of which are performing with outstanding results.

There is a further irony at the heart of Mr Dyke’s letter. He expresses cynicism about the consultation process over the review of the Education Law and indicates that he does not intend to waste his electricity and time by engaging with it. It is the current 1970 Education Law that prevents the devolvement of governance to schools and colleges and it will be the replacement law currently out to consultation that will enable the very self-governance advocated by Mr Dyke.

It is a pity that Mr Dyke has likened the 2020 consultation on the Education Law to the flawed ‘Your School, Your Choice’ ‘consultation’ conducted in 2015 by the then Education Department during the term of the previous States.

My personal message as a member of the current ESC committee to Mr Dyke is that as far as self-governance for schools and colleges is concerned, he is preaching to the long since converted. The current ESC committee is energetically committed to establishing self-governing schools and colleges in Guernsey as soon as the new law permits, and any new committee produced by the general election in June this year could not possibly be more committed to that cause.

So I urge Mr Dyke to cast aside his cynicism and participate in the consultation, and in order to save both his electricity and time I recommend he goes straight to Part 4, Proposed Areas for Reform, Governance which he can find on page eight of the consultation document.

RICHARD GRAHAM

Veue du Guet,

Rue de la Lande,

Castel,

GY5 7EH.