Empower schools to recruit UK teachers

THAT neither the president of Education, Sport & Culture nor her committee members are able (or willing) to understand the possible benefits of local management of schools simply beggars belief. (GP editorial, 2 February).

Our schools have huge incentives to act for the benefit of the pupils under their care. Their staff and managers see those students each day; they know them well and are very easily able to track their academic progress as well as their pastoral needs. It would be very straightforward for them to apply a great range of interventions which would have ‘positive and constructive impact’ on children when required, if only they were suitably empowered to do so. Instead they are stymied by the largely unwelcome interventions of civil servants (often ex-teachers who may not have particularly enjoyed teaching in the classroom) who operate at arms’ length, without the same personal knowledge of the pupils.

The impact of centralised management of education in Guernsey is, in my experience of teaching in local schools over many years, neither positive nor constructive. Teachers are forced to spend hours jumping through unnecessary, bureaucratic hoops rather than getting on with playing to their strengths, ie teaching and supporting their pupils. This is often hugely frustrating and the island has lost many wonderful teachers over the years because of this frustration.

Recruitment of teaching staff is among the strongest arguments for local management of schools. The vast majority of our teachers come from the UK education system. There, it often takes only a week to recruit a teacher into post, from advertising the role to getting the contract signed for the following term or academic year. Most roles are offered to the preferred candidate immediately after the shortlisted pool have completed the process of touring the school, being interviewed and teaching a lesson to demonstrate their skills. If they then decide to turn it down, the next most suitable candidate is offered the role as they are still waiting on the premises.

In Guernsey there are the additional challenges of getting candidates over to the island, but it is the red tape of centralisation that causes the process to take many times longer in our States’ schools. Countless excellent teachers who have been willing to come here have been lost to us during my career; they simply get fed up of waiting to hear anything and in the meantime accept a job elsewhere. Schools would be highly incentivised to ensure the process happens quickly and smoothly if they were able to do their own recruitment; civil servants clearly are not. While there are other factors involved, our independent schools are consistently better able to attract good teachers, simply by recruiting much more efficiently, despite having far fewer personnel involved in the process.

The people of Guernsey have spoken. They don’t want a smaller number of bigger schools, and neither do the current committee members. Yet by maintaining the status quo of centralised management, we are preserving the very worst aspects and inefficiencies of large schools whilst turning our backs on the many benefits.

To ask ‘where is the proof it would work here?’ when there isn’t any, precisely because we are still clinging to an outdated system so that some civil servants can cling to their jobs, is fairly baffling. We are the outlier, here – where is the proof that our system is fit for purpose? Local management of schools works everywhere else, and we have a greater need for it here than larger jurisdictions.

To suggest that losing those roles, and in so doing, empowering educationalists and school leaders actually to get the work done properly and efficiently in schools, would run counter to States’ intentions towards public sector reform, is just laughable.

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