But a report released just last week, was critical of certain aspects of the way the school has been run in the past. A particular focus was put on the poor leadership at Les Beaucamps over the last few years, when it is known that Sophie Roughesdge was the Headteacher. However, she has left the school on a secondment – seen by some as a promotion – to work within Education Services as wider changes are made to Guernsey’s secondary school systems.
With an Acting Headteacher in place and those changes to the island’s Education system on the horizon, Guernsey’s Executive Headteacher Liz Coffey said Les Beaucamps is well positioned for dramatic improvements.
“We are obviously embarking on this move to the two school model, working collaboratively with the staff to try and manage that transition as smoothly as possible. Now inevitably there are going to be some people who manage that transition better than others so it is a really difficult piece of work we have to do,” she said.
Pictured: Sophie Roughsedge, the former of head of Beaucamps. It was the leadership during her time as head that came under fire in the recent inspection report. She has since been promoted inside Education Services.
“Some of the sorts of things that have been concerns for this school, we hope can be addressed by the sorts of changes that are going to be brought about. Like the report mentions staff absence rate, at this point in time that has been more than halved. Parts of the report are very much on the agenda for us to look at as we move over to the new model.”
Despite the criticism it contained, the report was not without positives. It found the school had a good standard of wellbeing and welfare of its students. Martin Haimes, the Acting Headteacher, said things are looking good for the future. Since he started, he has put good communication at the top of his list of priorities, which has preemptively tackled some of the concerns highlighted in the report.
“The first thing to do new into a school is really to set out an example of my expectations, and to make sure those expectations make priorities with what staff want in mind. You have to learn from other people what the priorities are,” he said.
“So being really clear on that and communication, finding out from their perspective exactly where the school was, and then working with the Senior Leadership team to establish the priorities has been key. The priorities that we established were not different to the ones that were already in place but they agree with exactly the things that the inspectors have raised.”
St Sampsons and Les Beaucamps will be the two sites for the two school model.
Mr Haimes has already put into place improvements surrounding the school’s special needs care and also for the year 11s. These included putting people into jobs that were empty with the resources they truly needed, and also providing far more careers guidance for the senior students to ensure they had better support in coming up with a plan for their future.
But he emphasised how strong the staff at Les Beaucamps were, something he said would ensure they would eventually become a “great school”.
“The staff here have been stunning, and it’s making them feel that they have got some leadership but letting them get on with things. They have been great and I have been really pleased that the report recognises the staff’s commitment to the school.
“Parents can absolutely rest assured that the school is in good shape, and the staff are skilled. The number one priority of any school is the wellfare and wellbeing of the students. The report recognises that we are doing that well, teacher learning is good, we are really just a few small steps away from this school being a really good school.”
Looking forward on a larger scale, Ms Coffey said she had a great deal of optimism about the two school model:
“I was just talking to the shadow youth committee yesterday to actually talk about some of this, and they were absolutely brilliant in coming up with suggestions, strategies, ideas, and actually the young people themselves are pretty ok about what is going to happen in the future. It is managing it in an appropriate way so you do enough and don’t do too much. Staff have to be able to get on with their day job, so we have to allow them the opportunity to have that stability without then taking on board lots of other things too quickly. And that is a real challenge, to find that balance. So an appropriate pace of change.
“Guernsey’s been in a bit of a hiatus with education. I have been here three and a half years and I have had three different political committees in that time, three different plans of what is going to happen. Now I am obviously one of the three people anointed to manage this change agenda now, I am totally committed to it, but it is absolutely time for us to try and move forward with the plan that we have got.”
Pictured top: Acting Headteacher of Les Beaucamps High, Martin Haimes.