Guernsey’s senior politician wants to limit the attendance of Education’s top civil servant at meetings of school governance boards to once per year.
Deputy Lindsay de Sausmarez, President of Policy & Resources, is seeking to amend Education’s plans which would give its Director the right to attend any meeting of boards.
The move, which is backed by Deputy Tina Bury, would instead give school governance boards the discretion to invite the education chief to any meeting it wishes.
It would also allow the political members of Education to instruct the Director to attend meetings if there is “written cause for concern” over how the boards are operating.
This could include “a material failure in governance, safeguarding, financial management, or compliance with applicable law or policy”.
The pair said this was “to ensure the continued direction towards independence and autonomy for the Governance Boards”.
Education, Sport & Cultures’ next set of plans for governance boards, which will be debated by the States next week, allow for central government to decide the role and responsibilities of school boards, and appoint some of the members.
But Education yesterday announced it would modify its plans in response to criticism from other deputies.
ESC wants the purpose of the boards to be set out to show they must support the views of staff, students and parents, and hold senior leadership to account on standards, resources and performance.
They have also proposed removing the requirement for each board to have an education civil servant as a member, in response to fears that the oversight of schools would be kept too close to central government.
Deputy Paul Montague, President of ESC, has insisted that ongoing investigations across the States will produce recommendations that could change how much influence civil servants have over the governance of local schools.
The amendment marks another challenge to the committee’s plans after it successfully batted off attempts to delay the introduction of school boards earlier this month.
What has ESC proposed?
- Create ‘clusters’ of independent governance boards covering every States-school.
- Appoint a chair, and community, staff and parent representatives.
- Also include an industry representative on the Guernsey Institute board.
- Scrap school management committees which include parish representatives.
- Form a new Committee to investigate how much of finance, IT, HR, and other central services should be devolved directly to schools.