The fight for ‘independent’ independent schools

Thursday 22 June 2023

Guernsey’s three grant-aided colleges have been successfully untangled from the proposed Education Law Review which is currently being debated.

Deputies Lyndon Trott and Simon Fairclough have published an amendment to the Policy Letter, which rubs out any moves to control the grant-aided colleges through dozens of alterations to Education, Sport and Culture’s Policy Letter.

The amendment creates a new definition - Accredited Independent School - which essentially covers the three grant-aided colleges; Blanchelande College, Elizabeth College and The Ladies College.

"This amendment inserts a subcategory of independent schools, the accredited independent schools, which would include the three colleges,” said Deputy Trott. “The purpose of this subcategory is to ensure a lighter legislative and regulatory touch for the colleges, because they already follow standards set by well recognised professional bodies within the UK education sector.”

While the original proposal asked the assembly to agree that Independent Schools should be covered by the principles and objectives that could potentially become enshrined in law, the amendment has pulled the independent schools out of the picture and away from government oversight.

The amendment allows the Accredited Independent Schools to retain autonomy over their curriculums and inspection approaches. The argument being that the original Policy Letter seemed to suggest that ESC had concerns that the colleges are not functioning as they should, while evidence from recent inspection reports indicates that’s not the case.

When presenting amendment 8, Deputy Trott said: “What does count, is that according to the highly acclaimed independent school's inspectorate, colleges are exemplars both in terms of the educational outputs and the level of their governance.

"There is nothing, nothing to suggest that the schools are not functioning efficiently or effectively.”

Deputy Trott also argued that bringing the independent schools under any potential new legal governance would generate a more confrontational relationship between the States of Guernsey and the grant-aided colleges.

"There are three messages I want to emphasise. We want to avoid inefficiencies and duplication and unnecessary costs,” he said.

“We all should want to engender a culture of cooperation rather than confrontation.

"And I want to see a new education law that allows the sector to thrive rather than be controlled in an inefficient, expensive, potentially confrontational and completely unnecessary way.”

The amendments were unsurprisingly supported by the colleges themselves. In a joint statement between The Ladies College, Elizabeth College and Blanchelande College, they said: “[We] are proud of the educational provision we offer the island and fully support the amendments that Deputy Lyndon Trott Deputy Simon Fairclough have proposed.”

Pictured: Deputies Trott and Fairclough (L-R).

Despite strong support from the assembly, several deputies did stand to oppose the amendment.

Vice President of ESC, Deputy Sam Haskins didn’t understand why such a big deal was being made about the Policy Letter.

"We believe there's a lot of misunderstanding here. I've heard... lots of [big] words, but no substantive reasons as to why could there be confrontation.

“There is nothing in here that says that independent schools won't be able to be nimble. The overall question to me is not ‘if it ain't broke...why are we fixing it?’ It's ‘what is being done now? This isn't control, this isn't stymieing, it’s accountability."

The President of ESC said the Committee has a duty to give the community the school system it deserves.

“The one area that I want to talk about is the government's responsibility to safeguard and... to uphold rights for the education of our children; and to carve out a group of our schools from that provision, I think is very concerning.

“If we use the analogy of our finance industry, we don't say that some trust companies because they have professionals within them, who are members of accredited bodies, therefore are able to sidestep regulation from the GFSC. We don't do that with our doctor surgeries. So why would we do that with our children?”

A second amendment – amendment 9 – is still to be debated fully and concerns pulling the newly defined Accredited Independent Schools away from potential new requirements in relation to ‘additional learning needs’.

“Where the Committee for Education, Sport & Culture (ESC) is seeking to impose requirements on Independent schools (which include Accredited Independent Schools), even though those schools have their own obligations for the provision of additional learning needs under the prevention of discrimination legislation,” the amendment states.

Amendment 8 was split into 17 propositions, each either altering, deleting or adding a corresponding proposition in the Policy Letter. All 17 propositions were voted through by the Assembly.

The full Education Law Review has dozens of amendments lodged against it and debate will continue this week, as ESC attempts to modernise the decades old law with a new piece of legislation.