Education appoints new community governors

Community school governors have been appointed in Guernsey to provide regular oversight, support and challenge school leaders.

The roles were set up by the States as part of plans to allow local communities, parents and staff to work more closely with school leaders and the Committee for Education, Sport and Culture (ESC) politicians.

Community governors will sit on every Interim Governance Board (IGB) for the island's schools and hold them to account through "informed and robust inquiry", ESC said.

Lesley Le Page, community governor of Les Beaucamps High School, said: "We hope to create even more improvements to education for the children that will shape our future."

Ms Le Page said she had been on the school committee for six years which had been "very enjoyable and valuable".

"It seems that these new governance boards should give us the opportunity to be even more involved with the schools to continue to see the wonderful work that they do, in a more meaningful way," she said.

ESC said more than 95% of school leaders supported the boards and saw them as an "important and valuable foundation".

Kieran James, principal of the Sixth Form Centre, said the community governors would provide different "perspectives and dimensions".

"Hearing the opinions from all different kinds of stakeholders will be vital in making sure the new Sixth Form Centre is an ideal working environment for the young people of Guernsey," he said.

"The boards have already been proving valuable and I look forward to seeing the work they will achieve going forwards."

Tim Langlois, community governor of the Sixth Form Centre, said: "So far, we have undergone lots of training to ensure that we can be as effective and knowledgeable as possible when making improvements that directly affect our schools, and in turn, the lives of us all.

"It's important that we understand how governance boards work and how we can work to the best of our ability to provide the best results for education in Guernsey."

ESC said it had since started the process for parent and staff representatives to join the boards.

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