Expert throws weight behind trust schools

Published on Thursday 12 November 2009 21:22

AN EDUCATION expert has backed East Lothian Council's proposal to set up a trust to run its schools.

Professor Geoff Whitty, an authority on education trusts, said the move could help improve weak schools.

He was commenting as education secretary Fiona Hyslop faced growing pressure to embrace the proposals.

Speaking during First Minister's Questions yesterday, the Scottish Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie, demanded that Alex Salmond replace Ms Hyslop with someone who was prepared to tackle the issue.

But Prof Whitty, director of London University's Institute of Education, said the controversial move would only work if trusts were created for clusters of schools rather than individual institutions.

And he warned that autonomy for individual schools could lead to poor performers – particularly those in deprived areas – becoming worse.

Earlier this week, The Scotsman revealed East Lothian Council's proposal to become the first local authority in Scotland to set up trust schools in a cluster, which would devolve more power to heads and a community-led board of governors.

The move is controversial as Scotland has previously rejected any move to take schools away from direct council control.

However, England has moved to a system of devolving power and hundreds of schools south of the Border have successfully opted to become trust schools.

A trust cluster would allow schools to collaborate, share expertise such as specialist teachers and make shared budget decisions, such as pooling school bus services under a joint board of governors.

Prof Whitty said it was crucial to the success of the scheme that schools were not entirely removed from local authority control, allowing councils to make big-budget decisions like new buildings.

"The problem about schools becoming individually autonomous is that it is good for some schools but bad for others," he said.

"If you take the local authority out of it and just let all schools have independence, the strong grow stronger while the weak grow weaker; whereas if you group strong schools and weak schools together in a trust, that's quite a potentially beneficial move as the strong schools can bring the weak schools up."

Ms Goldie yesterday described the government's lack of response on the East Lothian proposal as a "shambles" and demanded an urgent debate on Scotland's education system.

"Alex Salmond needs to grip this issue, and if Fiona Hyslop cannot lead this vital and overdue debate on Scottish education, will he find someone who can?" she asked.

However, Mr Salmond defended Scotland's education system: "What I won't accept is running down an educational system, as the Conservatives do, which has delivered record attainment and results."