Schools which opt out of the local authority system perform better than those that remain controlled by their council. That controversial view was put forward yesterday by a former councillor in the aftermath of a proposal by East Lothian council to create arms-length trusts to operate clusters of primaries and secondaries.
Dornoch Academy opted out of Highland Council control from 1993 to 1999. The academy in Sutherland was the only senior school to take the step when the Conservatives were in power at Westminster and was able to run its own finances and make decisions in the best interests of the community.
Dornoch made the move to upgrade from a two-year to a six-year secondary — an expansion blocked by the council — but came back into the fold after Labour regained power.
Yesterday, the former district councillor for Dornoch, Duncan Allan, called for schools to once again be given the chance to opt out of local authority control. Mr Allan said that the move drove up standards and avoided some time-consuming and costly bureaucracy.
“It incurred the wrath of the educational establishment of Scotland,” admitted Mr Allan. “But the headmistress at the time supported the local people and they went through the procedure and off they went on their own. It was quite new to everyone, how to run a school.”
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A school board was set up and a new head teacher, John Garvie, was recruited and remains in post today. Throughout its time as an independent, Dornoch Academy succeeded in its aim to offer a full six-year education and now has 274 pupils.
Mr Allan said that Mr Garvie had showed great courage and has been “very, very successful”. “The councillors had absolutely nothing to do with running the school but I watched with great admiration as the board ran it extremely competently.
The school’s management board was headed by Joan Bishop, a businesswoman who had a daughter in one of Dornoch’s feeder primaries. “The parents and the community were very involved in the ethos of the school,” she said. “And I think we have a very high-quality school now partly due to the fact it is ‘our’ school.”
At present the only independently-run state school is Jordanhill, in Glasgow, but earlier this week, it emerged that East Lothian, an SNP-led administration, was considering setting up arms-length trusts to govern “clusters” of schools.
The proposal was picked up at First Minister’s Questions yesterday. Annabel Goldie, the Scottish Conservative leader asked if the First Minister accepted there was the “urgent need for a debate on how we provide education” and said that Fiona Hyslop, the Education Secretary, had not addressed the East Lothian proposal since it was reported on Monday.
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Saying that he was “all for debate on the future of Scottish education”, Mr Salmond described East Lothian’s proposals as “an interesting public consultation exercise” that “represents an interesting suggestion on the way to improve community empowerment.
“That seems to me an entirely sensible attitude to take to the East Lothian initiative. And I know it’s an entirely sensible attitude because it was given to me by Fiona Hyslop.”