Unusually learned head of year from one of the Channel Islands (8)
I believe the answer is:
alderney
'one of the channel islands' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'unusually learned head of year' is the wordplay.
'unusually' indicates an anagram.
'head of' indicates taking the first letters.
The first letter of 'year' is 'y'.
'learned' anagrammed gives 'alderne'.
'alderne'+'y'='ALDERNEY'
'from' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for alderney that I've seen before include "Channel isle" , "Cow, perhaps" , "One of Channel Islands" , "A Channel Island" , "Cattle" .)