Education Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC365

Back to Report

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education Committee

on Wednesday 27 February 2013

Members present:

Pat Glass (Chair)

Neil Carmichael

Alex Cunningham

Bill Esterson

Charlotte Leslie

Siobhan McDonagh

Ian Mearns

Mr David Ward

Craig Whittaker

In the absence of the Chair, Pat Glass was called to the Chair.

________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Andrew Thraves, Publishing and Strategy Director, GL Education Group, Dr Bridget Sinclair, Chair of National Co-ordinators of Governor Services (NCOGS) and Governors Service Manager of Swindon Governor Services, Liz McSheehy, Chief Executive, SGOSS, and Pat Smart, Executive Headteacher, Greet and Conway primary schools, and National Leader of Education (NLE), National College for School Leadership, gave evidence.

Q104 Chair: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming. I am sitting in for the Chairman today, who is not too well. I will endeavour to provide his robust style of chairmanship. He always says at the beginning of these sessions that what we are looking for from witnesses are recommendations that we can make to Government. When you are giving your answer, keep in mind that anything you can give us that is a firm recommendation we can consider putting in our report to Government.

Clearly, governors are in the press today. Sir Michael Wilshaw is due to give an address today to launch a new school data dashboard. He calls it "a powerful new online tool designed to support governors to hold their schools to account". He is saying that "there will be ‘no excuse’ for governors who don’t understand and challenge their school robustly". He calls for more paid governors, better training and more professional governors drawn from both the public and private sectors. He also wants to challenge local authorities to take rapid action when governance is weak. Is Ofsted focusing on the right things in order to support governors in schools? Is this new dashboard going to make everything right?

Andrew Thraves: I have had a quick look at the dashboard. It is nice and simple, very visual and easy to understand. To some degree, though, it is fine at the top level for parents and some senior leaders. To some degree as well it has got to be about the data that lies underneath, because key to making sure the school is effective-in terms of its leadership, teaching and learning moving forwards-has got to be something about: what does the data actually mean in terms of moving forward?

Q105 Chair: Is there a danger that, for governors, this will simply become a tick-box exercise, in that if they have covered things on dashboard, they do not need to look any further?

Andrew Thraves: It depends on what the dashboard is showing. For example, if it is showing that progress has not been made, or if it is showing that the Pupil Premium, where it is spent, has not been working in the school, clearly that is signalling that something is amiss and something needs to be done about it. You could argue it could become a tick-box exercise if everything looks fine, but if there are issues to be raised, then clearly, also, those issues need to be addressed by the governing body.

Pat Smart: I am one of several National Leaders of Education who took part in the Fellowship Programme last year, which looked at governance, on which we have presented evidence to you. The data dashboard was one of our recommendations.

Q106 Chair: So, you welcome it?

Pat Smart: Yes, very much.

Dr Sinclair: Yes, the data dashboard is a very welcome development. It gives that high-level story about the data and trends over time, which will be a very quick and easy way for governors to begin their journey into delving into unpicking the data. But it must not become the be-all and end-all of data. It certainly is the beginning and will begin to raise questions, because even if that data dashboard is showing favourable trends, there could be deeper underlying stories that need to be explored. We certainly would not want that to become the exclusive source of data, and RAISEonline and further dipping into year-on-year in-house data is incredibly important, because the data dashboard is still looking at the end-of-year summative data, rather than in-house tracking.

Liz McSheehy: I agree with that. It is fine to have the dashboard and it is fine to have the information, but you need the right people on the governing body who have the skills to interpret and question and ask around that information. If it is helpful, it is great as a snapshot, but as Bridget says, you do need to be able to delve behind it. In a sense, your governing body needs to have the skills to be able to question around it too.

Q107 Chair: Michael Wilshaw is arguing today that "good governors focus on the big issues: the quality of teaching, the progress and achievement of their pupils, and the culture which supports this". Do you agree with that and how will the dashboard be able to identify the culture in an organisation, which is so important?

Andrew Thraves: You can see from the dashboard where it is focusing: progress, Pupil Premium spent, attendance and so on. To some degree, the dashboard is quite a useful device in terms of focusing the school on what the key areas might be. On the other hand, to some degree it is the "so what?" question, and it is the same with any data. As people say about the education system in the UK, we are data rich but data interpretation poor. The "so what?" question is, "Well, you’ve got the data; you may not have made the progress that is required"-or Pupil Premium has not been spent, or attendance, or whatever-"but what do we do about it?"

Chair: So, it is a good start, but just the beginning of a dialogue.

Andrew Thraves: Yes.

Q108 Neil Carmichael: I have just been to the presentation that Sir Michael gave to introduce the dashboard. He set out his case for doing so along the lines of: failing schools with poor governing bodies just do not have governors who are looking at this issue at all. He said most of them are talking about school meals rather than mathematics, which was a phrase he used. He said others just have not considered indicators at all. The real question behind this, fundamentally, is why are we in a place where the chief inspector of schools thinks that too many governing bodies need the dashboard?

Pat Smart: One of the issues that we looked at as a Fellowship was the fact that we have a RAISEonline document: in the case of primary schools, it is 91 pages and it is quite difficult. We were looking for a simplified document-not to replace RAISEonline but to supplement it. Added to that, we felt that the governors’ online manual, which is 256 pages, was just far too long. Some simplification, we felt, would help governors to ask the right kinds of questions. As colleagues have said, it is not the be-all and end-all. It is not the final answer to it; it is just one example of things we can do.

Liz McSheehy: I would argue that you need to get the right people in to be governors, and take people who come from business and who have skills, who are able to interpret information and ask the right questions. When we are talking about skills, we are not necessarily talking about specific business skills; we are talking about broader, transferable business skills. This would mean that you are used to looking at data sheets, you can ask questions and you are used to performing in a board situation. We need to get people in to be governors who actually can understand and think about the type of questions they are asking and really be critical friends. I think that is really important.

Q109 Neil Carmichael: You put your finger on the problem, and that is what this Committee, fundamentally, needs to address. With all the scores of governors we have-230,000-clearly, if you look at Ofsted inspections, you can see that some of them are just not doing a good enough job. Many are doing a good job, so let us not paint everybody with the same brush, but some are not. The supreme paradox is that the schools that are suffering the worst seem to be getting the least good governance; it ought to be the other way round, to some extent. It is certainly the wrong way round now. How do you address that problem?

Liz McSheehy: You would expect me to say this, but I would say we need to have more of my organisation, which is SGOSS, the School Governors’ One-Stop Shop. We are a well-kept secret. The organisations that know us and use us think we are good. Why are we good? We work with employers to identify volunteers, who we can then place with schools. We work with local authorities and we work with schools. The important thing is that we have recruited 24,800 volunteer governors from business since 2000. We have pushed the envelope as well because, out of these, 65% were under 45, more than half were female and over 20% were from ethnic minorities. The important thing is that we run an individual matching service. We found volunteers who are very high quality and professional. Of the 3,072 we recruited in 2012, 85% had degrees, 5.4% were qualified lawyers and around 7% were from FTSE 100 companies.

Q110 Chair: If we are getting all of these highly professional people-all right, not into most schools-why is Michael Wilshaw saying we should pay governors? Do you agree that we should?

Liz McSheehy: There are not enough. We should not necessarily pay people, because if we are talking about the skilled volunteers who we are putting in, they are people who come from senior or middle-managing business operations. They would not necessarily want to be paid. What they do need is recognition from their employer, whether it be greater time off because they are doing governor work, or whether it be recognition of the learning that they bring back to their own workplace.

Q111 Chair: Do the rest of you think that governors should be paid or do you think, as Liz is saying, that we should treat them more like magistrates so that there are protections around that role?

Andrew Thraves: The problem with paying governors is: what would you be paying them? If you look at governing bodies and the way things have gone in the last few years, there is talk of governing bodies acting more like a board of directors of a company. A board of directors at a company is not paid some stipend of several thousand pounds a year, so you have got that issue. The other piece about it as well is the fact that maybe there is public recognition or some other reward system that is not necessarily about money. I do not agree that governors should be paid. I do not think it would make much difference, frankly.

Dr Sinclair: I do not think there is evidence that non-payment is a limiting factor, and payment would have to be considered incredibly carefully because of the ramifications that would have, and they are complex. The problem of weak governance is a complex one as well and there certainly is no easy fix, but we are absolutely right in thinking it is about getting the right people round the table, retaining those people and giving them the right support and training, so that they have a very clear understanding of the expectation of the role and its responsibilities, and so that they give commitment and have time for that role. There is a great focus on the recruitment of professionals and graduates, which is fine, but whoever those people are with the right credentials, they have got to have passion and the time to give to that role for a consistently long period. They also need to develop the right relationship with the school to govern.

Q112 Mr Ward: You are not describing a world that I am familiar with. Ideally, it would be wonderful to be able to attract people who have professional educational backgrounds to inner-city areas and some of the more deprived areas. If you believe, as I do, that it is very important to have local community involved in schools, be it parental or community governors, it is going to be extremely difficult, even with a great deal of training, to get people to a level where they can understand the complexities and challenge a headteacher on the data that are produced. In those situations, the only recourse needs to be an independent expert for support. They are not just interested in school meals; they are interested, very much, in the levels of performance, attainment and achievement within the schools. However, there must be additional independent support to say: these are the questions. That support also needs to challenge the answers that are then given by the headteacher in the school. I am supposed to ask a question: do you agree?

Dr Sinclair: I agree with the challenges that you have in those more deprived areas and the difficulty of recruiting sufficient parents to those governing bodies who will be effective. The new constitution regulations allow much greater flexibility to the make-up of the governing body so that you can recruit much more specifically to particular roles. I am not saying it is not going to continue to be a challenge for those schools; if you are going to recruit the right people, they may have to travel some distance to serve those schools, but there are mechanisms to attract those people to schools where they can, perhaps, make the greatest difference. There is flexibility to do that, and it might be beholden on the leadership team as well to take a greater role in securing the recruitment of stronger governance where that is the case.

Pat Smart: My two schools are in inner-city Birmingham, so I have a lot of experience with the kinds of communities that you have just mentioned. As well as my own two schools, I have supported other governing bodies as National Leader or indeed as a governor. My experience has been that you have a continuum from laissez-faire to meddling. If you have a strong headteacher and a senior leadership team who are open and transparent, and have very high expectations and aspirations for their children, you can cope with a slightly weaker governing body. The problem is where there is a problem, and where you have not got that senior leadership team in the school-particularly the headteacher-that is when things can go seriously wrong. My experience has been, and the Fellowship’s experience was, that it takes too long for interventions to happen when something does go wrong. For example, we heard of evidence where Interim Executive Boards (IEBs) were put in place up to two years after a school had gone into a category. Now that we are in the new "requires improvement" category, hopefully that will change, because there is much more pressure on the former "satisfactory" schools to prove themselves. There is some optimism for the future that the right interventions will happen.

Q113 Neil Carmichael: We know, from a previous evidence session, that Interim Executive Boards are quite successful at turning a school around. Chiefly, they are smaller than governing bodies and they are also effectively populated by people who are cando, professional types. Is there not a message there?

Dr Sinclair: There is a message, and I understand where you are coming from. The model of the IEB is not necessarily a sustainable one because they are appointed to a school that is already identified as being in crisis and selected, quite rightly, on their skills basis and understanding of education. For that short period in which they are acting as an Interim Executive Board, they can be quite operational in supporting the leadership team and often in appointing a new headteacher and senior leaders where that school is in crisis. They are moving towards handing back to a sustainable governing body. What we are seeing is the quick and rapid improvement, but, in fact, you are then handing over, in likelihood, to a new leadership team, as well as a new governing body. I am not sure that model is sustainable when those people are actually in for a short period and probably devoting a huge amount of time to supporting that very fragile school over that period.

Q114 Neil Carmichael: A school must have been getting fairly fragile to have needed an Interim Executive Board in the first place.

Dr Sinclair: Absolutely.

Neil Carmichael: The point made by Pat, along the lines of intervention sometimes taking far too long, suggests to me that we need to see more types of IEBs, and knock off the "I" and perhaps have more permanent measures like that to sort out schools that are in need of that kind of help. It is all very well saying, "Well, we’ll shove in an IEB to solve the problem," but really what we should be saying is, "Why are the problems arriving in the first place?"

Q115 Chair: Instead of asking how we get the right skills on governing bodies, do you think the new regulations will help in getting people off governing bodies who do not have the right skills?

Dr Sinclair: It is sending the right messages to governors to take control of their governing body and make decisive decisions about strengthening their governing body. They do have the flexibility and they should not put up with governors who are ineffective on their governing body. There is no excuse to have governors who are not contributing to that governing body and to be saying, "Oh well, we’ve got vacancies because we can’t recruit to this particular stakeholder group." You do not have to retain that makeup; you can change that, and then you can recruit.

Q116 Neil Carmichael: What powers does a chair in a governing body have to get rid of an incompetent governor?

Dr Sinclair: It is not easy.

Neil Carmichael: No, it is not.

Dr Sinclair: They can use powers of persuasion. It is about that governing body acting for the interests of the school, and if you have-for want of a better word-dead wood on the governing body not contributing, then the chair of the governors needs to lead the governing body to strengthen that governing body.

Q117 Neil Carmichael: What happens if he or she is incompetent?

Dr Sinclair: That is more challenging.

Q118 Mr Ward: Can I start by looking at the issue of the particular skills that are required? The DfE acknowledges that a key challenge is encouraging schools to be open to new influences and focus on recruiting governors for their skills. Are you finding that that difficulty is the case?

Liz McSheehy: It is a good question.

Mr Ward: Thank you.

Liz McSheehy: You would expect me to say that, wouldn’t you? There is a need for governing bodies to be able to articulate what skills they need, and good governing bodies can do that very well. They need to be aware of what they are not good at and go out and find that, but so many governing bodies are not able to do that, and that is one of the issues that we are stuck with. Because of the way we work-we work very closely with local authorities and we work very closely with schools-in a sense, when we are looking at identifying volunteers, we are looking at filling the gaps. Then the support we have from the local authority or the support we have from the school in identifying what particular skills there are in some way goes to help. However, it is an issue.

Q119 Mr Ward: We have already touched on this debate about the types of skills required, such as some with finance skills or maybe even a legal background and so on, as opposed to the more transferable skills. Is it just one or the other or is there a balance?

Liz McSheehy: If we talk about specific skills-such as business, finance or legal-it takes us down a particular blind alley, because people are not necessarily put on governing boards because they are fantastic lawyers. They are on a governing board because they have the skills of having a legal mind and being able to interpret documents in a particular way or look at things in a different way. I do not think it is necessarily about bringing a specific set of financial skills; you are not an accountant, but you have the propensity to understand and interpret data, etc. It is about transferable business skills, and we are finding that people are coming from financial organisations and legal organisations to be school governors.

Q120 Mr Ward: If we move on to the issue of NCOGS, there is the subject you raised of accountability for making appointments to governing bodies. It says that "while there is much good practice regarding the appointment of governors there can be variability," as we would expect. Does this matter at all? Is it a key issue?

Dr Sinclair: Yes, it does. Where you have a model where the accountable body, whether it is the local authority or the diocese, is appointing local authority governors or foundation governors, they have a duty to ensure that those governors they appoint are able to contribute fully and to focus on school improvement. Sometimes that is difficult if those organisations are limited in where they are drawing from and if they are more concerned about just filling the posts, rather than really making sure those people are going to have an impact on that governing body.

Q121 Mr Ward: What about the variability between the different phases, or the different types, of schools: PRUs all the way through?

Dr Sinclair: The quality of governance? Yes, that came from the Ofsted HMI report in 2011 on the relative calibre of governance, where there was quite a disparity between, particularly, the primary and secondary, wasn’t there? It is an interesting point that, in that report, Ofsted do not comment on a hypothesis of why that is the fact, but there is often a halo effect between the judgment on leadership and management, and governance. In fact, from that report, the judgments on quality and leadership management from those same schools were, in total, 64% " good" or "outstanding" in primaries and 71% "good" or "outstanding" in secondary schools, which, in fact, mirrors the governance judgments. You would have to unpick that more. The devil is in the detail and it is very difficult to make a judgment on governance; on what do you base that judgment? It is difficult.

Q122 Mr Ward: What about the concern that has been expressed that the increased focus on governance through Ofsted may frighten some off? Is that going to be a problem? The others might want to chip in.

Dr Sinclair: I do not believe there is any evidence of that. Every governor wants to do a good job in governing, and I very much welcome the new Ofsted framework, which gives due weight to governance. I think it is going to do a lot to strengthen governing bodies, because they will have to respond to that and be held accountable. I do not see the Ofsted framework putting governors off.

Liz McSheehy: I share that view. It should not put people off. It might weed out people who might not take the job seriously, but it serves to underpin the importance of the role. If you are taking people on, they need to realise it is an important job being a school governor and there is accountability. It is very helpful.

Q123 Mr Ward: Just for the record, what are your views on the payment of governors? Would that help with recruitment? Is that an answer?

Pat Smart: As a Fellowship, we looked at that and we felt there was not a case for paying-we are talking about 300,000 people-although we thought there was possibly a case for paying the chair of an IEB, who is taking on that extra role.

Q124 Chair: Is that the general view across you all now-that there does not appear to be a case or that non-payment is not a barrier?

Dr Sinclair: Yes.

Andrew Thraves: Yes.

Pat Smart: Yes.

Liz McSheehy: Yes.

Q125 Ian Mearns: I have been a governor myself for quite a number of years-I think this is my 30th year as a school governor, so I want some back money if they decide to pay people. Will training and development address the failings of the 40% of governing bodies that Ofsted has identified as "satisfactory" or "inadequate"?

Andrew Thraves: To some degree, yes. Training is always going to be important. There is always a case for induction training. As more academies come on stream, their money is being spent elsewhere. The basic training is getting affected. There should be training at a higher level. It should go both ways as well, because the company I work for, which is GL Education, has a company called Kirkland Rowell. We do stakeholder surveys of parents, staff and pupils. What is interesting in the feedback in terms of our surveys is that a significant number of teachers say they are not supported by the governing body. There is an interesting piece there. If you look at the National Professional Qualification for Headship, there is not much in there-if anything-that is about working effectively with the governing body. You could maybe introduce something in there, and then it will work both ways, so there would be training for governors and training the headteacher about working with governors. That could be a potential solution.

Dr Sinclair: I would definitely support that. Training for headteachers in governance is very important, because the headteacher has a huge influence on the quality of the governing body, in supporting the professional development of the governing body and on helping shape that governing body. I would certainly wish to see much greater management training for the governors and potential leaders and headteachers in governance.

Q126 Ian Mearns: Bridget, you have got a role within local government Governor Services, I understand. Are you at all concerned at the loss of local authority Governor Services and training, which has been diluted around the country? Do you think private providers will be able to fill this gap appropriately?

Dr Sinclair: Yes, I am concerned, and there is evidence that a lot of highly skilled Governor Services officers have left the service in recent years due to cuts in LA services. There has also been a loss of many officers in the school improvement teams that work around us, so we are losing that expertise and intelligence about the schools. However, as we are becoming much more simply traded services, Governor Services are self-supporting in that matter and developing in different ways and working collaboratively across local authorities, alongside other emerging markets working in Governor Services. There is a danger that, where there are regions where those services are fragile, there is not the coverage over wide regions, and governors potentially could lose that local provision of high-quality breadth of service and provision. It is not sufficient for governors just to attend an odd event once a year, or something; they really need access to a portfolio of training and support and, ideally, substantial face-to-face support alongside other provision.

Ian Mearns: Certainly, over the years as a governor, we have been bombarded by DfE circulars and guidance notes, and the local authority Governor Services has been able to give us a readable synopsis without having to wade through all the technical detail about what the implications are and what it all means for us. Sometimes we have to go into the detail as a governor, but if you have got the synopsis you know where to look to begin with, and that has been very useful over the years.

Pat Smart: It would be a really good idea if there was an expectation on at least chairs of governors, if not chairs of committees or other senior governing body positions, that there would be training on a regular basis, because it is fairly optional at the moment. What happens is in weaker governing bodies it does not happen, and in stronger governing bodies it does. It reinforces the dichotomy. My school is a teaching school and we are going to look at training for aspirant leaders in governance, which could be a really good move. We would look across the marketplace to see where we could work with other people to do that. The National College has provided some new training now for chairs of governors, which is a step in the right direction-there is a long way to go on that. Also, they are into the third cohort of National Leaders of Governance.

Linked to that, and also linked to the previous question from David, there is an issue there for how we are going to work with governing bodies to widen their view. National Leaders of Governance are one way, but also another way, which came from our Fellowship report, was that we look at, particularly in primary schools, the opportunity for governing bodies to lead more than one school. I have had experience of it myself, when we took over a second school, and that was obviously with an IEB, but we have moved to a federation governing body and it has worked extremely well. The evidence and research shows that that would work as well, and that would be another way of supporting this gap in the primary sector.

Q127 Ian Mearns: Down the line, though, does that not, to a certain extent, imply dilution of ownership of the role of governor if it is within the context of a number of schools? I certainly remember when local authorities used to have group governing bodies to cover a number of schools, and that was before LMS. I do not think it was always the best model and it had to be finessed and updated to a large extent. There was some lack of connection, sometimes, between the individual governor and the schools, because they were looking at so many different problems in so many different schools at the same time.

Pat Smart: Yes. In my case, we have one headteacher and one chair of governors, so that would all help, and the context of the two schools is very similar-except one was performing far better than the other. We had a direct comparison and it worked well. Governors would need to understand the context, because people have already mentioned they need to have passion and commitment to the communities they are serving.

Andrew Thraves: We might find that begins to happen as the natural course of events. If you look at where the education system is going, you have got more academy groups and more federations. The SEN measures that are likely to come in will mean that groups of schools will have to gather together in order to provide their SEN requirements; it cannot be provided by just one school. To some degree, schools are going to have to federate more closely together anyway, and therefore it seems natural that governing bodies might need to do the same thing.

Q128 Ian Mearns: There is a real dilemma for school governing bodies per se, because, quite often, the willing people are not always the right people to do the job. People are well intentioned but, frankly, sometimes they are just not up to the job of scrutinising the role of the headteacher and the senior leadership team effectively and supporting them and doing the work they have got to do. Given that context and the real range of people you have-over 300,000 governors from all sorts of backgrounds-how should governing bodies go about identifying their priorities for training needs within their own cohort?

Liz McSheehy: I suppose I wanted to look at it from our business perspective, because we got some feedback from some of our volunteers about business people who are placed as school governors. The feedback on their training was quite good; 85% got training in their first year of being a governor and 84% rated the training as being "effective" or "very effective", which was a good bit of feedback. However, I suppose what we would like to see are training courses tailored to the needs of the high-calibre business volunteers who are being selected. We have heard of examples where people are being put in from large corporates who are having to consider supporting their governors by hosting governor networks and procuring bespoke training so they can make sure the training that is offered for those particular governors is tailored and fit for purpose. It is an interesting way of looking at it; some large corporates are saying, "Well, actually, there’s a gap here, and we’re supporting our people who are training." Ironically, the business governors are going back to their governing bodies and inviting the governors to attend some of that large corporate training. It is an interesting way of looking at it. It is saying, "Well, actually, it’s not quite fit for purpose, so we’re going to do something about it."

Q129 Ian Mearns: Does anyone think there are any areas in which training should be mandatory for governors?

Andrew Thraves: Strategy development. If you look at schools and where they are supposed to be going, they are supposed to be more strategic. Doing strategy is quite tough, and if you look at your average school, the school is obviously bothered about the day-to-day teaching and also where it needs to go, but strategy is: where do you want to be in the future? Where are you now? How do you get there? How do you teach a governing body to strategise? The other difficulty is: does the governing body know where the education system is going and how might it get there?

Ian Mearns: Does the Secretary of State know where the education system is going?

Andrew Thraves: There is a role there maybe not for better communication but for more in-depth communication from the DfE about: this is where we want you to be.

Dr Sinclair: Training and development is certainly not something where you have the induction and then you are a governor. Schools and governing bodies need to accept that they need to and should willingly invest in their own development, and that means financially as well as in their time, to explore their development needs and to access the training in as many areas as they need to. Local authorities run induction training and that will get you started; it will familiarise you with some of the many hundreds of acronyms and give you an overview. Then there will be 20 other probably very helpful pieces of training that you will need to access over a period of time, whether that is for example, child protection, health and safety or performance management. There is a host of areas that, among the whole governing body, there needs to be experience in. Training and development is very much ongoing, and governing bodies need to invest in that. Going back to those fragile governing bodies, which have previously failed, you would probably find that any kind of training and development has lapsed. There is not a culture of training and development, and that is something I recommend.

Q130 Ian Mearns: In an earlier argument you mentioned the NPQH process for headteachers. Do you think there should be a mandatory module within that about training for governance as well as headship?

Andrew Thraves: Absolutely, yes.

Q131 Chair: Can I just check that you all agree that governance training should be mandatory for headteachers?

Dr Sinclair: Yes.

Andrew Thraves: Yes.

Pat Smart: Yes.

Liz McSheehy: Yes.

Q132 Chair: Do you have a picture of whether governors in academies are getting the same frequency of training and level of training that previously would have happened under local authorities?

Dr Sinclair: I do not have evidence across the piece. I can only talk from my local authority in terms of detail about that, where all of our converted schools are still buying into the service and accessing the portfolio, which has developed to meet the needs of academies.

Chair: So we just do not have the evidence yet.

Dr Sinclair: I do not have the evidence. Perhaps that is something I can give you later.

Andrew Thraves: There is interesting anecdotal evidence when I go into academies and also from the resources that we create and sell-our questionnaires and other things. I do not have any figures, but we tend to find that academies talk about spending more on training, generally, because they are free to spend the money where they want to spend it. Academies also tend to spend more on assessment resources because they believe in maximising pupil progress, base-lining them and seeing where they need to go next. To some degree, as well, with academies, if they are sponsored by entrepreneurs or business groups, or whatever, those business groups and entrepreneurs can put the right people onto that academy body. They have got access to a wider pool of people.

Pat Smart: As a slight aside but still linked to academies-my experience has been not from the converter academy point of view but from the forced academy-governing bodies still have to make the decision about which sponsor they will go for. My experience has been that they find that extremely difficult. They are in a traumatic situation-they are being forced to be an academy and suddenly they have got to choose. It is a general marketplace; it is not a very good system at the moment, and I would question whether they have got the ability in that situation to make a really good decision.

Q133 Chair: So, it is variable depending on whether it is a converter or pressed?

Pat Smart: Yes.

Q134 Neil Carmichael: We have already been testing the territory of underperformance; I did that earlier and I am going to return to it. First, I have two questions, one that was triggered off in my mind by Pat and her comments about federation structures and so forth. Is there any evidence that they are gaining traction and popularity in the world of governance?

Pat Smart: The word "federation" is off the radar in a way, because of the new landscape we are in; academy has taken over from that. There is evidence that federations work, and it is about close partnerships that put the children first and make a difference to the children-that is what they are there for. They work. There is probably some concern about the move towards multi-academy trusts, not as a principle but due to what that might mean for the autonomy of individual schools. There will be headteachers and governors who will be concerned that they may lose that if they come under the umbrella of something else. It is the point we are at, rather than an opposition to it-though there is opposition to it, of course. There is also just the general concern that we do not know where we are going with it because the pace of change is so rapid.

Q135 Neil Carmichael: There could be different structures, couldn’t there? You could have vertical integration, such as feeder schools and so forth. You could also have horizontal integration, with similar schools coming together. You could have a combination of both. Is there any evidence that any one of those is better than the other?

Dr Sinclair: I do not think there is evidence. In terms of governing multiple school systems, there is obviously a point whereby it becomes difficult to govern more than two or three schools-what is that critical point? We all understand that, in order to govern well, you have got to know the schools well, and it becomes increasingly more difficult to know many schools very well. You become highly dependent on the leadership team for information about those schools that you are governing at a very high level, if you are not able to know those schools. There is a concern around the more complex models of governance that we are seeing, and a study should be made of the vulnerabilities of those models as we move forward.

Q136 Neil Carmichael: Turning to another matter, in an earlier session we were testing the difference between skills and stakeholder representation. There is an argument that you have been setting out that skills are the top priority. Of course, there is stakeholder representation on a lot of governing bodies and it raises a number of sub-questions. One of them is the issue of accountability. Let us imagine a stakeholder-parents or staff; how often do you think those governors report back to their governing body and constituency, and how many of those constituencies end up firing a governor because they are not doing a very good job?

Dr Sinclair: Because they do not act on behalf of their constituents, it does not work like that. If you are a parent governor, you are not representing the parent body-you are there as a parent. You are not being lobbied by your parent group and then taking that voice. The parents will know whether the governing bodies are acting effectively by the performance of the school and looking at the minutes of meetings, and will make a decision on whether they are happy with their governors. If they think they want to be a parent governor, then they can be nominated to become one the next time there is a vacancy, or they may decide not to re-elect a governor if they feel that person has failed in their role.

Q137 Chair: Is it important that stakeholders are represented? We have parents and pupils and staff, so is it important they are represented, or do they just get in the way of professional governing bodies?

Dr Sinclair: It is very important that we have stakeholder involvement to some degree. Parents and staff need to have a voice at their local community school. The weight of that voice can vary, and we have got those new constitution models that allow you to vary that. I would not want to make a judgment that one stakeholder group is particularly predisposed to be weak or stronger. It is about those people having the passion, the time and the ability to govern.

Q138 Neil Carmichael: Which is best? What is the most important: having people who are skilled or having a group of people with labels?

Dr Sinclair: Labels do not matter. It is about having people who are skilled, passionate and effective.

Neil Carmichael: Yes, so that would be your priority.

Dr Sinclair: You still want that local representation, to some degree.

Andrew Thraves: It is about the representation, but it is also about engaging with your stakeholders, generally, and that does include parents and pupils. A key role of the governing body is the reliable information that is at their fingertips. There has been an interesting piece in the last few years with Parent View. You do not need that many parents to trigger an inspection, in theory. A good governing body will engage with their stakeholders significantly, because they need to have that information. Remember that with stakeholder surveys and others, you are measuring perception. There may not be an actual problem; you are measuring the perception. If Ofsted goes in and sees that there may have been an issue, or that perception is an issue and you have done nothing about it, the governing body is going to be clobbered. It is very important to engage with the stakeholders and then do something about measuring the perception and doing something about it. If the perception is that something is weak, then it is about doing something about that. That is from wider engagement; surveys can engage with a wider number of people.

Q139 Chair: Can I ask about Parent View? Are the views expressed on the Parent View reliable indicators of school leadership and governance?

Andrew Thraves: I have been a governor for a number of years. At my small local, rural primary school down the road, you could say there is a cabal of local parents-and they are always the same ones-who could use Parent View together and trigger an inspection. It can be used in the wrong way.

Q140 Neil Carmichael: That is the danger. It is all very well saying "engagement", but if you think that engagement is having a few people on the governing body to represent, or to flag up, the parents’ view, ironically that could dilute the engagement. What you really ought to be doing as a governing body is engaging with that whole stakeholder group, talking to the PTA, writing letters to the parents, keeping them informed and not relying on the five or six on the governing body to do that for you. You need to be doing it as a governing body with the leadership of the governing body right behind that message. Having stakeholders on the governing body is no guarantee that you are going to engage with stakeholders. It actually might, effectively, weaken that capacity. A good governing body should be measured certainly on how it engages stakeholders, but not just simply because you have got a few around the table; you have to be out there talking to them.

Chair: And the question is?

Neil Carmichael: The question therefore is very important and is central to this issue-I have already asked it but I am going to ask it again. If you are going to construct a governing body, do you think the constitution of that governing body should be determined by an appetite for skills or a desire to have stakeholders on it?

Andrew Thraves: Skills are more important than the variety of stakeholders on the governing body, because you can engage with a wider variety of stakeholders through other means.

Q141 Neil Carmichael: Does anyone dissent from Andrew’s view?

Pat Smart: We did look at this in some depth on the Fellowship last year. We looked at a whole range of governance, from charities to public services, and we found that the smaller governing bodies tended to work better, particularly when they were skills-based. That was our recommendation.

Q142 Chair: Is that your view too?

Liz McSheehy: Yes.

Dr Sinclair: It is the skills, but the two are not mutually exclusive. It is not helpful to focus on that. They are not mutually exclusive. You can have the skills and you can train and develop, but it is about the governing body acting corporately for the best interests of the children. A stakeholder model is not an obstacle to good governance.

Q143 Neil Carmichael: A central person on the governing body is the chair, presumably-you would agree with that. Should he or she be elected or appointed? If it is the latter, then by whom should he or she be appointed?

Dr Sinclair: They have always been elected. We would have to have good reason to change that.

Q144 Chair: Is there any evidence that we need to change it?

Dr Sinclair: I do not believe so. There are anomalies where there are chairs who, perhaps, are not doing a good job, but the governing body is responsible for electing them. Therefore, they need to be responsible in electing the right person to that role.

Q145 Neil Carmichael: Have you any data on the subject of how many actually go through a contested election?

Dr Sinclair: No.

Q146 Chair: Is there any evidence that there are any chairs of governing bodies across the country who are not elected? Are we getting red flags up saying, "These people are not elected"?

Dr Sinclair: When you say, "not elected", that is the process-

Chair: Sorry, I meant "unopposed".

Dr Sinclair: I do not know the data.

Neil Carmichael: I have one last question, because I know I have probably strayed beyond my brief here.

Chair: I have been very indulgent.

Q147 Neil Carmichael: You have, Pat, and I will be thanking you later in some way appropriate. Some of you have hinted that intervention is "slap happy" and sometimes too late. One would have thought, certainly in academies, that, to be honest, it is the governing body that should be doing a fair bit of intervening if it sees its school not going too well. That is surely one of its key responsibilities, isn’t it? Intervention on a governing body should only occur if that governing body has just simply failed, itself, to do the job of accountability. Do you all agree with that?

Andrew Thraves: To some degree there is an element of the governing body, whether rightly or wrongly, being seen as an extension of the staff. One of the challenges is to try to drive clear, blue water between the governing body and the staff. It goes back to the point made slightly earlier about the composition of the governing body. If you have got issues with some of the teachers or if you have got issues with the headteacher, it is quite difficult to do something about it if you have got the very people there on the governing body. There is something about clear, blue water there, to some degree.

Neil Carmichael: That goes back to the stakeholder discussion. You cannot have clear, blue water if everybody is swimming around in the same water.

Q148 Mr Ward: We have touched on the issue of access to information, and, Andrew, you have expressed concerns about the difficulty, particularly in larger schools, of accessing information to proactively monitor progress. Just for the record, could we have some views on how that can be done? Then I will have a quick question on the clerking role. We have touched on the dashboard but, just for the record, what are your views on getting that access to information?

Andrew Thraves: Well, I would say this, wouldn’t I-you should use some of the resources that we produce. Whether we do surveys or whether it is assessments for children, schools or whatever, the key thing is the reporting that comes out the other end. If you have got the new data dashboard, which gives a top-level piece, there is something beneath that that needs to happen that says, "Okay, well how do I actually address the issue?" if there is an issue. You need that granular reporting. One of the reasons we are successful as a company is that teachers buy that from us.

The other thing I would say though-and I always find this personally as well, being on a governing body-is that there is sometimes an expectation that governors have to become statisticians as soon as they walk through the school gates for a governing body. I always wonder, "Well, why is that the case? Why are we suddenly elevated to that position? Will we really understand the data, as soon as it’s put in front of us?" The dashboard is important from that perspective, for the non-specialists. The granularity underneath is equally important, but it has to be interpreted accurately. One of the things I would say about data, generally, is that it is fine to say that this is where you might be, but the equal, if not more important, bit is, "Okay, what do I do about it?" That is the interesting piece: the interpretation and the analysis and, as I said earlier, the "so what?" factor.

Dr Sinclair: Schools are data rich and a good headteacher will present the governors with regular, adequate reports, which will enable them to understand the performance of the school across a period of time. The problem is that the governors do not know if they are seeing suitable information or not, and that takes us back to training. They have got to know what good reporting looks like, and they have got to know what questions to ask and what to expect from their headteacher and what to ask of their headteacher. Schools are data rich; there is plenty of information there.

Q149 Mr Ward: I am drawn to it because I know of a school that failed an Ofsted inspection a month or two after it received quite a glowing report saying, "Everything’s going well." I have a somewhat sceptical view about the value of training, as outside advice can be contrary. Do you have any comments on the role and professionalisation of the clerk?

Dr Sinclair: I wholeheartedly support having a professional clerk, independent of the school. Many clerks are employed in other capacities in schools, still, and that is not an ideal situation.

Q150 Mr Ward: Who should pay for them?

Dr Sinclair: They should be paid for by the school, but not employed, perhaps, in other capacities.

Andrew Thraves: I would agree with that. A good clerk cannot be simply a means to prop up a weak chair. You cannot be excused for having a weak chair; you need two strong people in both those key positions.

Q151 Chair: My experience-and maybe I have just worked in good local authorities-is that the clerks were people who did not just turn up and take the minutes. They knew, and could give, good legal advice and good financial advice. Is that still the case or are we seeing some of that weaken now?

Dr Sinclair: No, we are seeing clerking strengthening, definitely. I would just mention that I know that the new governors’ handbook, which is due to replace the Governors’ Guide to the Law, will be a much smaller document and will not have a lot of the procedural information that it is essential for the clerk to have to enable them to give that professional advice and guidance.

Q152 Chair: Is that a recommendation?

Dr Sinclair: Yes, the clerk still needs to have that detailed procedural guidance and information, so yes they do still need that, otherwise they are going to have to go and refer to guidance and legislations to remind themselves of the detail. That is not very practical or helpful.

Q153 Chair: Finally, Liz, is there a role for your organisation in recruiting clerks?

Liz McSheehy: Yes, it could be an SGOSS-plus service. There could well be, just as there could potentially be a role for us in identifying people from business who would be effective chairs. I think there are opportunities to look at that.

Chair: Just finally, as I said at the beginning, we do like recommendations, so if there is anything else that you can think of, either now or that you want to give us later in writing, please do so. If there are no further recommendations, then thank you very much.

<?oasys [pg6,cwe1] ?>Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Michael Jeans, Chairman of Haberdashers’ Education Committee, The Haberdashers’ Company, Mark Taylor, Director of Schools for Cambridge Education, Islington, and designated Director of School & Young Peoples Services, LB Islington, Nicola Cook, Governor Services Manager, Children and Young People’s Services, Buckinghamshire County Council, and Darren Northcott, National Official for Education, NASUWT Teachers’ Union, gave evidence.

Q154 Chair: Good morning. I do not know how many of you were in the room earlier, but if you were you would have heard me say that what we are looking for is firm recommendations. We make recommendations to Government, which they may not accept in their entirety, initially. However, we usually find that, over a period of time, policy does change and is influenced by the recommendations that come out of this Committee. If you can give us firm recommendations, that is always very helpful. Can I start off by being quite controversial? Do we need a radical alternative to the current governor structure? Is it working? Is it no longer fit for purpose?

Michael Jeans: It is a broad question, which means there is a danger of a broad, general answer. It clearly is not working if you have got a gap of 10% of governors in the maintained sector; if we are not recruiting governors, then it cannot be working from that aspect. It cannot be working from the aspect that, even under the old regime and old inspection standards, there were reports from Ofsted saying there is poor governance or less-than-satisfactory governance. Equally, there are some that are being governed fine and have got full governing bodies. It is not working totally but nothing ever does work totally. It is a significant enough problem to be examined.

Mark Taylor: In a changing education landscape, in a sense, governance is always going to be a work in progress in the way that it needs to be across a range of different local bodies and institutions. Nonetheless, there is enough solid practice and practice that has responded creatively to that changing landscape to keep that governance under review.

In terms of recommendations, I would suggest that notion of work in progress and using good practice, and making sure that there are vehicles through Ofsted and other mechanisms we have got in terms of accountability that we make more public both to governors, local authorities, academy chains and whoever else is involved in that process.

Darren Northcott: I would agree with that. There is a strong case for enhancing the model we have got. There is a lot of good practice out there, but clearly there are problems and there are concerns that this morning’s witnesses and others previously have identified that mean we need to concentrate on this and make sure we continue to refine that governance model as best we can. It is very challenging; it is complex. There are no quick or easy solutions to the challenges we face.

Nicola Cook: My view, coming from Governor Services, is that there are a lot of strengths in the current model of school governance. I endorse the principle of the stakeholder model, in terms of democratic accountability for public money. I recognise what people are saying about skills representation, but I do not think the two are mutually exclusive. The revision to the constitution regulations, which now give local authority maintained schools greater flexibility, is very welcome. Under the previous framework, it was very prescriptive and sometimes it could be a barrier to being able to put somebody with the specific skills that you needed onto a particular governing body.

In terms of the vacancy rate, I am not too troubled by that because that is always at a point in time, and we have governors who are being reappointed going through that process. Clearly, there is a lot of work to be done to encourage people to come forward to be on governing bodies. In terms of the work that Ofsted is doing, that is bringing a real focus now onto school governance, and it is very welcome and will be very helpful.

Q155 Chair: I know you can only speak for your schools or your sector, but do you think that the dashboard is going to be universally welcomed? Can you see any particular area, or schools, that will not welcome it?

Mark Taylor: From somebody who works currently in local authority, schools will welcome the dashboard; generally speaking, schools do welcome data. My observations on the dashboard would be that it is at a high level, and unless there is a more coherent framework of questions to support governors in using that data, that may limit its usefulness for governors. Also, if you look at the balance between that and RAISEonline, which provides more detailed data, I would suggest that something between the two might be more helpful. Again, the issue of a solid framework of questions that governors could use not just in the local setting-because there are comparisons that can be made between similar schools-but nationally that supports them in using that data is really very important. There are dangers in letting the governors make the questions up themselves. There needs to be a bit more rigour around that, in terms of recommendations.

Chair: Just a framework.

Nicola Cook: The Ofsted data dashboard is welcome for governors. The important thing, though, as colleagues are saying and have said in the previous session, is that governors need to know the questions to ask, and then they need to know what to do with the information that they receive. Any external data that governors have access to are very helpful in terms of validating the information that they are getting from their school because, as colleagues said, schools are data rich. For governors, the data dashboard at that high level can be very valuable in looking at the data that the school is actually providing to the governing body, and seeing if it validates what the school is telling them about progress within the school for pupils.

Michael Jeans: We may have come on to it-you did in the previous session-but the whole area of strategy and key performance indicators is linked with that at the dashboard, and the degree to which one does make comparisons. Again, the questions to ask are absolutely crucial; the data alone do not do anything. It comes to training governors. Do they understand what this dashboard is saying? Do they understand the key performance indicators? Finally, I think one generally needs to take care that, with the use of data or KPIs or even the dashboard, the governing body remains at a strategic oversight level and does not dive down into micromanaging operational matters, unless these key performance indicators and the dashboard are indicating that there is a problem. Otherwise, it will be right down there in the minutiae, and that can create havoc.

Q156 Ian Mearns: We heard from the previous panel, and it was a clear guide to us, that training in strategic thinking for governors was essential. I think, Darren, your own union has said in evidence to this Committee that it is clear that "the established model of governance in the maintained school sector does not operate consistently to ensure that governing bodies are able to discharge their key responsibilities effectively". We have also seen evidence that Ofsted have rated 40% of governing bodies as either "satisfactory" or "inadequate". While there may be strengths within the current model, there is obviously a plethora of weaknesses. Does the stakeholder model really still work or is it time to change?

Darren Northcott: As many people have said, I do not think it is an either/or question-it is not a skills or stakeholder model. The stakeholder model is important for the reasons that have been discussed this morning. Having access to critical skills, which may involve membership of a governing body or it may involve the governing body having access to an external source of advice and support, is very important. Sometimes, the problems that we encounter as a union with governing bodies perhaps have at their root the fact that the governing body has not had the opportunity to access specialist advice and support on school budgets, finance, personnel and so forth. That element of skill is often missing when there are problems with governing bodies; there is no question about that.

Nicola Cook: We must not get too hung up on this debate about stakeholder model versus skills because, as I said, they are not mutually exclusive. There is now flexibility within the regulations. What is crucial is governors understanding their role, as Darren was saying. If governors understand their role, because they have got the right training and support, then whether they are a stakeholder representative or they are there because of their skills is not to my mind the most important issue.

Mark Taylor: I would urge caution if you are driven down the path that means we have to somehow decide between stakeholder engagement and a skills set. In a sense, as soon as you are on a governing body, you are de facto a stakeholder. The question is where you come from and whom you are representing. First of all, the first clear thing is that, when you are on a governing body, you are part of a governing body. Although you are influenced by your stakeholder group, you are not solely representing that stakeholder group; good training tells governors that at the outset.

In my view, adequately trained, a parent is very well placed to ask sensible and sound questions about the performance of the school, providing they have the correct data, they are appropriately trained and the data are presented to them in a way that they are able to understand and manage. I accept that in my own local authority I am fortunate enough to be working with a group of schools where we do not have any schools that are failing at the moment. All bar a bare handful are "good" or "outstanding", and that is not to do with the local authority, in a sense; that is to do with the quality of the governance and the investment in that governing body. While I accept that we need to understand what being a stakeholder is and what having the skills set is, I would be cautious about being driven down one path or the other.

Q157 Ian Mearns: I must admit, certainly, I have nothing against accountants or HR advisers, but, frankly, sometimes the fact that they are an accountant or HR adviser does not mean they are going to know what questions to ask about whether the French curriculum is being taught correctly.

Michael Jeans: Can I just quickly respond, as an accountant? I do not practise as one. Skill is a difficult thing to define. Skills come first and do not necessarily deny a stakeholder, but there is a longer debate. But I always say there are skills and there is experience. You do not put an accountant, or a lawyer or a surveyor on the board of governors in order to gain on-the-cheap professional advice. You put somebody on that board because they have that breadth of experience and, if necessary, will know that at this point you should seek external advice from an accountant, or something. It is quite wrong to say that you have got them there just to get something on the cheap.

Nicola Cook: People with those professional roles have to be extremely careful about the advice that they are deemed to be giving to the governing body, because they could end up with a personal liability if they are not careful, so that is absolutely right. As the previous panel said, it is about people bringing those transferable skills to the governing body that is the important aspect of that.

Ian Mearns: I do not know how many times, as an MP, I have had to tell my constituents that I am not a lawyer and I cannot give legal advice.

Q158 Mr Ward: I must say that, as an accountant, my skills were never really required-the key missing factor was always interpretation of performance data for the pupils. That was the big gap. Can I just pick up on the issue of suitable training that you referred to? Mark and obviously Nicola, the definition too often of trained governors is those that have been on a course, and we have a grid and we tick off who has been on which particular course. It is then a case of, "That’s it. We’re all trained now." On your courses that would not apply because they are so superb, but there is-is there not-a fallacy that you send them on a course and that is it.

Nicola Cook: I can agree, yes, that if you look at it at that level, that could be the case. What is really important is that governing bodies undertake self-evaluation, so that they understand the strengths and weaknesses not only of the school but of themselves, so they identify the training that they need. It is then about going back and putting that training into practice. Yes, okay, they have been on the training and they have ticked the box, but an effective governor will then be taking that information back and trying to make a difference with it. It is then about them reassessing and re-self-evaluating after the event to actually understand the impact of that training. That is certainly what we would be encouraging our governors and governing bodies to do.

Also, like other colleagues, we are always looking at how we can develop our training. We centrally run courses and hold governing body training, which can be very valuable because you get the whole governing body together, and data are a prime example, because you can have somebody come in who will train you on your own school’s data.

So then what we are looking at is: can we then go on and work with those governing bodies to look at the effect afterwards? While we are on the subject of training, induction is incredibly important and it is what we do. I think a number of people who have submitted written evidence have said they would like to see mandatory training for governors, or at least mandatory induction training for governors. We would certainly support that. In Buckinghamshire, for those governing bodies that buy our Development Programme-which is over 90% of them, including academies-we pre-book those new governors in for induction training. Maybe eight to 10 years ago there were about 40% of our new governors going through induction training; we now have that up to over 90% of our new governors.

Mark Taylor: Very briefly, critically, in terms of viewing training, going on courses is a way of receiving training. I am not convinced it is the most effective way of doing it. I would look at it in three ways. First of all, the training of the governing body needs to be based on an audit of the skills within the governing body, the self-evaluation that exists within the school-which includes an evaluation of data and an evaluation of quality-and what the school is saying about its own improvement for its school improvement plan. It needs a place to start to think about its training.

Off the back of that, initially there are three areas. One is general training, which includes induction, which is critical. Secondly, there is bespoke training, which comes particularly off the back of that audit, and that is very valuable when governors do that well. Thirdly, there is specialised training, which is very important for chairs of governors and/or where there are particular issues that governing bodies are facing.

In a Rolls-Royce position-if that still exists-where there are opportunities for schools and governors to work thematically within localities on particular issues, that is very helpful. We have certainly found that where we put groups of chairs of governors together, working on various areas of underachievement that are across those schools, that has been very powerful and has led to their forming a chairs’ network and other networks that then grow out of that.

Q159 Ian Mearns: I am very heartened to hear what you said about the induction training for governors in Buckinghamshire, but I am not convinced that that is consistently the case across the board. As I was saying earlier on, I have been a governor myself for many years. Frankly, the playing field upon which we are playing has changed so much in that timeframe that it is not just induction training that is important; it is also going back and helping governors who have been governors for many years, quite often, and just reminding them that this is a ball and that is the goal. It is about clarity of that role. Do you think we are getting enough in terms of guidance from the DfE to help clarify the different roles for headteachers and for governors within the governing body context?

Nicola Cook: My personal view is that I can completely understand the Department is endeavouring to introduce more freedoms for governing bodies. There is a danger that we get to a tipping point where we reduce so much guidance and prescription for them that they are going to be in a position where governing bodies could end up reinventing the wheel in isolation. There is a grave danger that that then distracts them from their real role as busy volunteers. I certainly echo comments that I have heard about the Governors’ Guide to the Law. My view is very different from a colleague on the previous panel, who said it was too long and unwieldy. We do not think that; we think it was a really useful document and not just for governors but for clerks to governors. There is a danger that we are swinging too far the other way.

Darren Northcott: The Governors’ Guide to the Law is a unique document as well. You would struggle to find something as concise and accessible as that. If that is not there, I would worry about where governors and clerks and those with an interest in governance would go to find out some of these basic questions about schools’ legal responsibilities.

Michael Jeans: I reinforce a lot of what has been said. Induction is key, but let us be clear as to what induction of a general nature is and what induction into a particular school or group of schools is. I think specialist knowledge and specialist skills can be trained. There is also this whole area, which colleagues may have referred to, that I am going to be very specific about, and that is, in terms of the role of the governor, how you behave on a board. Do you understand what being on the board of governors is? How do you relate to each other? Do we train chairs to be chairs? I know the National College is doing something. Incidentally, in my group of schools, which covers both the independent and the maintained sector, we interchange governors. In that group, nobody will be a chair unless they have been a board member for a certain number of years. There is a mixture of things, and training is a rather wide term.

Mark Taylor: As a rule of thumb, schools are very complex institutions and the whole education landscape changes all the time. We have a whole range of issues now around funding and the like, which are difficult for governors to get to grips with. Whether they come from the stakeholder set or the skills set, it would be unrealistic to think that governors could do their job properly without adequate guidance and a resource that is pretty straightforward.

Q160 Ian Mearns: It is difficult enough for headteachers and professional members of staff to keep up with what the expectations of Ofsted are this week. Do you think, therefore, that Ofsted needs to be much clearer in terms of giving guidance about what is expected of a governor from their perspective? There is a big focus on governance through Ofsted at the moment.

Michael Jeans: Its latest publication, last year, says where it is focused and is clear about what it is going to look for when it comes to do the inspection. We are seeing a change that is too early to judge, but it looks much better than before.

Mark Taylor: You have to be realistic about the reality of the length of inspection. An inspection now lasts one day, and we are currently doing a lot of work with governors to prepare for that. That is about putting governors in a position to be able to tell the story about their school and their work. You have to be careful not to over-egg that one in relation to Ofsted. Ofsted rely on the data that is there in the public domain.

Nicola Cook: I would agree with Michael; it is very welcome that, given the importance of governance, Ofsted is now looking at it specifically as part of that leadership and management, and is giving quite helpful pointers to governors as to what they expect to see. For us, in terms of local authorities supporting our governing bodies, the new "requires improvement" category is very helpful, rather than "satisfactory", as are the expectations that if governance is an issue there will be an external review of governance. What we have in Buckinghamshire is a local authority policy now for working with "requires improvement" schools. One of the things we will be doing is discussing with the governors and the headteacher how we work and how we strengthen governance. Actually, that change of emphasis from Ofsted is a really useful tool for us and governing bodies in looking at that.

Darren Northcott: It is helpful that Ofsted, essentially, sets out its expectations of governing bodies. There is a long-standing trend in inspection, where there is sometimes a mismatch between what is articulated centrally and the experience of schools when an inspector turns up to conduct an inspection. Ofsted needs to be clearer, first of all, about ensuring that its central expectations are clear, but also that its inspectors on the ground are going to adhere to those expectations in all cases.

Mark Taylor: That is what I meant. I support the guidance; it is sensible and sound guidance. It is about what happens when you are inspected for 12 hours and what that translates into.

Q161 Ian Mearns: Nicola, obviously you are from Buckinghamshire and you have talked to us about what happens there. Certainly, in the North of England, local authorities are taking a hiding when it comes to overall levels of revenue support grant. Certainly, we are seeing a dilution of advisory teams and support services, generally, within education departments. Do you think local authorities are still going to have that capacity and capability to support governing bodies effectively as they seek to take on those extra responsibilities and that extra increased accountability regarding governance?

Nicola Cook: Can I first contextualise my team? We are predominantly a traded team; our Governor Development Programme is completely traded with schools, so we are having no funding for that, as is our clerking and advice team. Yes, as Bridget said in the previous session, we are seeing many experienced colleagues disappearing because of the cuts. I cannot comment for every local authority because, clearly, they are looking in their own individual circumstances as to the best way forward. I do think there are ways forward. A number of local authorities are looking at setting up charitable trusts and putting some of their services into those charitable trusts. As I said in my written submission, that is something that is happening in my local authority. We are not alone; there are others going on that journey.

Q162 Ian Mearns: I understand the point you are making about being a traded team, but the team itself is not entirely self-sufficient in terms of the advice and guidance that is given to governors. It often looks elsewhere within the Department or within the authority and, quite often, other support services on which they relied have been diluted as well.

Nicola Cook: I agree with that. A lot of our advice and support and colleagues that we pull in to provide governor training we are paying for through our Development Programme; they are not doing that without our paying for it. But I accept what you are saying: as changes happen within those teams, it becomes more difficult if you have got fewer skilled people within your local authority. That is where we have to look creatively at how we work together and certainly, as co-ordinators of Governor Services, at having those discussions about sharing training across borders. There is also the work of the National College, in terms of the work it is doing with chairs.

We need to look at different ways of working, because we can still share expertise across boundaries. We can work with the National College; we are certainly encouraging our chairs to go on that Leadership Programme. We are also encouraging our governing bodies to have those external reviews of governance. We are also looking very much, as the Learning Trust is being developed, at school-to-school support and how the local authority commissions that. It is not about us, as local authorities, doing it all ourselves; it is about using that expertise within the system right across all schools.

Q163 Ian Mearns: I have a general question to finish off on my perspective. We have got 300,000 governors now working, and they are volunteers and all trying their best. Given the fact that they are, after all, volunteers, do you think we are now collectively trying to ask too much of them?

Mark Taylor: We need to coach them. We need to find ways of doing that. In Islington, we have developed what we are characterising as a community of schools. I have the same concerns about infrastructure support and how that is going to run through from the support that is provided by governors; again, like my colleague in Buckinghamshire, that is traded, but there is the question of what sits around it. There is going to be a really important role, in terms of governance, in making sure that one of the roles will be to make sure that governors can work together, that they can broker support, and that they can use the skills sets they have got across schools, across boroughs and across boundaries. There is going to need to be some kind of general audit and horizon scanning to make sure that they are in a position to do that.

Q164 Ian Mearns: One of the things that strikes me, Mark, is that, by their very nature, people who get themselves called to give evidence in the Education Select Committee, even as governors, are enthusiastic about their role, but that deep-seated enthusiasm for the role does not filter down all the way through the 300,000 people. Some people do it under sufferance or they do it because they feel they have got a duty; they do not have that same deep-seated enthusiasm that many of us have about the role.

Michael Jeans: That is absolutely right. Volunteers are always difficult to pick on when you come to try to do an evaluation, because they are always going to turn around and say, "Well, I’m not paid to do this, am I? So off with you." That is the same everywhere. A lot of them are not coming forward because they are frightened, and they are frightened of two things. It is only what they read or hear, and one is the amount of regulation and governor liability: what is going to happen? They worry, "Am I going to be incarcerated?" Secondly, they are terrified about time. Unfortunately, the positives are not put over. Being a governor-you are right that we are all going to be enthusiasts-is huge fun. It is massive fun to be around children and seeing what can be done with children to help them. It is massive fun to be involved and so rewarding, but somehow we have not managed to get that across. It is up to all of us to try to do so.

Q165 Chair: I am going to ask the whole panel something, but I will address Michael first. I know you can only answer on behalf of what you know in your schools, Michael. Is governance more accountable in federated structures, such as multiple academy trusts, and should the Government be encouraging more of the federated structures in maintained schools?

Michael Jeans: Haberdashers has two federation trusts. There are two particular structures within there, and one of them is a federation between a grammar school-a converter academy-and an originally sponsored academy; it was a failing school. They are quite different; one is selective and one is not. They operate with one federated board, but they each have school committees. Down in south-east London, I have got three academies, all of which are originally sponsored academies, which, in a way, is easier. Down there, we have one chief executive, three principals, a central team, one board of governors, and we have school committees.

I think the federation is a way to go, generally, on academies. However, they can only go to a certain size. You must be careful with the federation model, and we had issues. The board of governors has just grown like topsy; you have got 30 on it. That has got to be addressed, and the new regulations will enable us to address that. I would not want to chair something with 30 people on it.

Darren Northcott: Whether it is academies or in the maintained sector, there probably is a case for looking at some kind of federated governance structure, simply because of the economies of scale involved. It allows expertise to be pooled and experience to be shared. I know it is a point that has been made in the past, but having 24,000 governing bodies for 24,000 schools perhaps is not the most efficient way of organising the governance resource that we have available. I would repeat the calls made by others to look closely at federation and see how it can enhance the support that is available to governors, bearing in mind the point that you do not want massive governing bodies that are unwieldy and cannot take effective and timely decisions.

Q166 Chair: We had an interesting look at the Netherlands and their governance structure, recently. What was difficult about it was the more they told us, the less we knew. Nobody seemed to know very much about what was happening. They had these boards that pulled in a lot of economy of scale. But they were huge, and then we were asking, "How do you get on the board? Do you get elected?" It just seemed to be somebody’s mate, from what we could gather. There were lots of issues around that.

Michael Jeans: I sit on the board of a school in Brussels, and it sounds rather similar.

Chair: We were very confused by what they were telling us.

Nicola Cook: I just want to make a point about federated governing bodies. It is important for us, nationally and locally, to be encouraging governing bodies to look at federation, while recognising that one size does not fit all. As we start to see more variable models of headship, then that is often the way federation comes. For governing bodies, governors are there very much for their own school-quite rightly and quite understandably. It is also about encouraging governing bodies to be outward looking as well as looking after their own school.

Q167 Alex Cunningham: I served on a federated governing body for two specialist schools that had come together, but you see some of these federations that are much larger. How do you get that concentrated attention from governors for an individual school to challenge the things that need to be challenged-for example, the quality of teaching?

Mark Taylor: We use federated governing bodies in our community schools effectively, and the reason they have been successful is because they have been together for a common purpose. The first thing to understand is that a federation, of itself, has got every chance of making things worse, rather than better. It will make things better if you understand why you federated the governing body and what the purpose is going to be, and we should not lose that. In that sense, the federation can then be short term, medium term or, indeed, long term.

If you are unsure about the common purpose, that helps you tackle some of the issues of the size of that federation, because, clearly, if it is enormous, it is unlikely to be able to meet the needs of that common purpose. If that is around improving leadership or improving the quality of teaching in particular, it needs to be very focused. Sometimes, you can, as I have said, have schools with separate governing bodies, in a sense, federate to tackle a particular issue. That is an avenue that can be really successfully used.

Q168 Mr Ward: Are you suggesting that the way forward for raising the performance of our schools is much more of a collaborative model, rather than a competitive one?

Michael Jeans: I would add, on the federation size point, that our two federations are very focused in the same areas, except some have a lot in common. You cannot just expand ad infinitum. We have been under a lot of pressure from the Department to add more schools. In fact, over the past five years, we have doubled the capacity of our schools, and added three academies and four primaries. We have not increased the number of boards of governors. We said "no" to any more, because it is just beyond our capacity to do it, and there would not be synergy between any school that we added-unless we could just tuck it in under one of our boards.

Q169 Alex Cunningham: Maybe I am a bit naïve about these things, but when I was a member of a federated governing body, we had two schools and we were able to challenge very specifically on the standard of leadership. If you end up with one governing body or two or three governing bodies looking across a series, surely that individual contact with a school is diminished.

Michael Jeans: That depends on the structure you have underneath, but obviously if it gets huge then you cannot do it; obviously, you cannot do it. We have got three main schools under one federation.

Q170 Alex Cunningham: In this world of expansions and larger and larger groups, how do we make sure that that very basic role of the governor is fulfilled?

Michael Jeans: I do not know, because I am not in that game.

Q171 Alex Cunningham: Would you caution against our having a situation where we do see this huge mushrooming of groups because we cannot do the fundamental work of challenging leadership and quality of teaching?

Michael Jeans: They may work for economic benefits. I do not know. I am not criticising them, because I do not know how they can work in terms of effective discharging of gubernatorial responsibility proper.

Darren Northcott: I recognise that challenge; you are right about that distance between a governor and an actual school. That is well established. There are approaches you can explore. For example, school boards or school panels that perhaps feed up to an overarching federated body can at least mean that there is a body or an institution looking at a particular school that feeds into a federated governing body. That perhaps sounds slightly bureaucratic, but it does at least help make sure there is some kind of effective link between each individual school and the overarching federated governing body. But the challenges you identify are very important.

Q172 Bill Esterson: Wasn’t that the role of a local authority?

Darren Northcott: Then this gets into debates around the middle tier and about how that is structured, as well. We are getting something that is growing quite organically and in different ways in different parts of the country. Clearly, there is a real challenge in a system where you have got 24,000 individual schools, each of which has its own governing body with a substantial amount of power. That can lead to substantial variations in the quality of governance and that is what federation, in its best form-and it does work in some cases-really does seek to address.

Bill Esterson: Something struck me about the conversation you were just having. I saw this on a charitable trust; we always seemed to be getting new trustees because of a lack of expertise, and it was never enough, so the board just grew and grew and grew. It added another expert for this area and another one for this. You touched on this earlier and then you started to move away from the point that Alex is making about the fundamental role of scrutinising what goes on in the school.

Chair: We saw some of that when we were looking at Holland particularly, where they had boards that managed 50 schools, and everybody who sat on the board seemed to get a very large salary for it-and there were an awful lot. But we are going to come back to look at academies specifically.

Michael Jeans: I do not know how Ofsted inspects that.

Q173 Craig Whittaker: I suppose my question is to Mark and Nicola, in particular. We have heard evidence to date that says, very clearly, that local authorities do not make the most of the powers they have to intervene in failing governing bodies. Why do you think that is?

Mark Taylor: I understand that and I hear that. From an Islington perspective, which is where I can speak from, that is not the case. We have intervened and used our formal powers; there is an informal stage before those formal powers, which we are also free to use. Once those formal powers are in place, there is an opportunity for the local authority to influence both the make-up of governing bodies and their direction and overall strategic view of the school. We have certainly done that. To be perfectly frank, I would urge other local authorities to do the same thing, because those powers do exist.

I understand that, in some local authorities, that has not been the culture. We consult with governing bodies and headteachers every year about those powers and how you would arrive at that, and that is a consultation that we review every year, and it is clearly set out in what we describe as a Work in Support of Schools Framework. I accept the national picture, and what I would say is: I am not sure what we do around the powers, because the powers are already there. There is an issue about local authorities not using them. If they do use them, then it is possible to bring about school improvement and changes in governing bodies fairly quickly.

Nicola Cook: I would echo what Mark is saying. There is variety in how those powers have been used. We have used them in Buckinghamshire. My personal feeling is that what we will see now is that local authorities will do that more, with the changes that have happened. There is a consultation at the moment about the fact that Ofsted will be inspecting the school improvement services of local authorities. Already, Ofsted are commenting on the quality of local authorities’ support when they feed back at inspections, which is a fairly new departure. We will see those interventions used more, and I believe some local authorities have intervened without issuing warning notices, as well. So, there have been some who have been intervening much more quickly than others.

Q174 Craig Whittaker: Are you both saying, therefore, that it is an ethos more than anything, rather than the fact that they know they have got the powers but just do not use them?

Mark Taylor: It is a culture issue.

Nicola Cook: We have got a shift from local authorities, in terms of moving towards a commissioning basis and being the champion of the child. Certainly, I know my local authority is looking at what its strategy is going to be moving forwards, in terms of supporting schools and academies, and how those powers are used and wanting to discuss that with schools.

Q175 Craig Whittaker: Just speaking of academies then, do we think there are enough measures to tackle underperforming governance in academies?

Mark Taylor: Again, that is an issue of culture. You can say, "No, that’s to do with the Academies Division in the Department or the sponsor." If you are-to support my colleague there-the children’s champion, you have a responsibility to let both the Department and the sponsor know when you have got concerns. Indeed, in Islington, that is what we have done and will continue to do. I therefore do have some concerns, potentially, about the internal mechanisms around governance within academies, but that should not take away from the local authority’s role as the children’s champion in challenging that.

Nicola Cook: Sir Michael Wilshaw, when he was before this Committee, was making it very clear that local authorities do not have the power of intervention in academies, but his expectation is that they would be expressing concerns to the Department. The concern there is that, if there is that loss of local intelligence and the local authorities are relying on publicly published data, then, clearly, they are old data and not up-to-date. Again, it is about that local authority’s relationships with its academies and whether information is being shared.

Q176 Craig Whittaker: What about in places like my local authority? That has a very positive stance against academies-although now the majority of my high schools, for example, are academies. How do you get that local intelligence if you are not prepared, in policy, to have a strong link with your academies, which is the case in Calder?

Darren Northcott: It is very difficult. Some local authorities have tried to fulfil that championing role, but clearly they do not have that formal relationship with academies. Consequently, they have tried to use, for example, local authority scrutiny committees on councils, for example, to ask questions. We have come across examples where academies have simply refused to co-operate with a local authority trying to find out basic information about the governance of a particular academy, and that is quite a profound issue that is worth exploring in a bit more depth.

On your question about local authorities and the variability, and extent to which they are willing to intervene with the governing body where it is underperforming, there are strong local authorities that will intervene where they feel it is appropriate. In some local authorities where they do not, partly it may be culture but also it may be something a little more basic than that, in that the school is a purchaser, very often, of local authority traded services. We have certainly come across cases where there is a perceived nervousness on the part of a local authority to be too robust against a school because it is concerned that the traded service will be withdrawn by the school, so the school no longer purchases a service from a local authority. That is a nervousness that you do encounter sometimes with some local authorities. I wonder if, where you have got a local authority that is not intervening, sometimes that is part of the problem.

Q177 Chair: Mark, you did say you had some concerns about internal issues within academies. Would you like to share with us what those are?

Mark Taylor: Just to be very clear, certainly in my borough we have very strong relationships with academies. We view academies as part of the community of schools. Nonetheless, the more direct relationship that we would be used to with our community schools we have to manage much more carefully in relation to our academies. Again, there are a number of different sponsors, and they deal with their schools in different ways. Indeed, where we have raised issues with the Department, they have responded accordingly and wanted to work with us. But it is as much about precision around data, access-if you want to take views about the quality of the teaching and learning, for example-speed of action, and then a whole host of cultural things, which could sit around it being an academy and that need for it to preserve its own sense of identity. Our view is that an academy is just a school that simply works in a different way in some respects. I do have some concerns about that and I am very keen that, in a sense, where you have got a de facto middle tier, where there are, for example, chains of academies, they should be inspected and viewed and evaluated with the same rigour that local authorities have used in the past.

Q178 Alex Cunningham: We have had the Haberdashers’ written evidence, Michael, about the recruitment of governors and the robust system that you have in place there. Why do you believe that approach to recruitment and training of governors is effective?

Michael Jeans: I suppose, in terms of output, because I believe that our schools are governed well. I am very lucky. I have a pool of people; I cannot satisfy all the people who want to be a governor at one of our schools with a slot. That covers, again, the maintained and independent sector. I do not guarantee that, when they do get a slot, it will be in either. They come for interview. They know that for the Haberdashers’ company, education is our prime purpose, so they are part of that. You get the commitment, which is why there is success, and the enthusiasm.

Q179 Alex Cunningham: Does that not make it rather exclusive? Could other groups of people add different values to a governing body?

Michael Jeans: Sorry, I did not make that clear. There are 140 governors of Haberdashers’ schools; only some 40 of them are actually Haberdashers. There is a great number with Haberdashers that are unwashed and the rest are washed.

Q180 Alex Cunningham: Do you think it is necessary for other groups to adopt a much more rigorous approach in order to achieve the quality of governor-if I can use the expression-that you maybe achieve?

Michael Jeans: I hope we do. Yes, I do, but it is back to the other issue. It is a chicken and egg scenario, isn’t it? We are all enthusiasts, so we would probably like to get people involved in governorship. If we then say we are going to be really robust about our interviewing or our selection, in the same way as we are about our evaluation, that might turn people off. How do we get that balance right?

Q181 Alex Cunningham: I wish I had known you about 10 or 12 years ago, because I used to have the responsibility of finding governors for schools in my local authority. I struggled-just as many schools struggled-to identify parents. In fact, sometimes, they would find someone who had once been a parent of a child at a school donkey’s years ago and say, "You’ll be able to do the job." I just do not know how we manage to attract more people from a wider perspective. Have you any ideas on that?

Michael Jeans: I was talking to a group of 10 church primaries the other day, which were all in the same deanery, about their problems with getting governors. A lot of it is about the enthusiasm. A lot of it is about how we at Haberdashers will run events that cover all our governors, so we will have a governor’s training day. They will be going along to be part of something else. We will have a celebratory dinner once a year, where we celebrate the fact that they are governors. How are they valued? They are not going to be paid, but are they really made to feel valued? We do our best to achieve that.

Nicola Cook: Nationally and locally, we need to raise the profile of school governance as much as we can. As others have said, it is an under-recognised role. The work of the School Governors’ One-Stop Shop is extremely valuable, and I am really pleased that is continuing. Effective local authorities will be working with the School Governors’ One-Stop Shop to effectively place those people. For example, in my local authority, we have people put forward by SGOSS. We also endeavour to recruit governors, and then what we do is liaise very closely with our governing bodies. I have got members of my team whose work is specifically that: to work with governing bodies to most effectively place those volunteers who come along. That is really important, because, if the governing body has done its skills audit and it knows what skills it would like to find for its governor vacancies, then that goes with the work that SGOSS is doing and other people are doing in terms of recruiting governors.

One thing we are trying to do is to encourage people from underrepresented communities to get involved in school governance. We are very conscious that we have nearly 26% of our pupils from BME communities, but our governor representation is something like 4%. We are not saying that governing bodies therefore need to go away and find X% of BME governors and should look at it like that. We are working with our community consultative group to endeavour to raise the profile of school governors in and for those communities who are underrepresented, so that they can see the significance of school governance.

Alex Cunningham: We have to value them much more highly.

Nicola Cook: We do.

Q182 Alex Cunningham: I do not think anybody would disagree with that. Should governors be paid or should there be other incentives in places?

Mark Taylor: We have to value them. We have to sustain them as well, in practical ways. We have spent a lot of time making sure that, once governors are on governing bodies, there is enough for them to do and the right amount of support and engagement with the borough, if you like, in order to keep them in the right place and therefore attract their friends, sometimes, or other governors from the community. An example of that would be that we make sure, clearly, they have statutory representation on things like the schools forum. Where we have other advisory bodies within the middle tier, they are very well represented on that. We have a chairs group. We also have forums every term for them that have grown from a handful of people to, now, well over 100. They are not just the professional skills-based set; they are governors more widely.

You need to support governors in them having an identity within the borough beyond the school. Also, we need to make sure that they are able to influence strategy and policy in more of a system way, because I think that attracts and sustains governors once they are in the role. They feel they are more than just one thing.

Q183 Ian Mearns: A couple of weeks ago, we had an HMI at the Committee, and he said that the HMI, collectively, have taken a decision that they should, as individuals, not sit on governing bodies. I think that is perverse, frankly. An HMI should not be sitting on a body for which they could have an inspection or advisory role. But what is to stop them actually being on a governing body within their own community, if they are not going to be affected by the job?

Mark Taylor: Absolutely, it makes sense.

Michael Jeans: I think what you are doing within Islington is not dissimilar to what I am trying to do in Haberdashers. We are trying to make people feel beyond the single school. We can give them some central support. We value them. I will give every single governor this1 when they become a governor, which is our own little guide to excellence in governance. It is personalised to them. You can say it is not of value, but it makes them feel special.

Q184 Alex Cunningham: The chair said, when she opened her remarks at the very beginning of the morning, that this is about recommendations that we can make to Government. If you were going to have a one, two and three of recommendations to drive up the interest of governors but also ensure their quality, what would they be?

Michael Jeans: Make them valued. There may be some specific things we have mentioned.

Alex Cunningham: We have covered the value thing.

Darren Northcott: We should be clear about the nature of the role as there may be a misunderstanding about what governance involves, and that might put a lot of people off. Local authorities are very well placed to explain to potential governors what would be involved and what would not be involved, and that might help encourage more people to consider taking up a post as governor.

Nicola Cook: I would not disagree with either of those, and another one I would add is: recognise the importance of the clerking role, because a professional independent clerk can bring such an amount of support, expertise and advice and actually make the workload manageable. That is another very unrecognised role that should be recognised.

Mark Taylor: I support that statement about clerks. One cultural thing is that I think governors have got the message now that they are accountable and they have got the weight of the world on their shoulders. We should ease back on that a little bit and start to emphasise the value they can add to the community, because that is what will drive them to be governors.

Alex Cunningham: It is the realisation of that weight, at times, that is discouraging people from coming in, but maybe that is the right thing to happen.

Mark Taylor: It is over-egged.

Michael Jeans: The clerk point is so important. Do not bother about paying governors or the chairs; there should be a professional, independent and paid clerk.

Nicola Cook: Absolutely. Our clerks are paid.

Michael Jeans: Sometimes, professional means paid.

Nicola Cook: The clerk should also have good access to a Governors’ Guide to the Law behind them as well.

Q185 Alex Cunningham: I have a final question to Darren. The NASUWT’s written evidence indicates that this inquiry should build on the work of the Ministerial Group on School Governance, which convened under the last Government. What specific conclusions about recruitment and retention of governors did the ministerial group arrive at? How do you recommend this committee should take these forward?

Darren Northcott: One of the things the group did was identify what a complex issue this was and people had, perhaps, come forward previously with rather straightforward or crude solutions, i.e. we should just pay governors and that would sort it out. One of the things the group did is it began to dig beneath that, so it spent a lot of time looking at alternative governance models in the public sector, the private sector and the voluntary sector and began to learn from those and how those lessons might be applied effectively in the context of schools. The disappointment was that, when that group had begun its work and had begun to identify what it should investigate-for example, recruitment and retention and the issue of payment-its work was stopped. One of the recommendations we would want to make is that something that is comparable to that ministerial stakeholder group that had representatives from across the education sector could be reconvened to begin to look at these issues in more detail. The group made a very good start and identified some good areas for further investigation, but that seems to have stopped. That was a pity as far as we are concerned.

Q186 Alex Cunningham: So, its specific remit would be one, two, three?

Darren Northcott: It needs to look at issues around: training; recruitment and retention; governance in academies, which we have touched on already; the role of local authorities; and the distinction between the roles of headteachers and governing bodies. Where is that line drawn between strategic management and day-to-day management, which Michael touched on in his opening comments? That would be a pretty broad brief there, and it had a very good brief, frankly, although aspects of its remit needed to be explored in more detail. It was a shame that that work did not continue, because it was beginning to make good progress.

Q187 Bill Esterson: I just have a question or two on training, some of which we have touched on. You mentioned the constraints on local authorities and the ability to deliver training will be one of the challenges there. How would you think that training should take place-should it be underpinned by national standards? Who would you get the training from?

Mark Taylor: Training has been a real strength within the borough and will continue to be. Broadly speaking, it is a traded service, so schools choose to buy that service. I think they do that because of its quality and for no other reason. I do not doubt for a second that if that quality dipped they would go elsewhere, and that would be the right thing to do. Almost inevitably, while there needs to be an infrastructure around it, it will largely be on a traded basis. My concern is that clerking is not about taking notes; it is about offering a whole range of other advice and a sensible, sound head. It is a whole range of different things around that. If it is to be, if you like, thrown out to the wider market-which, in a sense, it is now-that should only be on condition of there being some really clear guidance around that. My fear is it could drift into governors finding themselves in difficult positions; some people take notes well and make sure that they are clearly presented, but they are not getting that level of support that a clerk can give.

Q188 Bill Esterson: Should the training for the role of clerk go down the route that you have in universities and colleges, where there is a professional qualification?

Mark Taylor: That would be a really interesting line to pursue.

Q189 Bill Esterson: The National College is running a project now with 70 outstanding chairs of governors around the training of chairs. Do you have any thoughts on the training of chairs?

Michael Jeans: I welcome what the National College is doing. It is a tiny number, certainly, but I know it will spread. I have not been on the course, but, again, is that about how you chair something and the skills of that, or is it about anything peculiar to chairing governors?

Nicola Cook: I would say this, wouldn’t I-Governor Services are well placed to deliver training to their governors, and it is about us looking at how we do that in flexible ways. We also make online training available through another provider to our governors, and we welcome the National College’s work now with chairs of governors. As I said earlier, we are encouraging our chairs to undertake that leadership programme, because it actually starts off by giving them the opportunity to do a 360-degree appraisal of themselves, which, ordinarily, chairs do not probably have the opportunity to do. Certainly, we have had a lot of interest from our chairs, and they are very interested in being able to have that feedback from the governors that they work with. As my colleagues said, there are more training providers within the market, but there are some strong bases for providing governor training, and we would echo what Mark is saying is happening in his local authority.

Q190 Bill Esterson: In both Buckinghamshire and in Islington, you would see it as being a traded service. What about in those authorities that are not in such a strong position?

Mark Taylor: Where they are not in that strong position and where there is not an established Governors Service that schools want to support, there needs to be some clear guidance about what that support should look like. This is so that governing bodies can be well informed by that before they commit themselves to anything.

Q191 Bill Esterson: Where does that guidance come from?

Mark Taylor: That is a very interesting one. There is guidance, clearly, that exists around the function of the governing body. My own view would be that some national guidance around that, particularly if you are linking it towards some professional qualification, would be a pretty useful thing to offer, because that is where you will get the emphasis on the quality of advice, rather than the note taking. Certainly, that is the thing that I know schools find most valuable-it is the quality and the depth of sustainable advice.

Nicola Cook: We will see, as Governor Services come together in collaborative groups, or as local authorities set up trusts, there will be more provision of services across boundaries in a collaborative way. This means we will not be functioning strictly within our local authority boundaries, like we have been.

Michael Jeans: I also sit on the board of AGBIS, the Association of Governing Bodies of Independent Schools. We offer a lot of seminars on governor and chair training and, increasingly, we are willing to make that available to the maintained sector, and it is not expensive.

Chair: We have come to the end of the session. Thank you for coming along and giving your time, not just by being here today but in terms of the preparation that I know people put in. If you do have any further thoughts or recommendations, please let us have them in writing. Thank you very much.