Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Peter Kayes
Summary
A personal submission from an experienced governor.
The GB should act as a board of non-executive directors.
The primary focus has to be on raising pupil attainment.
At times governors can be more objective than staff.
GBs do not need to be any smaller.
The stakeholder model for GB membership should be retained.
Co-opting governors can fill skills gaps that may exist.
Elections should be retained for staff and parent governors.
Committee structures should be streamlined and minimise the level of bureaucracy.
Training for governors should continue to be voluntary rather than compulsory but with strong encouragement for the appropriate levels of knowledge to be developed by all governors so they can contribute effectively.
The effectiveness of GBs should be monitored on at least an annual basis by the local authority or whatever organisation has responsibility for the school.
Governors should not be paid for the role.
GBs should develop positive relationships with the other organisation they work with including the local authority.
No radical change is needed to the structure of governance in our schools.
My Background
1. I am writing in a personal capacity having been a school governor since 1976 though not continuously since then. I have experience of being a governor at four very different schools including three primary and one secondary school, totalling 35 years’ experience as a governor across those schools and having been Chair of Governors at three of them. My appointments were all initially as a local authority nominated governor although at the first school I was also a parent with children at the school and was invited to become a co-opted governor after serving two terms so returned to the governing body. I am at present Chair at one of the primary schools and the secondary school. During this period I have experienced significant change in the role of governors from what most took to be a passive role in the 1970s to the present where governors are in effect the non-executive directors of an enterprise with a significant turnover and are held to account by both the local authority and Ofsted. I am also active in our local Governors’ Association helping to share expertise and good practice across the schools in our local authority area. 80% of the local schools are members of this association.
2. During my working life I spent 14 years in industry and then moved into education as a teacher in a further education college and subsequently as a manager in a university. I also undertook duties as an external examiner in further and higher education for 20 years. I am now retired.
Purpose Roles and Responsibilities
3. As a strategic board of non-exec directors, the Governing Body (GB) should be overseeing the work of the school as a whole, its effectiveness, helping formulate the strategic direction and vision and holding the leadership to account, all with a view to maximising the learning achieved by the pupils. The Headteacher needs someone to report to and be accountable to; the governors and in particular the Chair fulfil this function.
Recent Policy Developments
4. Governors have to work within the law so have a responsibility to ensure the school complies with statutory duties. Governors will be the people who should decide how a school can develop within the context of the changing landscape, such as the development of academies and federations, and determine what is in the best interests of the school. A Headteacher and other senior staff have vested interest in these matters so are not the appropriate people to make decisions related to such issues, although as staff members they can always make recommendations and as governors be involved in the discussion about any such issue. The GB can be more impartial whilst individual governors will represent their individual and collective interests for example as parents, one reason why all stakeholders should be represented on a GB.
5. The Headteacher supported by staff colleagues will always be the most appropriate person to make recommendations on the curriculum and how a school should adapt to curricula initiatives nationally whilst Governors can take a view on this advice in relation to what is in the best interests of the pupils.
Structure of Governing Bodies (GBs)
6. I feel most strongly that the present stakeholder model structure of governing bodies is the best and that moves to make governing bodies smaller are seriously misguided. Primary schools tend to have governing bodies of around 12 members and this works well although at times there are barely enough governors to take on specific tasks from which some governors need to be excluded. Secondary schools tend to have larger governing bodies but rarely more than 20 and typically only 15–18. These sizes of GB make it possible to ensure stakeholders are involved but without becoming cumbersome. Significantly smaller GBs would not be able to carry out all the functions required as effectively.
7. The option to co-opt governors ensures that the skills profile and breadth of representation can be achieved where there may be gaps amongst the remaining members. Staff and parents make highly valuable contributions to discussions that would be difficult to achieve any other way. Maintaining links with the local authority is also important and helps prevent schools becoming too inward looking.
8. Committee structures need to be streamlined with a minimum number of committees and a focussed remit for each, avoiding unnecessary meetings. Select meetings should be allocated to open discussions, self evaluation or strategic planning, without the burden of a long business agenda. No meeting should be allowed to last longer than two hours.
9. Staff and parent governors should always be elected to these roles by their peers to help ensure that a GB does not get packed with “friends” of the Head or Chair.
Recruitment and Development of Governors
10. There is a lot of discussion around making training for governors mandatory. There is substantial value in governors being given an induction programme and training in the role of governors can be an important element of this. However there are many ways to achieve this and a face to face training course is only one such which will not always be a practical way to achieve the necessary level of understanding. Mentoring by an existing more experienced governor can be very effective. Governors will also always learn from each other in the way they conduct their business.
11. Electing governors would make it difficult to insist on mandatory training although this can be very strongly recommended.
12. Training for Chairs is extremely important but many chairs will have considerable experience as a Chair elsewhere before taking the role on at a school. An optional programme to train chairs is needed and should be recommended strongly for people without such experience. Training in the relevant educational matters that need to be understood in a school may be just as important to a new chair as training in chair(wo)manship.
13. Business and organisational experience will be valuable amongst the governors but not to the exclusion of other expertise such as knowledge of the children, parents, community and the education system more generally. The suggestion that school GBs should be reduced to seven people with business skills would be likely to be a recipe for disaster in many schools because of the skill and experience mix that would be lost as a result.
14. Some schools find it more difficult than others to attract candidates for parent governor elections. This is no reason to remove the requirement but a reason for GBs to work harder to find parents willing to come forward and helping them to do so. The existence of parent governor (or other) vacancies should not necessarily be an issue on which to criticise a school if it is clear they are making efforts to fill the vacancies or have sound reasons for waiting until they find the right person with the skills they need. The existence of parents on the GB makes a direct contribution to the accountability of the Headteacher.
Effectiveness and Accountability of Governing Bodies
15. The current Ofsted inspection framework covers this issue during their periodic inspections. The fact that Ofsted will not necessarily be inspecting schools judged Outstanding at some point in the past is a weakness in their framework.
16. Local Authorities should be holding their GBs to account by monitoring. Other organisations such as sponsors of academies should be held to account on the extent to which they also do this.
Remuneration
17. It would be totally improper to pay governors or chairs of governors. There should be no reason to do this. Trustees working for charities in the public sector are not paid and to do so risks attracting people for the wrong reasons, potentially corrupting the process. Individuals should be willing to take on these roles purely voluntarily as for any other activity in the voluntary sector and to do so only to the extent that they can share the time.
18. It is reasonable to recompense governors for costs they incur in carrying out their duties, subject to these expenses being agreed in advance. Governors should not be prevented from taking on the role because of the cost of so doing or the need to pay for childcare, for example. Current practice already permits such reimbursement.
Relationships with Other Bodies
19. Governors should ensure they have a good and effective relationship with their local authority, sponsors, trusts, school leaders and trades unions. Open rather than secretive governance is essential to developing and maintain these relationships.
Are changes needed?
20. As may be apparent from my comments above I do not think there is a need to change the current models of governance. The majority of GBs are effective and support their schools well with 70% judged good or better. Only 2% are unacceptably weak according to an Ofsted report of 2007, whilst 28% “could do better”. Any system will have a minority that needs to do better so effort should be concentrated on supporting these GBs to improve. For the rest “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”.
November 2012