Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)

1. Executive Summary

ATL welcomes this inquiry. In summary:

School governing bodies offer critical friendship, strategic vision and quality assurance to school staff including the leadership.

Major policy developments, including changes to school status and proposals to devolve teachers’ pay determination to individual school level, place a greater onus on school governing bodies in terms of legal and administrative accountability and in workload terms.

This has increased the difficulties in recruiting and retaining school governors, particularly those from less traditional backgrounds.

Governing bodies are increasingly responsible for organising their own training, with little impartial information or quality assurance available. Not enough training focuses on developing trust, honesty and integrity within the governing body.

Governing bodies are a vital part of the accountability system, ensuring schools are accountable to their local communities. They must also be accountable themselves for the ways in which they support teaching and learning in particular.

It is not clear how Academy governing bodies are held accountable to their local communities, nor how Ofsted inspection reports help to hold governing bodies accountable.

Individual school governing bodies should be better focussed.

Nationally agreed training should be available, both in the legal duties associated with governance and in developing reflective analytical tools to hold schools to account.

Schools cannot, and should not, work independently of each other. ATL recommends the development of local governance, responsible for the education of all pupils across a local area, with maintained and Academy schools working together with colleges and the local authority to develop mechanisms to plan, work and learn together.

2. About the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL)

ATL, as a leading education union, recognises the link between education policy and our members’ conditions of employment. Our evidence-based policy-making enables us to campaign and negotiate from a position of strength. We champion good practice and achieve better working lives for our members.

3. We help our members, as their careers develop, through first-rate research, advice, information and legal support. Our 160,000 members—teachers, lecturers, headteachers and support staff in maintained and independent nurseries, schools, sixth form, tertiary and further education colleges in the United Kingdom—are empowered to get active locally and nationally. AMiE is the trade union and professional association for leaders and managers in colleges and schools, and is a distinct section of ATL. We are affiliated to the TUC, and work with government and employers through partnership and by lobbying.

4. ATL Policy

ATL believes that teachers as professionals must be recognised for their knowledge, expertise and judgement, at the level of the individual pupil and in articulating the role of education in increasing social justice. Within light national parameters, development of the education system should take place at a local level: the curriculum should be developed in partnership with local stakeholders; assessment should be carried out through local professional networks. Schools and colleges should be encouraged to work collaboratively to offer excellent teaching and learning, and to support pupils’ well-being, across a local area. Accountability mechanisms should ensure a proper balance of accountability to national government and the local community, which supports collaboration rather than competition.

5. What is the purpose, roles and responsibilities of school governing bodies?

ATL’s policy on governance1 sets out our view that

“Governance should have a unique role in furthering the professional locus in decision-making, offering both support and challenge at a local level, and ensuring that schools are held to account in the local community. The important functions of governance currently are:

Critical friendship.

Strategic vision.

Quality assurance.”

6. Governing bodies can offer critical friendship to the whole school staff as well as the leadership, based on direct, local knowledge of the issues faced in schools and across local areas. It holds schools to account for strategic vision and direction. It also offers sustainability, ensuring continuity of vision through changes in personnel and circumstances.

7. While there remains a vital role for school governing bodies, we also need a new form of local governance responsible for education development at local level, ensuring good education for all pupils across a local area.

8. The implications of recent policy developments for governing bodies and their roles

Major changes in school structures have a big impact on school governing bodies, as the governing body is the employer in Academies. However, the powers of individual governing bodies can be diminished in chain Academies, where staff may be employed centrally.

9. Increasingly, governing bodies have been put under pressure to become Academies, either because there were financial incentives to convert, or because an Ofsted inspection triggered a conversion process. This pressure has at times led to difficult relationships between governors who were for or against conversion, and between governors and staff, including school leaders. Where schools have converted, a divided governing body is not a good place to begin rebuilding staff morale and providing vision.

10. Academy status can also mean loss of local authority (LA) support for governing bodies. While this support may be replaced by Academy chain support, this may not reflect knowledge of the local area. For individual schools converting to Academy status, this can mean loss of a link to other schools in the area, as well as loss of LA support for HR, payroll, data services, ICT and governor training. Many of these services will require negotiation with other providers in order to ensure value for money and effective provision. This takes time as well as governors with expertise in contract negotiation and management.

11. There are difficulties too with the lack of binding contracts for future funding, which makes it increasingly difficult to plan for the continuing education of pupils.

12. The report of the School Teachers’ Review Body in Dec 2012 contains proposals that will devolve pay determination for teachers much more to individual school level. If implemented, these proposals will place a greater onus on governing bodies to ensure that appraisal systems are fair and unbiased and that decisions on pay taken by headteachers accord with discrimination legislation. We do not believe that most governing bodies have the requisite level of expertise in this area to ensure the fairness of the proposed pay systems and this will present a challenging training and recruitment issue for schools.

13. Recruiting and developing governors, including the quality of current training provision, and any challenges facing recruitment

It has always been difficult to recruit governors, and it is often schools with the greatest need which struggle most in this respect. In our position statement we note that “it is becoming increasingly difficult …to recruit and retain governors with the expertise to carry out the most important functions that relate to the leadership of schools. As governors’ duties increase, it becomes increasing difficult to find governors with the time or the commitment to engage in the meetings, the training, the debate and the paperwork. These difficulties are exacerbated by the lack of status of governors and difficulty of securing time out of work to carry out governor duties.”2 The increased pace of change in the last few years has continued to increase governor workload, with little change in governor status or employer commitment. The motivation of volunteers to carry out such a difficult and responsible role can be easily harmed by perceptions that government and its agencies are constantly finding fault with governing bodies.

14. Timing of meetings and training has an impact on recruitment and retention. Holding meetings during the day can be difficult for governors who work, unless their employers are supportive of volunteering generally or education specifically. Evening meetings penalise those with family commitments, as well as people from Black and minority ethnic communities and women, who are more likely to work non-traditional hours. They also mean long working days for staff governors and the headteacher. Part of the answer is to ensure that times of meetings are varied, and to encourage more employers to provide paid time off for governor duties.

15. Action is needed to improve the diversity of governors, including by ensuring that governor vacancies are advertised in community settings, in appropriate languages and forms of communication. Training, including induction, needs to reflect the diversity of the community and of governors. Many people lack the confidence to put themselves forward as governors, perhaps because English is not their first language, because they did not do well at school, or because they have a particular image of governors that does not reflect their own background. ATL recommends that better information should be provided about the role of governors, that shows the important contribution of people from different backgrounds. This information should be provided in settings and in ways that attract less “obvious” candidates including through special events in non-school-based venues.

16. We also stated in 2009 that “Too much of a governing body’s role is to do with practical management”.3 Unfortunately, this problem has grown rather than diminished. As individual governing bodies take on a greater role as employers of staff and in negotiating services, the responsibilities become even more onerous, and detract from the vital role of providing strategic vision for the school. This makes it even less likely that governors will come forward from across the wider community.

17. Training, which used to be provided by the local authority, is cut back even for maintained schools, due to cuts in funding, and becomes another cost to be negotiated by the governing body. There is very little information about the range of courses available, and very little, if any, quality assurance. Training must balance national requirements with local knowledge and expertise.

18. Increasingly, it is difficult for governing bodies to receive impartial information on difficult issues. In the past, governors could be supported by the governing body of another school which had been through similar issues. In a more competitive school environment, and with less local authority input, it is now more difficult to find people who can broker that support and help schools to learn from each other. It remains to be seen whether the National College might form part of the answer, through its National Leaders of Governance.

19. We believe there should be a nationally agreed training package covering the role of governors and the myriad legal, financial, employment and education duties imposed on schools. It should also enable governing bodies to develop and use their own analytical tools in order to identify the key issues of the school, evaluate the strategic action plan and hold schools to account for progress against the plan.

20. Effective governing bodies have integrity, and members trust each other to be open, impartial, honest, challenging and supportive. Current training focuses on the “nuts and bolts” of governance. While this is important, training must also enable governors to develop as a body in order to sustain integrity and trust. These are critical success factors which can be developed, but not very effectively through training overly or solely focussed on the processes of governing.

21. The structure and membership of governing bodies, including the balance between representation and skills

ATL believes that the critical friendship, challenge and support that governing bodies can offer should be based on direct, local knowledge of the community, and the issues faced across local areas. It is likely therefore that governing bodies include staff, parents and others with community interests, including democratically elected representatives of the local council. Now that Academies can appoint a number of Academy governors it is vital that the voice, knowledge and expertise of “local” governors is not lost.

22. ATL supports the policy of including pupils’ voices in the day-to-day business of schools. We recognise that sixth form colleges have pupil representation on the governing body, but we are not convinced of the effectiveness of this strategy, particularly as students are elected for one year only. We do believe that there should be links between the governing body and school council at both primary and secondary school level.

23. The effectiveness and accountability of governing bodies

According to the Ofsted report School governance: learning from the best,4 the characteristics of effective governing bodies include:

Positive relationships of mutual support and integrity between governors and school leaders, based on trust, openness and transparency.

Well-informed governors, given good quality, accurate, concise information focussed on pupil achievement.

Clarity of role and responsibility, and an understanding of the difference between headteacher and governor roles.

Good understanding by governors of the school, underpinned by visits to classrooms and conversations with staff, pupils and parents where the purpose is understood by all involved.

Governors willing to ask challenging questions and make difficult decisions.

Effective time-management and good systems for sharing information between committees, with a strong clerk, who ensures meetings are well-run and who maintains governors’ work plans.

Effective induction, and training which encourages governors to reflect on their own effectiveness.

24. Governing bodies “should hold schools to account for their vision, and for the development of teaching and learning to support that vision… Governance must be about holding schools to account, in a professional dialogue based on expertise and trust, not control and surveillance”.5

25. The governing body should therefore be accountable for the way in which it supports teaching and learning. The question remains, to whom it should be accountable and how. In particular, it is unclear to ATL how the governing bodies of Academies are accountable to their local community.

26. Ofsted inspection is one way of reporting the effectiveness of governing bodies, and the new criteria for leadership and management encompass governance. It would be helpful if inspectors could discuss findings with the wider governing body as well as the Chair. If inspection is carried out sensitively, rather than punitively, it can offer useful insight for governing bodies to reflect on their own effectiveness, as well as a challenging external perspective on the successes of their school. This will not be the case if governors feel (as many teachers do) that Ofsted inspection is about finding fault.

27. However, it remains unclear how inspection reports help to hold a governing body accountable to its community, to its sponsor or to national government—or indeed to all three.

28. Whether new arrangements are required for the remuneration of governors

We are reluctant to support any idea of payment for governors, as we believe this raises questions about their independence. We do believe much more could be done to raise the status of governors, which we believe should be equivalent to that of magistracy. This should include proper funding for expenses, mandatory training, and support from employers for governors to carry out their functions during working time.

29. The relationships between governing bodies and other partners, including local authorities, Academy sponsors and trusts, school leaders, and unions

The relationships between governing bodies and local authorities are undergoing difficult changes according to ATL members, often due to cuts in LA services. Advisory staff have been redeployed or have left, leading to a loss of continuity in relationships, loss of morale, and in some cases LA staff who have little understanding or experience of the school or the local area. We are concerned that losing this vital support for volunteers on the governing body could lead to serious mistakes.

30. We believe that the Select Committee might usefully look into the working of School Forums, and their relationship with school governing bodies. These have the potential to bring together a range of LA and Academy schools in a local area, with the Local Authority, to agree important policies across the local area.

31. Whether changes should be made to current models of governance

ATL believes that governing bodies at individual school level must be much more focussed, offering support for professional debate and development, particularly around teaching and learning.

32. But we also believe that we need a form of local governance that supports developments in education at a wider local level, ensuring good education for all pupils in all communities across a local area. According to our position statement, this local governance would offer strategic overview and vision of teaching and learning for the local area, and support local decision-making to benefit all pupils in a local area, including on issues of admissions and exclusions, courses and resources, community cohesion and well-being, equality and diversity, within professional dialogue and intelligent questioning. We are concerned by the loss of local collaboration, which we believe will be exacerbated by moves to introduce profit motives into the school system.

33. Local governance could cover a number of schools in a local area, it may cross local authority boundaries. It should include all schools in the area, including Academies and free schools, faith schools and maintained schools.

34. We believe that local governance, with responsibility for children’s learning across a local area, should include governors with expertise in finance, administration, employment and law that can be shared across the local area. It should include representatives from the local authority including wider children’s services and bodies involved with careers guidance, as well as trade unions, community leaders, parents, local employers, universities, voluntary organisations, and other organisations with strong local presence. Teachers and educational professionals should make up at least one third of governing bodies.

35. We believe local governance would enable schools and colleges to support all of the children in area more formally and consistently, to develop mechanisms to plan, work and learn together. According to our position statement, this model “offers focussed support and challenge to individual establishments with a framework that acknowledges that schools cannot and should not operate independently of each other. It offers a route for those who are committed to the development of ‘their’ establishment to consider the impact on all pupils in a local area, as well as providing local expertise that can be shared.”6 With the development of Academies, and the demise of the local authority, we believe the need for this kind of local governance is increased.

January 2013