Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Catholic Education Service (CES)
1. Executive Summary
1.1 The evidence is being submitted by the Catholic Education Service (CES) on behalf of the 20 Catholic dioceses across England and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
1.2 The CES represents 2166 Voluntary Aided, Academy and Independent schools in England on national education policies.
1.3 The dioceses, which we represent, play a significant role in the recruitment, appointment, support and development of Foundation Governors.
1.4 We believe it is important to protect the foundation governor model for our schools and would welcome greater training and support for all governors.
2. Governance in Catholic Schools
2.1 The current regulations require that the foundation governors in Catholic VA schools are in a majority of two over all other categories of governors collectively.
2.2 This ensures the schools are strategically led according to the particular religious character of the school.
2.3 It is our wish that the Select Committee sees this as strength in school governance and commits to recommending the current system is maintained.
2.4 The Catholic Code of Canon Law requires high standards in Catholic schools (Can, 806§2). The Bishops of England and Wales passed a resolution at their plenary in November 2011 mandating the CES to develop strategies alongside Diocesan authorities and within the wider Catholic sector to ensure that Catholic schools in difficulty can be helped to improve rapidly so as to offer an excellent Catholic education to our children.
2.5 We believe that strong governance is of crucial importance to maintaining high standards in schools and the recruitment, appointment, support and development of Foundation Governors is an important strand of the work being undertaken by the Catholic Church in ensuring standards are maintained and strengthened.
2.6 We welcome the select committees focus on governance for this reason.
3. Recruitment, Training and Development of Governors
3.1 We share the view that all governors need key skills and training and we will work to improve training for foundation governors in our sector.
3.2 We would like the Select Committee to consider strengthening regulations that guarantees governors time off work for their work in schools. The demands are increasing and therefore there is a similar increase in the amount of time governors need to be in the school during school hours.
3.3 It is important that we are able to recruit from minority ethnic groups, across the age and skills range and from local communities as 33.5% of pupils in Catholic Primary Schools and 28.7% of pupils in Catholic secondary schools are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
4. Conclusion
4.1 The CES are grateful for being given the opportunity to provide written evidence to the Education Select Committee.
January 2013