Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Confederation of British Industry (CBI)

1. The CBI is the UK’s leading business organisation, speaking for some 240,000 businesses that together employ around a third of the private sector workforce. With offices across the UK as well as representation in Brussels, Washington, Beijing and Delhi, the CBI is the voice of British business globally.

2. The improvement of our education system is the most important long-term investment that the UK can make to enhance economic growth and social inclusion. Last month, the CBI published the outcome of a major review of effective schools in the UK and the best systems globally. The report of this project—First Steps—is included with this response.

3. We welcome the opportunity to submit evidence to the Committee on school governing bodies. While steps the government has taken to improve the effectiveness of governing bodies by placing a greater emphasis on governance in the Ofsted inspection framework and introducing measures to make it easier for governing bodies to recruit the right mix of skills and expertise, it is clear that there is a still a significant variation in the capacity and capabilities of school governing bodies across the UK. Businesses believe some further measures are needed to improve the effectiveness of bodies for all schools. In particular, we believe:

A well-run governing body is critical to supporting school improvement but performance is still patchy, particularly for those schools needing strong governance the most.

A broader definition of accountability for schools is required by which governing bodies should also be judged. Ofsted inspection should play a key role in enforcing this.

The number of governors on a body should be capped so that it can be more effective in providing challenge and support to school leaders.

It is essential that school governing bodies have the right balance of skills and experience; more businesses can be encouraged to support schools to achieve this.

A well-run governing body is critical to supporting school improvement but performance is still patchy, particularly for those schools needing strong governance the most

4. The strong causal link between effective governance and the quality of school provision and pupil achievement is widely recognised.1 Governing bodies have an essential role to play in driving improvement in schools, by providing strategic direction, monitoring progress towards long term goals and offering critical challenge to the headteacher and school leadership team. In the best examples, governors support decisions that are in the interests of pupils and actively develop relationships on behalf of the school with the wider community. Governing bodies are like the boards of a company—a place for supportive challenge to the school leadership, not a more empowered version of the PTA.

5. Current reforms in England offer a timely opportunity to address the issue of school governance. The reforms rightly acknowledge the vital role of devolving decision-making to school leaders and lessening prescription from the centre. A drive toward greater autonomy for schools will require effective school governance to support the transformational change being sought. The government must implement measures to ensure effective provision in all schools across all the UK.

6. Business remains concerned however, that evidence shows nearly many governing bodies are not up to the task. In 2009–10, Ofsted inspections found that governance in 44% of all maintained schools required improvement (44% were rated as satisfactory/inadequate).2 A separate 2008 study3 found there is a particular issue with the effectiveness of governance for those schools in most need. As Exhibit 1 shows, only 46% of governing bodies were rated as good or excellent in primary schools where more than 50% of pupils are receiving Free School Meals. In contrast, this proportion rises to almost 70% rated as good or excellent in schools with less than 8% of pupils on Free School Meals.

Exhibit 1

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE GOVERNING BODY IN FULFILLING ITS RESPONSIBILITIES IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS BY % OF FREE SCHOOL MEALS4

A broader definition of accountability for schools is required by which governing bodies should also be judged. Ofsted inspection should play a key role in enforcing this

7. In the CBI’s First Steps report, we emphasise the need to begin the debate on education reform from the outcomes we want our schools system to achieve. These straddle the academic and the behavioural, emphasising both progress on the core and enabling skills and knowledge, and the development of behaviours and attitudes that are essential to success in work and life.

8. For reform to be a coherent whole, all the incentives acting on schools need to be addressed. This includes the accountability system, and the many conflicting expectations placed on schools. But judging real outcomes for every child and the steps schools are taking to deliver them is complex and not easily reducible to a league table or test. A renewed system should be able to judge performance against the outcome goals based on more complex metrics. For instance, a primary school should be judged on a basket of measures, not just testing scores at age 11. The goal of school accountability systems, including the role of school governors, should be to arrive at a comprehensive view of whether a school is achieving the broad outcomes it is set. In order to achieve this, the CBI believes the weighting of Ofsted narrative reports should be much greater in judging school performance as a whole, and that of league tables and simple exam-based metrics lessened. They should be the tool with which school governors hold the leadership team to account.

9. We strongly support the greater focus of Ofsted inspection on school governance and believe it will help to identify those school governing bodies that are not up to the task. Reports from Ofsted should be the basis of effective challenge to heads and governing bodies on low performance, which should not be tolerated. Ineffective governing bodies should be replaced if they fail to respond to measures to support improvement.

The number of governors on a body should be capped so that it can be more effective in providing challenge and support to school leaders

10. The fundamental responsibilities of governing bodies should be to set the overall strategic direction of a school, hold headteachers to account and have a relentless focus on driving up standards across the whole operation of a school, including the curriculum. But governors should not get dragged into micro-managing the school’s day-to-day activities. We know that effective governing bodies are organised and structured in a way that supports this core purpose. In line with powers already available to academy schools, the CBI would like to see more freedom for all schools to innovate and develop governance structures that provide a better basis for securing educational improvement.

11. There is strong evidence that smaller governing bodies are more effective at remaining strategic and are more decisive.5 We welcome the action taken so far by the Government to enable governing bodies to move to a new model with a reduced minimum size of governing body and a smaller number of fixed categories. Because we have still not reached a critical mass of effective school governing bodies we believe a maximum cap should be introduced to limit the number of governors. This would provide a useful guardrail to determine the size of all bodies while retaining the flexibility for bodies to appoint individuals to different roles.

It is essential that school governing bodies have the right balance of skills and experience; more businesses can be encouraged to support schools achieve this

12. Businesses support the drive to decentralise control to schools but it is imperative for headteachers and school leaders to be supported and challenged by governors who have the right skills and expertise. The most successful governing bodies draw on a wide range of expertise, including parents, business people and local government officers. Businesses can help by offering its experience—for example in the effective deployment of non-executive directors—and by encouraging employees to bring their work-related expertise onto governing bodies, like HR and finance, as many already do.6

13. We welcome government’s recent moves to make it easier for school governing bodies to recruit the expertise they need by introducing a new optional category of governors to be appointed on the basis of skills. However, the scale of the challenge facing school leaders is such that we would like to the government go further. We recommend that government suggest the types of skills that school governing bodies should seek to recruit, such as strong financial skills or human resources expertise. We also believe that the Welsh government’s initiative to make school governor training obligatory is a step in the right direction.7

14. It is imperative that the time and expertise of governors is efficiently deployed. Businesses are concerned by the number of their employees who volunteer to become school governors, only to be frustrated with the indecision and bureaucracy that can result from poor structures and inefficient operation of bodies. The end result can be that they are unable to bring to bear their expertise—the reason why they originally became a school governor. We would urge government to speed up their on-going review of legislative requirements and to deliver on measures to reduce bureaucracy for all school governing bodies.

15. While the Department for Education has had success in recruiting business leaders to fill school governor posts through the School Governors’ One Stop Shop (SGOSS), SGOSS estimate on their website that some 30,000 vacant governor positions remain in England alone. As Annex A demonstrates, CBI believes that there is a strong case for more businesses to encourage their staff to take on these important volunteer roles. We recommend a focused call to action, hosted in the Department for Education website, to encourage greater uptake. The CBI would be willing to help promote governor opportunities among its members and the wider business community.

CBI Employment and Skills Directorate

Annex

SCHOOL GOVERNORS—THE BENEFITS FOR EMPLOYERS

There are hundreds of thousands of school governors across maintained schools, making them the largest group of volunteers in the country. But for these volunteers to carry out their important role effectively, they need the backing and support of their employer. There are three good reasons for employers to give that support and to encourage more of their employees to take on this valuable activity:

It’s a great development opportunity for employees, adding to their skills.

It boosts employee engagement and adds to a company’s positive profile.

Effective governors mean better schools, which in turn mean better education outcomes, strengthening our skills base.

It’s a great development opportunity for employees, adding to their skills

Becoming a school governor provides the opportunity for employees to develop a range of skills and competencies that they can apply in their own workplace to the benefit of their employer. As a governor, employees will be involved in activities such as:

Using and developing interpersonal skills, potentially dealing with a wider variety of people and situations than they have previously encountered.

Developing teamworking skills.

Chairing meeting.

Interviewing and making employee appointments.

Financial planning and management.

Enhancing their knowledge of the education and qualifications system.

Being a school governor also raises employees’ awareness of the value of effective governance and gives them practical experience of it, which they can go on to apply within their own organisation or sector. In brief, one of the best ways to develop people’s ability to manage effectively and responsibly is to give them real responsibility—and that’s what being a governor involves.

It boosts employee engagement and adds to a company’s positive profile

Volunteering schemes are popular with employees—and helping young people is seen as particularly valuable. So supporting employees to be actively involved as school governors not only strengthens the engagement of those individual employees but raises morale and commitment more broadly across the workforce. It’s also attractive to potential recruits.

Everyone wants to work for an organisation they can take pride in, and a major contributor to achieving that type of reputation is for firms to be seen to play an active part in helping to build a better education system. Supporting employees as school governors can add to a firm’s positive profile as a socially responsible, community-involved employer.

Better schools mean better education outcomes, strengthening our skills base

Virtually every employer recognises that we can thrive as a nation only if we become a truly high-skills economy. And in surveys employers consistently report they anticipate needing their future recruits to have more—and higher levels of—skills.

To achieve those essential better outcomes in terms of strengthening our skills base, we have to improve the learning that goes on in schools. And that means improving every aspect of schools, as well as the teaching of young people in the classroom. School governors have a key role to play in driving forward that improvement through challenge, encouragement and effective governance. By supporting school governors, employers can make an essential contribution to ensuring that they have the right young people with the right skills and competencies available to them in the years ahead.

January 2013