Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the Wellcome Trust

Key Points

The Wellcome Trust maintains a strong interest in governance which arises from our belief that excellence in science education—as indeed in any aspect of schooling—is not possible without strong governance.

Governing Bodies play an essential role in setting the strategic direction for the school and holding its leadership to account, but too often the role is seen more as a support body that simply agrees the head teacher’s decisions. The governing body and school leadership should decide on their joint vision for the school and the measures that are needed to monitor its delivery.

Governing Bodies will become increasingly important to improving state education, as the system moves strongly away from Local Authorities towards academies which are answerable directly to the Secretary of State. Such autonomy increases the responsibilities placed on governors, but it also offers governors the possibility that they can exercise some real influence over their school’s future rather than rubberstamping decisions that are made elsewhere.

Governing bodies sometimes find it difficult to understand how their strategic role should work in practice, and we believe a flexible recommended code of governance (see appendix) would help.

For STEM education, we would urge Governing Bodies to pay particular attention within their schools to:

the need for high quality practical work;

provision of timely and appropriate careers advice to students; and

the professional development of staff.

Governors need to have clear and readily understood high-level data about the performance of the school, accessed independently of the school management. This should include both quantitative data such as examination performance and less readily quantified but important information such as pupils’ self-confidence.

Both the supply of, and the demand for, high quality training for governors need to be improved if School Governing Bodies are to be effective.

Introduction

1. The Wellcome Trust is committed to supporting science education. We work to ensure all young people develop the science skills and knowledge necessary to live and work in an ever more technological age. We believe it is important to equip young people with the understanding necessary to make informed decisions about the impacts of scientific and technological developments on their lives, as well as engaging and inspiring some of them to continue studying science. This includes developing the next generation of scientists, and helping others move into careers that draw upon science skills.

2. The Trust has an extensive education programme, mainly directed towards science education. However, we recognise that excellence in science education—as indeed in any aspect of schooling—is not possible without strong governance. This point was made in the February 2010 report of the Science and Learning Expert Group1 chaired by the Trust’s Director Sir Mark Walport.

3. As a result of these concerns, and following consultation among stakeholders, the Trust initiated at the beginning of 2012 a programme of activity around improving school governance. The programme is focussed particularly on a code of governance, the provision of information and the training of governors and is in collaboration with the National Governors’ Association, Teach First, the National College for School Leadership, Ofsted and DfE. This response draws on our experience in this programme and our beliefs about what constitutes good school governance.

The Purpose and Responsibilities of Governing Bodies

4. Governing bodies play an essential role in setting the strategic direction for the school and holding its leadership to account. Schools are beset by so many regulations and reporting requirements that it can be difficult to see the wood for the trees. The Governing Body (GB) should work with the school leadership to create a strategic plan for the school, and should then monitor its implementation through the School Development Plan. The GB should have a clear long-term strategic vision for the school and should hold the leadership to account for its delivery. This is what the non- executive directors of a corporation or the trustees of a charity do, and school governors should work in the same general way.

5. The best GBs already work like this, with a monitored, strategic and long term approach to school development, but many do not. From our work with school governors, we have learned that in some GBs the role is seen more as a support body that rubber-stamps the head teacher’s decisions instead of one that challenges and holds the school leadership to account. Support is an essential part of the role of GBs, but so too is challenge and it can be hard for a GB that has focused on the former to increase the level of challenge it employs. A key factor is the relationship between the chair of governors and the head teacher, which needs to be close and trusting enough for effective working, but not such that criticism is difficult.

6. We welcome work that DfE ministers have recently initiated to improve the strategic effectiveness of GBs, especially the move to encourage GBs to become more skills- based rather than representative. To carry out their role effectively, GBs need to be able to monitor with confidence key issues such as finance, property and human resources, and the presence among the governors of relevant expertise in such fields is essential.

7. We believe that GBs will become increasingly important to improving state education, as the system moves strongly away from Local Authorities towards academies which are answerable directly to the Secretary of State. Such autonomy increases the responsibilities placed on governors, but it also offers governors the possibility that they can exercise some real influence over their school’s future rather than rubberstamping decisions that are made elsewhere. This should be a selling point in the drive to recruit more high quality governors to schools that need them.

8. Despite the need for proper distance between the GB and the executive, we believe it is important that governors know and understand the particular circumstances of their own school. With the growth of academy chains, it is important that governance arrangements in such chains do not create remoteness between the GB and the individual schools.

Strategic Role of the Governing Body

9. Our work with governors suggests that many find it difficult to understand how their strategic role should be carried out in practice. It can be particularly difficult for governors to understand where the line lies between their strategic responsibilities and the management responsibilities of the head teacher and senior management. Governors—particularly parent governors—may not appreciate that stepping over this line is improper and can make the head teacher’s job harder.

10. With such concerns in mind, the Trust has produced, and is now in the process of piloting in 21 schools, a “Recommended Code of Governance’ included as an appendix to this response. The starting point for this Code was the Statement of Recommended Practice2 used by charities, and the UK Corporate Governance Code,3 and it has been developed through a series of workshops with teachers and governors and in collaboration with the National Governors Association, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Governance, the National College for School Leadership, Ofsted and DfE. The Recommended Code is intended as a flexible tool to guide GBs and school leadership through the process of developing and monitoring the strategic plan for their school.

11. We believe it is essential that the governing body and school leadership decide on their joint vision for the school and the measures that are needed to monitor its delivery. The GB is an important part of the accountability framework for schools’ performance, but it is not the only part, and other elements may bear down more heavily on the school leadership. In particular, league tables, external testing and inspection by Ofsted strongly influence the day-to-day priorities of school leadership. But examination results are not the only thing that learners and their parents want to get from school. Parents are also concerned that their children are confident, employable, inspired by their teachers and by the extra-curricular activities available to them. There is a whole range of outcomes that define a “good’ school, and only some of these are to do with test results.

12. As part of the strategic planning exercise, GBs need to agree the key outcomes for the school, and how they will be measured and monitored. GBs need to accept that outcomes such as inspired teaching and pupils’ self-confidence are not as easily measured as, say, GCSE results, and that the most important outcomes are not always the most easily measured.

13. We would hope that improving the functioning of GBs will improve science and mathematics education in various ways including those outlined below.

Looking beyond league table performance measures: some specific aspects relating to science and mathematics

14. One of the most important elements of good teaching is experimental investigation, but the current system of examining at GCSE and A level does little to encourage this kind of work because it drives teachers to focus on preparing for written exams. A GB with science achievement high among its priorities will want to satisfy itself that high quality practical work takes place in science. Similarly the focus on examination results could lead schools to undervalue informal science experiences such as visits to museums or industry4 ^, 5 which can improve student engagement and enrich and contextualise learning.

Careers Advice

15. Schools do not now have a dedicated budget for the provision of careers advice and guidance and may struggle to prioritise the delivery of high quality services. A GB should hold school leaders to account for the provision of high quality careers advice for students, including conveying the diversity of career opportunities and progression routes for students studying science, technology engineering and mathematics (STEM). Preliminary data from a survey of 14–18 year olds that the Wellcome Trust commissioned from Ipsos MORI found that most said they know little or nothing about careers in science and that the majority felt that they had not received useful careers advice from their careers advisors.6 A report from the National Audit Office7 listed careers information and guidance as one of five critical success factors in improving take-up and achievement in science.

Securing the professional development of teachers

16. Subject-specific professional development is important in both primary and secondary schools, because inspired teaching depends on both deep subject knowledge and strong teaching skills. Many school leaders are reluctant to prioritise professional development for their teachers because of the expense and disruption it can cause in school, but this is sacrificing long-term gain to short-term expediency. GBs need to hold school leaders to account for the professional development of their staff, who are the school’s key asset. In the case of science teaching, professional development is particularly important because of the rapid pace of change of science, and the numbers of teachers who are required to teach science outside their specialist area, which is why the Wellcome Trust collaborated with the Government to found a network of Science Learning Centres to provide continuing professional development for science teachers and technicians.

Information for Governors

15. Although there are now abundant data available to schools on all aspects of their performance, governors may find such data hard to interpret. In addition, the supply of these data is normally controlled by the school management, with the risk that the information the governors most need may never reach them. For example, the RAISEOnline database used by Ofsted and DfE provides abundant quantitative data relating to examination performance, but its complexity puts it beyond the direct use of many governors. We believe there is a pressing need for an information source designed specifically for governors to meet their need for high-level summary information to give a quick overview of the school’s performance against its strategic priorities. Governors need to be able to access this data independently of the head teacher.

16. The Wellcome Trust is a strong advocate of open data and we recognise that exposing government data for public use can be beneficial. We understand that Ofsted is proposing to produce short summary datasets for each school, designed to give governors, parents and the public access to high level information, and this is to be welcomed. In parallel with this, and in collaboration with the Fischer Family Trust and the National Governors’ Association, the Wellcome Trust plans to produce and pilot school “data dashboards” designed by governors, for governors, to augment the datasets that it appears Ofsted will provide.

17. Such work is moving in the right direction, but it will focus on readily quantifiable outcomes, particularly results in public examinations. Such data leaves unanswered many of the less readily quantifiable questions to which governors will seek answers, such as how the school is improving pupils’ self-confidence and whether pupils are inspired by their teachers. Wellcome intends to carry out further work with governors in the New Year to explore the extent to which these more qualitative, but nonetheless important, outcomes can be monitored through information made directly available to governors.

Governors’ Training

18. Most governors are non-specialists in the field of education, which like many technical fields uses language which can be baffling to outsiders. Training can help governors, particularly newly-appointed ones, come to grips with the field, and there are other areas, such as the interpretation of school performance data, in which governors would benefit from training. Yet we hear from the governors we work with that the quality of training available to them is variable, and often poor. Governors are often busy people with full- time jobs, and they should not be expected to give up a day’s paid work to train unless they get a rewarding experience.

19. The supply of high-quality governor training would improve if there were a stronger demand for it, and we believe that GBs should not only set aside a training budget for their members, but review each year how much training each member of the GB has received. The Wellcome Trust is at an early stage of discussions with the National Science Learning Centre and others about developing training courses for governors with a particular focus on achievement in science and mathematics.

January 2013