Education CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Louise Barker, Volunteer Governor

I would like to give some feedback from the position of governor in my child’s primary school as input to the Education Select Committee.

We are very lucky to have a committed group of people forming the governing body for our school. All of whom are professionals; some taking a career break whilst they have young families and others fitting it in alongside their job. We also have one retired person acting as Chair of governors currently.

Over the last 10 years since my children have been in education the role of governance has changed enormously. The expectations and responsibility of a governor nowadays compares to many decently paid jobs I would say. I do not think governors should be paid personally as I think they do it now for the benefit of the children in that school and paying them would potentially result in them having different drivers. I do feel though, that they should be recognised as extremely committed volunteers and whilst I fully expect to be accountable I think that many good people are simply scared off from being a governor due to both the time commitments involved (especially if they are also doing a full time job and being a parent as many are), and the responsibility involved. For others they hear and read about schools with bad governance and question their own ability to do a good job, so there are lots of good, capable people out there who never become governors in the first place.

I feel that our governing body—who are working extremely hard and are questioning and challenging the Head Teacher all the time—are still getting bad press because we expect more of the staff in school and they think that we are being unreasonable. At the end of the day they are being paid for what they do whilst we are not! We are mindful of the fact though that the teachers have a huge responsibility too and that their job is not easy. Too many excellent teachers are leaving the profession because they are not able to handle the pressure or because they are not prepared to do what it takes nowadays.

If we are all to work in the “Big Society” then there has to be more collaboration between those making the demands and those doing the work. For me that starts with government who make changes that cause havoc in schools across the country and create much more work for teachers and those who made the decision have absolutely no idea of the effect. It’s time people started to stand up and respond back—hence this e mail.

We constantly remind ourselves that it is not about processes and procedures or bureaucracy—it is about the education of our children both academically, spiritually and in life generally, and that is really all that should really matter to any of us.

March 2013