Governors    What is being a governor all about?

School Advice & Support Services

What is being a governor all about?

Induction Booklet - Poole Governor Services

With acknowledgement and grateful thanks to Stephen Adamson of Adamson Publishing for the use of text from "Start Here: What new school governors need to know" (2005)

WHAT IS BEING A GOVERNOR ALL ABOUT?

1.            What being a Governor is all about

So you have become a governor.   Or maybe you are thinking about it and want to know what is involved.  If you have already taken on the challenge you will have joined what is often described as the largest volunteer army in the land - around 350,000 people.

Despite the size of that number, the chances are that you do not have more than a sketchy idea of what you have let yourself in for.  You will probably have heard of terms like "performance management" and "PANDA", be aware that you are responsible for the spending of the school's budget; have some idea that school inspections affect governors, and know that governors get involved when pupils are excluded from school, but you may not know what lies behind these terms and duties.

Because the governor's load can sound onerous, first some reassurance.   Governors certainly have considerable responsibilities, but they don't exercise them as individuals.  It is better to think of "the governing body" rather than a "body of governors" because all governors decisions are corporate and all responsibilities are corporate.   Only by doing something criminal, or stepping wilfully outside your powers, can you incur personal liability.

What about these responsibilities? They have been subject to a lot of clarification.   They are not, however always completely clear, but there is plenty of guidance. One thing to grasp is:  You are not expected to be an expert.

You can, for example, be an active member of the finance committee without having any experience of accountancy!

Also, you are not alone!   There is a lot of help, not only from other governors and the headteacher.   Poole Governor Services also provides comprehensive support for both its new and established governors through its Service Level Agreement with your school.   This gives you access to central and whole governing body training and support and a telephone and email helpline.   There is also a  national helpline that you can ring for free advice.   And there are some excellent publications around.   See Chapter 4 for details.

Understanding the role

The most fundamental thing about what governors have to do lies in a definition of what they do not do.  Governors do not manage schools.  Schools are led and managed by their management, which starts with the headteacher and, depending on the size of the school, will encompass a number of other paid staff:  the deputy head(s), assistant head(s), heads of department, heads of year.  What governors are required to do is to oversee the development of the school.   Ultimately, all governors' responsibilities come back to this, though the route is sometimes circuitous.  Thus for example:

You do not:

-         choose the books that should be bought for the library

-         decide which teacher should teach which pupils

-         judge individual teachers

But you do:

-         allocate a budget to spend on buying library books

-         decide on the number of teachers the school should have, and the balance between different subjects

-         discuss with the headteacher measures to be taken to improve any subject where the public exam results look poor.

The three governor roles:

Strategic

Governors have three roles to fulfil.  It has probably already become clear that one of these is the strategic role.   This is setting the general direction of the school, looking at how you corporately want it to develop.  For example, if the school was consistently getting disappointing numeracy results, one strategic decision would be to take measures to improve them.   This might mean agreeing with the head to fund extra training for the staff, allocating money for more books or equipment, or employing an extra teacher or teaching assistant.

Strategic thinking need not always be directly connected with the curriculum.   The school may have an unsatisfactory number of instances of poor behaviour or of truancy.   It may have neglected developing after-school activities or may need to take measures to ensure the integration of increasing numbers of pupils for whom English is not their first language.

Being strategic does not just mean responding to problems or weaknesses.   You  may decide that you want the school to specialise in a certain curriculum area, or to seek specialist status.  Your school may be a faith school, and you would want to ensure that its faith informs the moral teachings of the school.   Or you may decide that some radical reorganisation of the school, such as seeking to federate with another school or becoming an extended school, is the way to make a good school even better in the future.

How your governing body makes these decisions should be determined by its mission statement and aims and values.   These encapsulate what the governors and the school staff consider to be special about the school, and where they want it to go.   You should have these explained to you by the school headteacher and/or chair of governors shortly after becoming a governor.  They are worth paying close attention to.

The other two roles are:

·        the 'critical friend'

·        'accountability'

The Critical Friend

The term 'critical friend' is very widely used to describe the governors' role, although not universally liked.   The governing body is meant to be the critical friend to the school's headteacher.   The second half of the phrase comes first.   The governing body is meant to be supportive of the head.  As has been made clear earlier, it is the head who runs the school, who is at the sharp end.   The headteacher therefore has a right to expect the governing body to be generally sympathetic, to be there to hear about difficulties, and to unite with him or her in developing the school as they have corporatively agreed.

The critical part means being willing to question and challenge when things do not look right.  The 'critical' does not exist separately from the 'friend':  you don't ask about a problem area and them simply say it is up to the head to sort things out:  you look together at positive steps that can be taken to improve things in the future.  Critical friendship is only achieved by trust and mutual respect.  Among your own friends, it is probably from those who are closest to you that you find it easiest to take criticism, and who will only criticise in order to help you.

In order to act as a critical friend, the governing body needs to establish ways of monitoring and evaluating the progress of the school.   Monitoring is keeping an eye on things and seeing whether the decisions you have made are producing the desired results.   Some of the strategic decisions will involve setting targets.   Monitoring means then asking to see if those targets have been met.   It is not just about looking at results on paper.   Making a visit to school during teaching hours is one of the best ways of assessing progress, but this only means occasional visits.  Evaluating is about analysing whether such strategic decision making and target setting has made a difference to the school's learners - had a positive impact on their learning progress.   In this way governors and the governing body contributes to the school's Self Evaluation.

Accountability and the executive role

Additionally, the governing body is accountable to a variety of 'stakeholders' in the school, and at times will exercise executive powers.

The executive powers cover various instances where the governing body has to make a decision that directly affects the running of the school:  appointing a new head or deputy, or deciding on appeals against exclusion (pupils) or dismissal (staff).

Although at first sight these tasks might appear to blur the distinction between the governor's role and that of the school's management, in practice there are good reasons why governors, not staff, should undertake them.   Some of these tasks belong to the governors because they affect the strategic direction of the school.   For example, making the appointment of a new headteacher is the single governing body decision that will have most bearing on the future of the school.  Others are more a matter of justice:  a panel of governors hears and decides on an appeal against dismissal by a teacher because governors can take an objective view.

Accountability is a term that you hear frequently in relation to figures in the public eye.  Politicians are supposed to act in the interest of the public that elected them, not in their own interest or in that of some other group.    In this way they are deemed to be accountable to the public for their actions, and not only at election times.   The principle of accountability underlies everything that  governors do too.   You are not elected or chosen just for your own benefit or for that of your child, and certainly not so that you can benefit financially from the post.    You are elected as a member of the public, or chosen as a member of a particular part of the public (the 'stakeholders') and reflect the accountability vested in you by contributing to and approving the School's Prospectus and annual School Profile, for example, presented then to existing and prospective parents/ carers of the school.

Types of governor

People (other than headteachers) become governors along one of five routes:

• elected by the parents
• elected by the staff
• appointed by the LA
• invited by the other members of the governing body
• appointed by the foundation of the school

Each governing body has a number of places reserved for parents.   Assuming there are more candidates than places, the places are filled by a vote of all the school's parents.

Members of staff also have places on the governing body.   The first staff  place is reserved for the head.    He or she has the choice whether to take it up, but the vast majority do.   The next place has to be taken by a teacher.  Except on very small governing bodies, there will be a third place, which is for a representative of the support staff:  teaching assistants, secretaries, caretakers, etc.

The LA also chooses governors, to represent the wider community.  These used to be mainly political appointments, chosen by the main parties on the local council, according to their respective strengths.  They are now much more commonly people in the community around the school who are interested in the school and want to help it. In Poole, such people are appointed apolitically by cross party panel of local councillors.

Certain sorts of schools have foundation governors (called in some instances partnership governors).   Many are schools that are supported in part of an outside organisation, which in most cases means the Church of England or the Roman Catholic Church.  If your school is described as voluntary controlled or voluntary aided it will have foundation governors, who are appointed by a Church, or other organisation where relevant.  Also If the school is a foundation school, it has foundation governors.   Foundation schools have greater independence from the local authority than community schools, most notably in that the premises are not owned by the local authority but by a trust set up especially for the purpose.  The trust elects its representatives to the governing body - the foundation governors.

Each governing body has a number of places for co-opted community governors.   These are people, again usually from the local community, who have skills or enthusiasm that the other governors would like to add to the governing body.

The governing body can also appoint associate members to serve on one or more governing body committees and attend full governing body meetings.   The definition of associate member is wide and pupils, school staff and people who want to contribute specifically on issues.

Categories of school

There are therefore six categories of state ('maintained') school, with some variation in governors' responsibilities between them.

Community schools are fully owned and supported by the LEA.

Community special schools are also fully owned and supported by the LEA, but cater only for children with severe special educational needs.

Foundation schools own their own premises, and are funded by the local authority.  They have more autonomy from the LEA than community schools.

Foundation special schools are similar, but cater for children with severe special educational needs.

The premises of voluntary aided schools are owned by an outside body, nearly always the Anglican or Catholic Church, and the schools are partly funded by them and partly by the local authority.

Voluntary controlled schools' premises are also owned by another body, usually a Church, but they are fully funded by the local authority.

So all this is the general context of being a governor.   Probably your first question is, what does it entail?   Mainly it entails attending meetings.

2.            How Governing Bodies work

The full governing body

Governing bodies work principally through meetings.   This may seem to be an obvious point, but the way governing bodies conduct their business reveals an important truth.   That is:  No governor has any power on their own.

It is only as a corporate body that governors can do anything.   However strong their qualities and shining their virtues, individuals are not chosen as governors in order to perform as glittering soloists;  they are chosen for what they can contribute to the governing body as a whole.

Therefore individual governors can only act on their own if authorised by the governing body to perform some particular task on its behalf.   This even applies to chairs of governors, who invariably take on a larger share of work than other governors;  but all the same, except in certain emergencies, the chair has no powers to act without the authority of the governing body.

Conduct of meetings

The meeting is at the heart of what governing bodies do because that is the democratic forum where decisions are made.   If you think you are not going to be able to make most of the governing body's meetings, you should not agree to become a governor.

However, the burden here is not excessive.  Each governing body has to meet at least three times a year.   Most governing bodies find that they meet twice a term, so as to be able to discuss issues in a timely manner, and to prevent the meetings becoming too long.   Two to two-and-a-half hours is the norm for most governing bodies. Meeting times may vary across the year, but will include late afternoon and evening sessions in an effort to take into account everyone's work-life balance.

Meetings have to be quorate in order to make decisions.  The quorum is fixed by law at one half of the serving governors.

Governing bodies have to have a chair and vice-chair, whom they tend to elect at the first meeting of each academic year (unless the governing body has decided to appoint them for more than one year).   Any governor can fill either of these posts, apart from someone employed at the school.    Each governing body has also to appoint a clerk, but the clerk cannot be a governor.   The clerk should be paid for their work.  Sometimes the role is filled by the school secretary, but it must be anybody that the governing body thinks can do the job well.   Many LAs have lists of recommended clerks.

Committees

The governing body is responsible for many areas of activity, and it cannot possibly cover them all in a few hours a term at whole governing body meetings.   Instead they are usually tackled by setting up various committees.   It is up to the governing body what committees it has, but most have separate ones for each main responsibility:

• finance
• personnel
• the curriculum
• health and safety
• special educational needs or pupil welfare.

A few schools prefer to handle these matters in full governing body, but most choose to set up committees which have the power to make decisions on behalf of the governing body, and then report back to it on what they have done. More and more governing bodies are now, for ease of understanding, drawing up a schedule of delegation in order to distinguish the different levels of responsibility between school and governing body.

There are some areas where it is compulsory to delegate the business to a committee set up especially.   These are usually to do with hearing appeals:

• on admissions to the school (foundation and voluntary aided schools only)
• from parents against the exclusion of their child
• from members of staff on pay or dismissal decisions.

The area that any other committee is to cover and how the committee is to be constituted - jointly known as its terms of reference - are decided by the full governing body.&