The Effective School Governor

Joan Dean

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134594191
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This comprehensive guide book for governors specifically focuses on providing clear guidance on issues facing schools now. Topics covered include: *the Home-School agreement *the school day, the school year *citizenship *literacy and numeracy provision *school self-evaluation and the light-touch inspection. The book addresses issues that are new to all governors.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Jane Dobson was a new governor. She had been elected by the parents at the school where her two children were pupils and was looking forward to her first meeting with mixed feelings. She felt very responsible as a representative of the parents and hoped that she would be able to contribute to the work of the governing body. The chair of the governors, John Robinson, had telephoned to welcome her as soon as he heard of her election and told her that Mary Jamieson, another parent governor, would be acting as her mentor for her first few weeks as a governor. Mary would tell her about the work of the governors and would answer any questions she might have. He also described the committee structure and suggested that she might like to go to any of the committee meetings which interested her so that she would be in a position to decide which ones she would like to join. Most governors were members of two committees and much of the work of the governors was done in committee.

In the days that followed Jane received the governors’ file of information. This included the following:

• a copy of the Instrument of Government
• a list of the governors, a thumb-nail sketch of each, their addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and membership of the various committees
• the terms of reference of the various committees
• a list of the governors’ meetings for the next year
• the last annual report from the governors to parents
• the school prospectus
• a plan of the school
• a list of the school staff
• copies of the various school policies
• a short paper on the National Curriculum and another on special needs
• a copy of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE 1997) publication School Governors: A Guide to the Law
• information about courses which would be available for new governors
• copies of the minutes of the last two governors’ meetings.

Jane spent quite a bit of time reading all these documents and felt that she was beginning to get a picture of the work of the governing body and the school and at the same time wondered about how much she had taken on.

At the first meeting she attended, the chair of each committee gave a short talk about the work of his or her committee and this helped Jane to decide which committees she would like to join.

Why have governors?

Any organisation which is publicly funded needs to be accountable in some way to the public it serves. Schools are no exception and governing bodies are part of the process of accountability. They have legal status as corporate bodies rather than as individuals. The size and composition of governing bodies is legally determined. Individual governors are appointed by different groups of people but are representatives, not delegates.

Governors are appointed to oversee and support what goes on in schools. The headteacher is responsible for the day-to-day running of the school but is accountable to the governors. Governors appoint the headteacher and staff and determine the aims of the school. They make or approve the policies on which the school is run. They manage the school budget with the headteacher. They bring to the school decision making an independent perspective and experience. They can act as a sounding board for new ideas put forward by the head and staff or suggested by external sources. They support the headteacher and staff in their work and represent the school in the local community.

The history of governing bodies

There have been governors or their equivalent for schools for a long period. In 1833 when education was first supported in part by public funds, the concept of a committee made up of people representing the community served by the school was introduced. In 1870 a national system of public education with locally elected boards was established, the forerunners of local education authorities (LEAs) which had responsibility for building schools and raising local rates for the purpose where church provision was insufficient The schools so established had to have their own boards of managers. In 1902 local education authorities were set up to take over the running of publicly funded schools.

The 1994 Education Act gave the right to free primary and secondary education to all children and gave LEAs the duty and the power to provide education and ancillary services. Instruments and Articles of government for schools were set out in 1945 with help from a model from the Ministry of Education. These gave managers (of primary schools) and governors (of secondary schools) the care of the premises, involvement in the appointment of the headteacher and staff of the school and the general direction of its conduct and curriculum.

In the years following the 1944 Act many primary schools were governed as a group and in some LEAs a subcommittee of the council was responsible for governing all the primary schools in the area. In 1977, the Taylor report A New Partnership for Our Schools (Department of Education and Science and Welsh Office 1977) surveyed the role of governors and managers and recommended that:

One body should have delegated responsibility for running the school, and in forming that body no one interest should be dominant – it should be a partnership of all those with a legitimate concern, local education authority, staff, parents, where appropriate pupils and the community.

(para 6 (iii))

The report saw the governors or managers as having responsibility not only for a certain amount of decision making but also for promoting good relationships within the school and between the school and parents and community. Each school should have its own governing or managing body which ‘should stand in the direct line of formal responsibility between the local education authority and the head of the school’ (para 3. 15). Governors and managers should normally be appointed for a four year period.

The Taylor Report suggested that people not involved in education had an important contribution to make to how schools were run and they should be responsible for establishing the school’s aims, considering how these were translated into practice, keeping progress towards them under review and taking action to facilitate such progress where necessary. Governors were to determine policy, have an equal say with the local authority in the appointment of headteachers, have overall responsibility for staff appointments, make budget decisions and ensure communication with parents.

The 1980 Education Act made the headteacher of a school a member of its governing body unless he or she chose otherwise. The term ‘managers’ was to be replaced by ‘governors’ for all schools. The governing body should include at least two govemors, who have themselves children at the school, to be elected by the parents. There should also be one or two teacher governors, depending on the size of the school, elected by the teaching staff. It would be possible still for two schools to share a governing body.

The 1986 Education Act laid down that parents were to have equal representation with the LEA (two to five members each, depending on the size of the school). LEA members were to be nominated by the LEA and parent members elected by the parents of children at the school. There were to be between three and six members co-opted from the local community and teachers were to have one or two elected representatives. In church schools there would be foundation governors appointed by the voluntary body whose task was partly to ensure that the school was run according to the trust deed. Governors were to report annually to parents at a special meeting called for the purpose.

In 1988 the Education Reform Act was published. This introduced for the first time a National Curriculum and also made it possible for schools, if governors and parents so decided, to opt out of local authority control and become grant-maintained. This Act gave governors responsibility for the school budget, head-teacher and staff appointments, headteacher’s and deputy headteacher’s pay, overseeing the introduction of the National Curriculum and the operation of the national assessment system.

The option for schools to become grant-maintained has since been withdrawn by the Standards and Framework Act of 1998, which required schools to become community schools, foundation schools or voluntary schools. Schools which had remained with the local authority were most likely to become community schools. Grant-maintained schools were to become foundation schools, going back to being part of the LEA provision but retaining some of the freedom they had formerly. Voluntary schools were those which are aided or controlled by the churches.

The current situation

In September 1999, when schools entered a new legal category under the Standards and Framework Act, each school needed a new Instrument of Government which set out the name of the school and its governing body and its composition. The composition of governing bodies for community schools is shown in Table 1.1.
Primary schools with more than a hundred on roll can choose columns c or d. Those with under a hundred children on roll can choose columns e or f.

Primary schools which serve one or more minor authority areas must co-opt one additional governor nominated by one or more of these minor authorities (town, parish or district councils). The governing body of any school with a sponsor may include one or two co-opted governors nominated by the sponsor or sponsors of the school. If the school is in an Education Action Zone, the governing body may include an additional co-opted governor nominated by the forum.

Staff governors who are not teachers may be elected by and from the non-teaching staff at the school. People employed under a contract of employment for services are eligible as well as people in permanent employment. Staff governors must resign if they leave the school.

The composition of governing bodies for foundation schools is shown in Table 1.2.

As with community schools, primary schools with more than a hundred on roll can choose columns c or d. Those with under a hundred children on roll can choose columns e or f.

The composition of governing bodies for voluntary controlled schools is shown in Table 1.3.

Primary schools over a hundred can again choose between columns c and d and those with fewer on roll can choose between columns e and f.

Table 1.1 Composition of governing bodies for community schools

The composition of governing bodies for voluntary aided schools is shown in Table 1.4.

In an aided school the foundation governors are additional to those listed above and must outnumber the other governors by three in the case of a secondary school with six hundred or more on roll or by two in every other case. Primary schools can choose between columns c and d if they are over a hundred and between e and f if they are smaller than this.

Governors serve for four years. In the case of teacher governors, a teacher governor must resign if he or she leaves the school. Parent governors, on the other hand, may continue in office until the end of their four year term even if they no longer have a child at the school.

The headteacher may choose whether or not he or she becomes a governor but is entitled to attend all governing body meetings.

The 1977 Taylor Report suggested that in secondary schools pupils might be members of the governing body. This has not been taken up by government but a number of secondary schools arrange for senior pupils to attend governors’ meetings as observers who may report on student views on agreed topics.

The Standards and Framework Act of 1998 lays down the duty of LEAs and governing bodies to have the promotion of high standards as their priority. The LEA has powers to intervene in the running of a school if in the opinion of the LEA pupils’ performance is unacceptably low, there is a breakdown in management or discipline or there has not been sufficient improvement in a school designated as having serious weaknesses.

Current employment law makes it possible for employees who are governors of a maintained school or college legally entitled to ‘reasonable’ (but unpaid) time off work to attend to the duties entailed.

Research into the work of governing bodies

There have been several pieces of research into the work of governing bodies. A House of Commons (1999) Select Committee on Education and Employment report made various suggestions about the work of governing bodies. They commented on the fact that school governors’ contribution to the life of British schools has been too little appreciated and supported the government’s emphasis that the governing body’s main purpose should be to help raise standards of achievement in schools; they suggested that governors should devote one meeting annually to reviewing standards of achievement in their schools.

Table 1.2 Composition of governing bodies for foundation schools

Table 1.3 Composition of governing bodies for voluntary controlled schools

Table 1.4 Composition of governing bodies for voluntary aided schools

Keys and Fernandez (1990) surveyed the views of 2,686 governors in 1,134 primary and secondary schools in England. They found that 44 per cent (35 per cent in primary schools) had a degree or professional institute final qualification. The median time spent by governors on the work of the governing body was about ten hours a term; 22 per cent of governors felt that the most rewarding part of the role was being involved in the life and work of the school. Other rewarding activities were being involved in the decision-making process and appointing staff and other personnel issues. The most time-consuming part of the role was the paperwork.

Over ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Knowledge Governors Need
• Chapter 3: Roles and Responsibilities of Governors
• Chapter 4: Working As a Team
• Chapter 5: Monitoring the Work of the School
• Chapter 6: Policy Making
• Chapter 7: Finance and Premises
• Chapter 8: Curriculum and Assessment
• Chapter 9: Responsibility for Staff
• Chapter 10: Responsibility for Pupils
• Chapter 11: Relationships With Parents
• Chapter 12: Marketing the School
• Chapter 13: Governor Training
• Chapter 14: Evaluation
• Chapter 15: Conclusion
• Appendix: Questionnaires
• Glossary
• Bibliography