School Governors and School Improvement

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael]

I can do so, because the Education Committee looked into that issue, and if people read the report, they will see that answers to many of the questions I asked yield such evidence. We need to look at that evidence when we consider questions like the one asked by my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Committee. That dynamic can be seen at work not just in school governing bodies, but often on company boards and in other organisations. It works, and it should be considered.

The role of business is very important. That arises in relation to the question of why we do not have the best interface between business and education, which is a general problem. For example, it is certainly a worry that only 28% of A-levels are in STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—when the business community is seeking a bigger pool of STEM-educated children and students.

Another issue is why more businessmen are not on school governing bodies, increasing that interface and bringing in leadership and management expertise. The Government have recognised that the Select Committee is right on that count, and we must ensure that we start to break down some of the barriers. The Government are right, and I hope that they will persist with the idea of creating a legal requirement to give people time off for service on a governing body.

I will finish by raising several points. The first is that we must strengthen the mechanism for imposing interim executive boards—IEBs—when schools are identified as failing. I believe that if an Ofsted inspection finds that a school is in serious trouble, there may well be a case for having an IEB, and the Select Committee suggested that Ofsted should be able to use its powers to impose one. The Government have said that there are other ways of solving the problems. If a school is in a federation or some other structure, they might get some assistance. None the less, we need to send a signal that setting up an IEB might just be the right option. It will not be right in every case or in every situation—for example, when a primary school is allied to another school—but it is certainly right for a secondary school that is failing in an obvious way.

There needs to be a pool of governors on those IEBs. Too many areas of the country do not have a sufficiently large pool of good people to be on IEBs. We need to redouble our efforts to find and properly train people. One structure that could solve that problem is the National College for Teaching and Leadership.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I support much of what he is saying, but I recommend that he looks at other models that promote collaboration between governing bodies. The experience from Darlington shows that a school can be turned around quickly by encouraging better collaboration, even when, as in Darlington, almost all the schools are academies.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the hon. Lady for her helpful intervention. That was one of my points. She is absolutely right, and I thank her for her support.

I want to touch on sub-regional structures, academy chains and other such structures that one might expect to find when schools collaborate. Collaboration certainly does make a difference. I suggest that some formal federal structure might be the answer in many situations. Mutual help, by which I mean learning best practice from others, getting support when there is a problem and being able to reach out for expert help, is really important. I accept the point that has just been made. I would even go further and say that the Government might want to consider making sub-regional structures more formal where that is appropriate. A horizontal or vertical structure, or a combination of both, is a good way of ensuring that the best leadership is available to schools. That applies to rural areas where there is a variety of smaller schools, or to a secondary school with a number of feeder schools.

Another point relates to the question of skills versus stakeholders. The Select Committee talked about that in some detail. It was right to do so, not least because I encouraged it to take on the issue. It has always concerned me that if schools are boxed in with certain stakeholders on their governing bodies, they might not be able to reach out for the appropriate skills. I have never been completely satisfied that all stakeholders are accountable to the body that appointed them or that they represent, so calling them stakeholders is, in some cases, an exaggeration. The Government need to focus on getting the right skills, and all barriers to that should be removed, which means that there should be considerably less focus on stakeholders and more focus on skills. I call on the Government to consider that point.

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend, whose constituency neighbours mine, is absolutely right. Of course we need to encourage people to become governors. We do not want to frighten them off, and good training is critical. The Education Committee has made some powerful recommendations on training, which the Government have largely accepted. The National Governors Association has constantly talked about the importance of training. I want also to highlight the work of the all-party group on education governance and leadership, which has produced 20 questions that feature in a number of reports, including those of the Wellcome Trust and our Select Committee. Those 20 questions include a reminder that we should focus on the training of governors. We must ensure that those training packages are up to scratch and relevant to the challenges of governance now, and not to what we think it was. The Government are right to talk about setting up memorandums describing what academies turn into and how governors should respond.

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a 30-minute debate, and the hon. Gentleman who called the debate has graciously allowed another colleague to speak for a minute or two. The Minister also needs to make a full reply. I therefore ask for any interventions to be brief.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful for your guidance, Mrs Main. I shall be brief. In my experience, local authorities have always put on a great deal of training, but it was not well attended and its quality was questionable. How can we ensure that the quality of training is improved now that schools are far more independent?

[Neil Carmichael]

I have already mentioned the National College of Leadership and Training, and that is one way forward, but there are other organisations that are independent of local authorities that should be doing the training.

Finally, we all rely on good school governors and on volunteers to be school governors. The question of payment has been discussed by the Education Committee. There is a possibility of paying chairs of governing bodies because of their exalted status and their great responsibilities. That should remain on the table to encourage a kind of progression of governorship—from governor to chair. That might be part of the answer to the question of federations, structures, academy chains and so on.