School Governors

Damian Hinds Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael]

That is a really important point, Mrs Main. I am suitably chastened.

If a governing body is recruiting from a relatively small pool, it will, by definition, be harder to recruit. That is my first point. My second point is whether we need to have 20 people sitting around the table. Should we not be looking at smaller governing bodies?

Governing bodies should recruit people from outside the education field as well, because it is imperative that schools have a better relationship with businesses, thereby improving career opportunities for their pupils. Part of a governing body’s role is to provide an interface between the school and future employment and further and higher education.

Let me now focus on the role of the chairman and the need for them to be properly trained and, possibly, remunerated. If we want someone who is going to spend quality time with the head teacher and who is able and willing to challenge them and to support them when they are implementing necessary changes, we need someone who has the commitment, the appropriate professional skills and, if necessary, the reward. I want to put on the table now the idea that we should be remunerating people. This is not a new idea, and it has been advanced by others, not least the chief inspector at Ofsted, and we need to consider it very carefully.

Another element of the role of the chair is whether or not they have been formally assessed. We need to introduce a system in which assessment is rigorous. We do not want a few old friends gathering around for a cup of coffee, slapping one another on the back and saying, “Hey, you have done a really good job.”

The other key person in a governing body is the clerk, and they must be someone who is capable of taking notes, ensuring that meetings run properly and advising the governing body on its statutory responsibilities and any other legal implications of its actions. I have seen too many governing bodies struggle without such advice and make inappropriate and sometimes quite useless decisions.

An issue that I have already raised in relation to one of the reports is whether, when parents have lost confidence in the school governors, they should be able to dismiss the governors en masse. That would be a final accountability mechanism that was not necessarily used often, but which was an ultimate threat. Such a mechanism would ensure that governing bodies were mindful of the need to interface properly with the parent body.

Those issues are important with respect to the chair and other aspects. On the structure of governance, I want to focus on three areas. First, it would be sensible to think in terms of more federal structures for governing bodies. The evidence is—this certainly shows up in the academies programme—that where we have governing bodies looking after more than one school, the likelihood of outstanding schools being developed is much higher. That is a statistical fact and one that we need to note. However, it is also important that we bear it in mind that good schools can spread best practice to the schools that need to improve, and through a federal or a partnership model of governance, that might happen more often and more readily. It seems to me that that is a direction of travel that has already started with the academies programme, but it should be promoted.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that with small rural schools, including primary schools, that sometimes have particular challenges in attracting sufficient governors, the model he described—a single governing body for multiple schools—could be especially important?

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for that very astute question, and the answer is an emphatic yes. I believe that smaller schools in rural areas would benefit from one good governing body running two or three schools, and we should also look at vertical models, by which I mean secondary schools with feeder schools and not just primary schools. To some extent, it is horses for courses, but we must put this idea on the agenda as a direction of travel to ensure that we get better governance for schools, including those that he mentioned.