School Governing Bodies: Diversity

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, there are governing bodies for maintained schools and boards for academy trusts. As I have already said to noble Lords, the majority of trusts have local governance in place and we want to work towards a situation where all trusts have local governance systems in place. That is something that we are talking to the sector about. That does not necessarily mean legislation. There are different ways that we can effectively achieve change.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister rightly said that governors should be representative of the community that the school serves. Setting a good example by, say, enabling a culture of equality and diversity so that it thrives within the school or the trust should be a key role of a board of governors. However, the facts show that that is not the case. Last year the National Governance Association published figures showing that just 5% of school governors were from ethnic minority backgrounds, and that figure has not changed since 1999. I will save the Minister from gently reminding me that my party was in government for about half that period, but her party is in government now and it is incumbent on her to say what action the Government will take beyond guidance, which clearly is not working, so that those boards are made more aware of the need to deal with the lack of diversity among their own number.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct that there is more work to do. In response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, we committed to continuing to encourage governing bodies to be more reflective of the school communities that they serve, and we recommended that they collect and publish board diversity data at a local level voluntarily. As far as the Government’s actions are concerned, we are investing in recruitment campaigns with specific diversity targets to help increase the pool of people who can serve on these boards and support local schools.