School Governors

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael]

I knew that the hon. Gentleman had been approached, which is why I felt at liberty to mention it and to encourage him to participate as vigorously as he obviously will. He is absolutely right about the stakeholder versus skills matter, but I believe that we need more skills and less emphasis on stakeholders. If we have too many stakeholders with vested interests, who are thinking about the status quo and not wanting to upset the apple cart, we are going down the route of not facing up to the big decisions. Governing bodies would be wiser to focus more on skills than on stakeholders, and that is the direction of travel that we should go in. The Government have already relaxed the rules about local authority governors, and we should go further and say, “Look, there is the emphasis on skills rather than the stakeholders.”

I have been the chairman of several governing bodies and a member of many, and I have seen stakeholders represent their groups and their communities extraordinarily well, but they do not necessarily ensure that the tough decisions are made in the school, and that is the distinction that I draw. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for putting the spotlight on that.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I agree with him about ensuring that governors who come on board have those skills, which they can use to hold the head teacher and the rest of the executive to account, but at the moment there are some 30,000 governor vacancies in the country. How do we go about filling them and ensuring that the people who are chosen have the right skills?

[Neil Carmichael]

That is a really good question, to which there are two answers. If you have everything corralled off into stakeholder groups, you are—are you not?—limiting the number of people who you can recruit. By definition, the pool is necessarily smaller. If you say that you must have parent governors or local authority governors—

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[Neil Carmichael]

Absolutely, my hon. Friend is right. It is not wise to say that we will go in completely the opposite direction. There is a balance to be struck, which is that where there are neighbouring schools with common interests and common issues that would benefit from a federal or partnership model of governance, that model would be good and should be welcomed. However, where there is a school that clearly does not fit that description, that type of model would not work. It is up to governing bodies to think that matter through. I am simply saying that the federal or partnership model of governance is one that we should promote where it is useful and relevant.

The second aspect of structure that I want to talk about is size, which my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire touched on. In many cases, a governing body of 20 or more governors is simply unnecessary. Actually, such a body quite often ends up with just a core number of governors playing the decisive role, and once one of that core number goes the rest are bereft of the necessary skill and expertise, and the governing body can fall apart. That relates to the recruitment problem. As we have heard, about 30,000 governor posts are still vacant, so it would be wise to consider relaxing the rules on the size of governing bodies and having fewer, but more focused and more skills-orientated, governors on a governing body.

I have already talked about the importance of governors challenging head teachers. It is absolutely right that head teachers should be challenged, but they should be challenged constructively. However, it is also really important that we have governing bodies that govern strategically, focusing on the long-term interests of the school and its pupils. It is necessary to think in terms of formulating a governing body that genuinely has that capacity to be strategic—to think about the school plan and what it can do to push forward the aims and objectives of that plan, and any other plan that is appropriate. Those are three areas of structure that need to be considered.

[Rehman Chishti]

On the numbers, I hear my hon. Friend say that 20 governors is too many. Are we looking at around 10 or 12 as the appropriate figure, if those 10 or 12 governors have the skills and in-depth training to hold the head teacher and others to account?

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[Neil Carmichael]

In one of the publications that I referred to, the all-party group certainly came up with 12 as the ideal number. Having 12 governors means having a reasonably good chance of getting a good cross-section of skills, and there would also be a sensible way of dealing with succession planning, which also needs to be considered when we discuss governors and the future structure of governing bodies.

One thing that the all-party group has done is produce a list of 20 relevant questions for governors to ask themselves. We went through a fairly exhaustive process. We had lots of governors in one of the Committee Rooms of the House, talking about the questions that should be asked by governors. They are the questions that we want to encourage more governing bodies to ask of their head teachers and of themselves.

One of those questions is:

“Do we engage in good succession planning?”

Another is:

“Do we carry out a regular 360 review of the chair’s performance?”

Still another is:

“Does our strategic planning cycle drive the governing body’s activities and agenda setting?”

Obviously, there are loads of other questions, but formulating these questions—and, indeed, the other work of the all-party group—has been useful in sketching out ways in which governing bodies might like to consider testing themselves, because we need more rigorous self-assessment by governing bodies.

Members will be pleased to hear that I am nearly finished. I want to finish off by asking a few key questions that are relevant to this debate. The first is, how do we make school governors focus on school improvement, based on a proper understanding of data performance? That question is a combination of wanting to ensure that we have school governors who challenge the performance of the head teacher and who are able and willing to take tough and rigorous decisions, but who are also capable of understanding, analysing and drawing appropriate conclusions from the amazing amount of data and information that fly around.

I have already touched on the second question, but I will repeat it as a sort of finale: are the governing bodies that we have too unwieldy, how do we ensure that we move from a stakeholder situation towards a skills-based governing body, and can we enhance the professionalism of school governing bodies? I want to emphasise the idea of ensuring that the chairmen of governing bodies are properly trained, properly engaged by the head teacher—and vice versa—and remunerated in a way that is consistent with their responsibilities and with the skills that we need to recruit for such posts.

[Rehman Chishti]

Regarding skills and ability, local authorities such as mine set a minimum training requirement that governors have to do, linked to compulsory aspects of the overall training scheme. Does my hon. Friend agree that that type of training by certain local authorities, in partnership with governing bodies—for example, the partnership between my local authority and Medway governors—works well?

[Neil Carmichael]

Yes, I do. There are good examples of training schemes and the National Governors Association—a good organisation to which I pay tribute— also does a huge amount of good training work. However, we must ensure that governors and governing bodies recognise that there is a strong need for governors to be trained, because some governors seem to think that training is something that people do only if they are bored, not because it is necessary. We need to promote the training of governors.

We are engaged in a real set of reforms in the world of education, which is an opportunity to look at governors and governance in a way that reflects our understanding of the new autonomous and independent approach that schools should have, as well as the fact that we want to drive up standards, wherever it is necessary to do so. We want not to waste time, but to get on with things to ensure that we have the appropriate leadership, impetus and toolkits to deliver the job.

I am not being prescriptive. I am simply raising issues that should be on the agenda to inform our discussions on changes to school governance. We should at all times—this is an appeal to the Minister and her colleagues —mention governance, underline its importance, encourage people to become governors and recognise that school leadership through effective governance is what we need as part of the mechanism to ensure that our schools continue to improve.

Community Sports Facilities

Debate between Rehman Chishti and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I thank you, Mr Bone, for asking me to speak, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) on securing this excellent debate. The timing is appropriate because this is the year of the Olympics in London. It is right that we should be focusing on sport. It is right, too, because we need to encourage people to live more healthily. Exercise definitely leads to a healthier lifestyle. My hon. Friend was right to emphasise the importance of exercise.

Let me talk about my own district council of Stroud, which has just reopened its leisure centre to great success. I pay tribute to Councillor Keith Pearson and his team for having the imagination to get on with the job of delivering an outstanding centre with so many improvements on the previous regime. Gone are the days of Mr Brittas and the “Brittas Empire”. Instead, we have an efficiently run organisation with clean facilities. The changing rooms are absolutely excellent and I invite Members to come and see them at any time—preferably to change for some sport. The centre demonstrates that councils can do things properly if they put their minds to it, and Stroud district council has done exactly that.

The centre expects some 25,000 users from the community around Stroud, which is a fairly impressive number. There is also Dursley swimming pool, which has a solar panel system to assist with the heating, so the pool is not just really good for the community but environmentally friendly. Things can be done by Conservative councils, and I applaud that. It is important that we recognise that councils can and should play a role. It is also critical that communities outside the council help in these matters, too.

My son is a footballer; he is a pretty impressive defender. I often go and watch him play at various football clubs across my constituency. It is really great to see so many clubs flourishing and providing decent pitches for people to play on and it is a great tribute to local communities that they allow these facilities to be developed and then support them. The support that local communities give to such clubs is critical.

[Rehman Chishti]

My hon. Friend is making an important point about local communities and local authorities. Medway has just spent £11 million on the Medway Olympic park in one of its most deprived areas—there is a seven-year life expectancy difference between one part of the constituency and another. Does he agree that it is crucial to get such facilities in deprived areas as well as in affluent ones, so that children with social deprivation issues can use the facilities and improve their health as well?

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I am grateful to him for making it, because that is an important point. We must ensure that we reach out to all communities, especially the ones that he has described. We must have healthy people who enjoy their lives, are properly engaged and play a full part in the society that we want to create. That was what my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) was referring to when she spoke about people with disabilities, and it is great that she emphasised that point.

There are communities in my constituency that support people with disabilities in their interest in sport. Most impressively, a huge amount of money was raised for a swimming pool as St Rose’s school, Beeches Green, for people with severe disabilities. That is wonderful; it shows that people care, that they can deliver the right kind of support and that people recognise that absolutely everybody should have opportunities to play sport wherever possible, which is completely right.

There are also threats to sport in my constituency. Stroud rugby club needs a new facility and to upgrade its rooms—in fact, it needs to move. We must help clubs such as that to seize the initiative effectively and ensure that they can deliver the right kind of facilities for the huge number of young people who want to play rugby. The place is full on a Sunday morning. My son is no longer interested in going to the rugby club at weekends—it’s football for him, although he plays rugby at school—but those who go to Stroud rugby club are really enthusiastic, and that is an important stepping stone to more involvement in sport. I am very keen for Stroud rugby club to thrive and I support it in its endeavours.

I went to Gloucester rugby club a few weekends ago to watch a very exciting game between Gloucester and Toulouse—my wife is French, so there were some issues about who was supporting whom. While there, I noticed the sheer involvement of the people watching the match. We must not forget that element when we talk about facilities. It is important to encourage people to go to and support sporting events. They will be watching people they know—members of their families and so forth—which is part of the collective activity of sport and should be promoted.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West mentioned corporate support; it is important and we should encourage it. The Government need to find ways to help to lever in the corporate support that is so necessary for many fledgling clubs and for developed clubs that want to move forward or expand their assets or facilities. We should not forget the sports such as skateboarding that we would not necessarily think of as sport, because they also give opportunities to young people to be involved.

The community facilities that we want are essential, and should be encouraged to develop into other services as well, such as social clubs, because that gives them an added dimension and another way to be successful. I have noticed that the clubs in my constituency that have moved on and developed in that way have prospered, and they continue to provide excellent opportunities for young people.