School Governors

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael]

Out of a total number of several hundred thousand governors, there are bound to be some who are not as good as others and some who are there for reasons not necessarily those that we would all expect or salute. As I said, we have to congratulate and thank all governors generally speaking but note that there are bound to be some who do not rise to the challenge.

I return to Lord Hill’s quotation because I shall address the debate in that spirit. I have been a governor—whether I am a local worthy is another matter—in total for about 20 years in various organisations, such as further education colleges and primary and secondary schools, so I do have some experience. I dealt with a difficult situation quite recently where governance had been judged inadequate and the future of the head teacher became an issue. I am no stranger to controversy in school governance, as well the more reasonable activities of a governor.

I managed to persuade the Education Committee to conduct a full-scale inquiry on school governance, and I see that a member of that Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), is here. He will know that I was keen to do that, and I am pleased that we have an inquiry under way and that the first evidence session will take place in January.

I have also established an all-party group on school governance and leadership. The striking thing about that is that every time we have had a meeting we have had standing room only. There clearly is an appetite and interest in governance, governors and the policy around them. We have produced two publications: “Stronger Boards, Better Education” and “Who Governs the Governors?” We draw two significant conclusions from each of them. I will refer to the direction of travel in my remarks. The question of accountability is clearly at the core of who governs the governors. The question of skills versus stakeholders is clearly at the core of the quality of boards. I will set out those issues in more detail in due course.

As I have already said, there are a number of changes in the world of education, and the academies programme is clearly one of the most significant. It has significant implications for governance in several ways. I have referred to accountability, but the fact is that, as schools become more independent from local authorities, we should ask our governing system to fill the vacuum created. That is not an unfortunate vacuum—it is quite deliberate and quite right that schools are more independent and autonomous—but we must have a proper accountability system within schools.

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

Might it not have been a good idea, rather than to have had the vacuum and then work out how to fill it, to build the capacity first, so that there was no vacuum to fill? Would that not be a more consistent and sensible way to make public policy?

[Neil Carmichael]

As I have already quoted Lord Hill’s view of governance and as the Education Act 2011 included reference to governance and talked about governors and the membership of governing bodies, that is on the agenda. I am simply saying that we need to think more about it now, but it has not been ignored. That is the key point. The context is the changing role of schools in terms of autonomy and accountability with implications for local authorities.

The next thing we should talk about is the role of Ofsted, which has a significant responsibility to check what governors are up to with regard to the performance of schools. The sad fact is that the chief inspector of schools, Michael Wilshaw, has said that 40% of governing bodies are satisfactory or inadequate. Therefore, 60% are doing a good job, but too many are not doing a good-enough job and some are doing a fairly poor job. We cannot have that because it is inconsistent with our objective of ensuring that all schools are good schools and, as part of that process, that governing bodies play their part.

That brings me to the question of local authorities when schools start to fail. Are they acting quickly enough and do they take bold enough decisions? For example, do they introduce an interim executive board when necessary, or do they wait until it is too late? There is evidence that they do the latter. We need to test that out and be bold enough and courageous enough to admit it. I am pleased that the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) is nodding in agreement.

There is no defying the facts, which are that on occasion local authorities do not act swiftly enough. Interim executive boards are quite useful tools. The interesting thing is that when they are introduced they are swift at dealing with some of the problems that they encounter, largely because they have focused skills and are not stakeholder-oriented. They focus on how to make a school better. In my experience, putting in place interim executive boards has produced encouraging results. The kind of governing body that we should consider for all schools in the future should be more like an interim executive board and less like the kind of boards that we sometimes have, which are too big, too cumbersome and too focused on stakeholder situations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main, and to follow the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell). It is always a joy to discover people who realise after they have left the Government that the rhetoric about localism and decentralisation is suddenly not as true as they thought. Perhaps in time, the right hon. Gentleman will discover the same things about the Department for Communities and Local Government as he has discovered about the Department for Education.

I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) for securing the debate, his interesting practical suggestions and his work on the question of school governors. Like him, I pay tribute to the 300,000 people who serve as school governors in communities, as well as to governors in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central. We, like many cities, could do with more, and higher calibre, school governors—there is no point in hiding from the Ofsted figures on the quality and satisfactoriness of governors—but I am not sure whether the Government’s education reforms are helping to improve governor capacity. In short, the confusing morass of competing initiatives arguably undermines the capacity for local leadership and muddies the waters as to what is required of a governing body. That relates to the importance of building capacity before we establish a vacuum in local governance, rather than finding that a situation has arisen and thinking about how to resolve it.

That point is particularly relevant to academies. The speed and slapdash nature of the academy conversion process under this Government is putting at risk people’s willingness and ability to serve their schools. That is, first, because of the competing powers of academy sponsors and existing governing bodies. Governance provisions for converting to an academy set only minimum requirements and allow for a reduction in size and composition of the governing body. The laxer rules are more open to abuse. As we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), in academies a lack of governor control can be particularly worrying. Indeed, there are widespread reports of academies selecting their own governors or manipulating the process. If we are interested in proper accountability and a proper non-executive role for governors, we must sort out the relationship between sponsors and governors. Evidence shows that where such changes in governance have taken place previously, the governors nominated by parents, staff and the local authority are the casualties.

I am not ideologically opposed to the academy programme. There are some able academy sponsors in Stoke-on-Trent—notably Stoke-on-Trent college and the Church of England diocese of Lichfield—but aggressive takeovers of governors can put communities’ backs up and affect the success of the academy conversion process. Furthermore, what is happening represents a massive centralisation and accrual of power by the Secretary of State. I always thought that conservatism was about the little platoons of society. I thought that the big society was an attempt to revive the great teachings of Edmund Burke for the 21st century. Instead, we have in our Secretary of State, with his minions, a Jacobin centralist of whom the Rev. Richard Price would have been proud. The Government are intent on gutting local communities and local democracy to hand over the practice of teaching and the inculcation of citizenship often to carpet-salesman chains and car dealerships.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is going to get back to the debate on governors, rather than carpet salesmen.

[Tristram Hunt]

Absolutely, Mrs Main.

Since the Education Reform Act 1988 came into force, the Secretary of State has accrued an extra 2,000 powers, including on questions of local school governance. Indeed, the Secretary of State, not Parliament, has almost total de facto control over what schools do, even including the curriculum, thereby subverting the role and contribution of a governing body. There are now often no intermediate bodies or forms of civil society standing between the head teacher and the Secretary of State. That is a recipe for the arbitrary misuse of power—something that the Tory party was originally established to fight against in the late 17th century. Surely good school governance is about respecting local democracy and civic engagement. It is about having the right people round the table with the right composition of skills and a balance of capabilities, and providing effective strategic oversight, not day-to-day management. The comments of the hon. Member for Stroud on the role of federations in that context are particularly germane and interesting.

Good school governance is about conducting professional recruitment procedures, drawing on specialist expertise, and, where necessary, holding teachers to account in the interest of parents and pupils. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter, I have experienced in Stoke-on-Trent a situation involving a strong-willed and arguably devious headmaster and a governing body that was unable to take control. It was up to the local education authority to step in and deal with that situation. Had that happened in an academy, I would have been worried about the teaching of those children and their prospects.

To act properly in such situations, governors require the right support. They need professional induction training and professional clerking services. I take the points made about mandatory training and the costs involved, but we want that to become almost the norm, without it necessarily being mandatory. Although that requires greater professionalisation and dedication on the part of governors, it also requires wider respect for that role from the Secretary of State and the Government. We have had the Teach First campaign, which the Labour Government successfully inaugurated, but what about a “Become a Governor” campaign—not necessarily with a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger? Instead of talking governors down and undermining their role in the school ecology, we should celebrate them as civic heroes. We need, as the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove suggested, to raise their esteem. That is what the 2010 report suggested. Instead, the Secretary of State has condemned those civic-minded individuals

“who see being a governor as a badge of status, not a job of work.”

Surely, it should be both, as I am sure it is in St. Albans, Mrs Main. It should be a mark of status and should be taken seriously and conscientiously as work. Just as with the stakeholders-versus-skills question, this is not an either/or option.

As the Government’s reforms grind on and local education authorities are stripped of their functions, the role and importance of the governor will only grow. When we think about such questions in the Labour party, we always have in our mind creating brilliant schools in local communities. The Government—a Conservative Government, of all things—seem concerned with denigrating governors’ volunteerism, undermining their capacity and transferring all power to Whitehall functionaries rather than local champions. If we want true governors creating great schools, we should focus on capacity-building, training and raising their esteem.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister— [Interruption.] Sorry, I call Kevin Brennan. The Minister has a few more minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Elizabeth Truss]

The Ofsted inspection will take place in due course, if the school performs below satisfactory levels. The reality is that, often—I could tell the right hon. Member for Exeter about similar cases in my constituency—poor performance on financials is related to poor overall school performance.

My colleague, Lord Hill, who leads on governors in the Department for Education, has already presented the awards for school clerk of the year, which was mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove, who also spoke about ensuring higher take-up. I understand that Lord Hill has committed to doing so again next year, which is good news for all of us.

I was interested the suggestion that we run a “becoming a governor” campaign and will take that back to Lord Hill for further discussion. We are, of course, happy to listen to suggestions from all parties in the House about how to improve standards of governance. As right hon. and hon. Members rightly said, there is a process for ensuring that all governing bodies attain the capability that we want, so that they can carry out their functions.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud raised some other issues. His organisation’s work promoting skills in governing bodies is important. He is right; we need wider recruitment of governors, including business people who have financial skills that would help, as the right hon. Member for Exeter mentioned. My hon. Friend welcomed our efforts to relax the constraints on the size of governing bodies, so that we have governing bodies that are fit for purpose and offer the right scrutiny of what head teachers and schools are doing.

Being a governor can help build the individuals’ skills and experience. We have talked a lot about how the governors’ skills and experience can contribute to the schools’ performance, but we should also see it the other way round. I know a lot of people who have benefited from their time as a governor and have been able to build up their capability to understand how a school works and education policy, management and financial scrutiny.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned the platoons that we are seeking to support in society. In that regard, it is important that we retain governorship as a voluntary service, because it is a two-way process, with members of the community gaining experience as well as contributing to the future of a school and schools gaining from that experience of the community. The Government do not have any plans to pay governors and go away from the well-established principle of voluntary governance. There might be times—for example, if a school is in trouble and an interim executive board is needed for that failing school—when payment might be appropriate, but in the general run of things, we support a continuation of the voluntary governance principle.

[Tristram Hunt]

If the Government’s policy moves towards for-profit schools, which the former head of the No. 10 policy operation is proposing, does the Minister see paid-for governance as part of that?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The Department has no plans to have for-profit schools, so the hon. Gentleman asks a hypothetical question.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud mentioned rigorous self-assessment of governing bodies. That is important. We must move away from the idea that the Government can mandate what schools and governing bodies should do to the idea governing bodies are responsible for building their capability.

I thank the right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to the debate and hope that I have answered their questions. This debate has helped highlight the importance of governors and governing bodies in schools. Often, when discussing schools policies, we end up talking about teachers, who are important in delivering an excellent education, but the structures that surround teaching and how we hold them to account are also important, as are the roles played by volunteers in our schools.

I am glad that we have had this debate. I will take up the issues raised with Lord Hill. If right hon. and hon. Members wish to write to me about further issues, I am happy to take those up, too.