by Paul Crisp, Managing Director, CUREE
Our work to support school success through evidence based leadership and practice extends also to governance. The growth of academies (and the like) has put even greater responsibilities on governing bodies and this is reflected in the treatment of governors in recent OfSTED inspections. In this short article, I have attempted to offer a snapshot of the governance picture and to outline some of the support arrangements available from us and from others.
Governors under scrutiny
If you’ve been inspected in the current cycle you have probably noticed how much more interested in the governance arrangements the inspectors now are. In the ‘good old days’ governance was a sub-theme of Leadership and Management where the Chair of governors (CoG) would have a ‘bit of a chat’ with an inspector. Contrast that with the last few months where CoGs need counselling (OK, I exaggerate!) after the interrogation they get about their knowledge of the school’s performance, including staff performance, how they drive the mission, improvement and development agendas, what they know about pupil premium etc. In the last year the two Michaels (Gove and Wilshaw) have been talking up the significance of governance and governors. Gove opened up with some inflammatory remarks about ‘local worthies’ (see my blog here) and Wilshaw has been on the Telly (Newsnight) and in print (most recently TES) highlighting the challenge role of governors. The Education Select Committee is also taking an interest though a still running Inquiry. The most specific evidence of OfSTED’s rising expectations of governors can be found in the latest (February 2013) subsidiary guidance to inspectors (references to governance on page 20)
The buck stops with you
This focus on the role of governors flows directly from the increasing diversity (or fragmentation as some would see it) of the governance structures of schools in England. According to the Education Funding Agency, 55% of secondary schools are now academies (the proportion of primary schools academies is much smaller), 2/3 of which are stand-alone and the remainder in chains of various sizes. Although maintained school governing bodies have had extensive powers for some time, the local authority (LA) retained substantial responsibility and power to deliver it; they could remove the head of a failing school and replace the governing body. In a growing fraction of schools, the governing body is answerable to no one but the Secretary of State. It is essential, in this situation, that governing bodies exercise their part of the leadership role with professionalism and a good balance between support and challenge – often a tough ask for a group of local volunteers. This drive to professionalism is one of the forces leading some – including the Chief Inspector – to press for smaller, more expert governing bodies and even to pay them (or some of them).
Help!
If the challenge for governors is coming from OfSTED, where do they get support from? The answer, increasingly, seems to be wherever they are willing to buy it from. Some LA governor’s support services are still functioning (their services range from routine clerking through to school improvement support and training). The National College for School Leadership (NCSL) set up a National Leadership of Governance (NLG) support structure last year designed to do for governors what National Leaders of Education do for headteachers. There are now around 100 NLGS across the country and their services continue to be free. You can find out more about what this is and how it works from my Blog here). More recently, NCSL have been piloting a Governance Review service provided by NLGs. The trigger for a Review is an OfSTED recommendation where an inspection has found particular weaknesses in governance. The pilot is now concluded and DfE are expected to announce the outcomes soon. Indications are that the process will be continued by OfSTED and schools will be able to commission the review from a number of different providers (including the NLGs who undertook pilot reviews but from other providers as well).
As one of the original group of NLGs, I’ve been working to support governors in a number of ways. For example, I coached a Chair newly appointed to a school in special measures. My main contributions in that instance were helping her develop confidence in her understanding of the main challenges and the solutions to them. On the way she had to fend off the array of agencies offering her often contradictory ‘advice’ and demand and get more practical support for her in her role. I have worked with local governor’s training providers providing inputs to various events. I conducted a review of governance for a special school in measures. The school was facing a whole battery of changes, governance being one of them. An issue which spanned both management and governance was the availability of external benchmarks against which the governors could judge the school’s progress..
This last project was a very good example of a problem which was both a leadership and a governance issue – the availability and use of relevant information by which both the school’s leaders and its governors could monitor and support progress. Helping schools make effective use of relevant information is core to CUREE’s mission and we look forward to helping others