The recommendations we are making have come from our analysis of the history and background of policies relating to the governance of schools, the regulations under which school governing operates and the outcomes of published research and our analysis of the data collected during the Study. The argument we have developed then shapes the recommendations.
The recommendations relate mostly to governing bodies, but because school governing is part of school governance some of the recommendations relate to school governance, which is the wider set of relationships within which schools are governed.
The main recommendations from the Study are as follows.
1. The range of governing body responsibilities should be reduced.
2. The role of governing bodies should be simplified.
3. The status of governing bodies should be enhanced, their contribution more widely recognised, and greater publicity given to school governing in all sectors of society especially the business community.
Together, these recommendations are likely to: • enhance the quality and effectiveness of
school governing
• improve recruitment to governing bodies • reduce the workload of governors and
governing bodies
• enhance governor satisfaction and motivation
• lead to improvements in governor training and increase participation.
1. Governing body responsibilities
should be reviewed
The responsibilities of the governing bodies are reviewed and any new configurations of the task (what they are required to do) and role (how they are required to operate) should be described simply, clearly and unambiguously. In any review of governing body
responsibilities, those that can be assigned to the headteacher should be. Such responsibilities should include those that by custom and practice are usually currently undertaken by the headteacher. The headteacher will of course delegate responsibilities to their colleagues as appropriate.
The headteacher should be responsible for all strategic, school policy matters and the day to day operation of the school and should be accountable to the governing body for discharging that responsibility.
The governing body’s strategy responsibility should be: to scrutinise relevant aspects of strategic management and policy development, and when content, to sign off and agree school policies and strategic plans; and to provide a forum for discussion of strategy and policy matters, Implicit in the discussion forum role of governing bodies is that they are supportive towards the headteacher, the staff and the school in general. Being supportive of ‘the school’ – its values, guiding principles and ethos - must be axiomatic for involvement in school governing.
The governing body’s scrutiny role should encompass:
• the extended service provision which is now part of the work of many schools • the broader range of schools
responsibilities and tasks following the implementation of the 2004 Children Act. • changes in the ways teaching is
undertaken and the work of the school is managed following workforce remodelling. • joint working by the school with other
schools
The accountability relationships in which governing bodies are involved should be clarified
The relationships, and in particular the accountability relationships, between schools their governing bodies and their local authorities, and pupils and their parents should be clarified. One way of explicating this relationship is to clarify reporting responsibilities. We recommend the following.
• Headteachers should be required to report to governing bodies more frequently than at present.
• The headteacher should be required to report to parents at least once a year on the operation of the school. The report should be agreed by the governing body. • The practice of SIPs reporting to the
Governing Body and to the local authority on the performance of the school and on improvement plans should continue. • Minutes of Governing Body meetings
should be routinely sent to the local authority.
• Headteachers should meet regularly and frequently with the local authority to discuss the school and its progress. The records of these meeting should be sent to the governing body.
• Local authority monitoring assessments of schools should be sent to the headteacher and the governing body to enable the governing body’s scrutiny responsibilities. • Every school governing body should be
required to review and evaluate its practice and performance, which could contribute to the school’s SEF.
Employment of staff
Governing body should continue to be responsible for appointing, appraising, and managing the performance of the headteacher and other senior staff and the local authority should be routinely involved in the appointment process if only in an advisory capacity.
School should be the employers of the staff who work in schools rather than the local authority and should take responsibility for all employment matters.
The Clerk to the Governing Body
The status of the clerk to the governing body should be raised. The clerk should not work in the school in a different capacity, in order to ensure the independence of the clerk in discharging the clerking responsibilities and to avoid any conflicts of interest.
Governor recruitment and the public profile of school governing
The public profile of school governing should be raised, which, together with a reduction in the range of governing body responsibilities and a simplification of the role of governing bodies, should help to improve recruitment. Companies and all ‘non-school’ work organisations of all kinds should be
encouraged to play an active part in recruiting governors. Where schools or groups of schools within a hard governance federation have a business partner and a higher education partner, the partners could be represented on the governing body.
Efforts should be made to recruit members of groups currently under-represented on school governing bodies.
The beneficial outcomes for those involved in school governing should be made more widely known.
All schools should continue to endeavour to establish and maintain very high quality relationships with the communities they serve for a range of important reasons and in the context of school governing because it is on these relationships that governor recruitment will be built.
Governor training
Training for new governors, chairs and clerks should be compulsory.
There should be a quality assurance system for school governor training programmes.
Consideration should be given to establishing a Virtual College for Governor Training with specific responsibilities for quality assuring governor training, overseeing national governor training programmes, and analysing governor training needs.
The inspection of school governing by Ofsted
The inspection of school governing bodies within the new arrangements should be strengthened. Evaluation criteria for the performance of school governing bodies as recorded in the SEF should be enhanced. Scaling down and simplifying the role of the governing body would help in this regard. The involvement of the governing body in the inspection process should be mandatory. Improvement in the inspection process will help to gauge the quality of school governing, to note those aspects of which are of high quality, and to help to identify those features that could be improved.
New models of school governing should be evaluated
In view of the fact that new forms of school governing are emerging, an evaluation of new arrangements for governing, especially the new forms of shared governing, should be carried out.
Introduction
The responsibilities of school governing bodies, however they are configured, do not have to be undertaken under by governing bodies in their present form. School governing bodies can be arranged in a number of different ways based on different organisational models. The intention of this chapter is to explore different models of school governing. Model 1 considers what governing bodies would be like if present arrangements were enhanced by making modest changes. Model 2 looks at what the arrangements would be if school governing was enhanced by making the more substantial changes which we recommend in Chapter 11. In essence, those changes would be the clear separation of the management and scrutiny roles, where headteachers are responsible for the operational and strategic work of the school but that that work – the
decisions and plans – is scrutinised by the governing body. An important aspect of governing is stakeholder involvement and the provision of a forum for discussing ‘the kind of school we want’. To function as this kind of forum, governing bodies would require wide stakeholder involvement to provide a setting and a basis for their scrutiny responsibilities. These scrutiny and discussion forum roles can be undertaken under various arrangements, which are the basis for the other models. Some arrangements for governing, which bear some similarities to the models we discuss are already starting to emerge through for example, hard and soft governance federations. The chapter starts by setting out the differences between the various models and goes on to describe the various models. We give a brief evaluation of the various models, elaborating the strengths and weaknesses of each.