The School-Ready Governor
A Guide for Trustees, Governors and School Leaders
Rebecca Leek
BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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First published in Great Britain, 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
This edition published in Great Britain, 2024 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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For Michael, who got me thinking
11 Who even are you? Building a healthy board – representation and induction 81
Section C: Practicalities 89
12 Being disciplined: The importance of developing habits 91
13 Core documentation: The documentation that describes your governance structures 99
14 Working with schools: Duplication of effort and ‘touching base’ 105
15 Golden threads and tightening the knot: How you can help with school improvement and make changes stick 111
16 Meetings: How to make them work 119
Section D: Handle with care 127
17 The importance of procedures: A word of caution 129
18 Exclusions: How governors are involved 131
19 People: Being an employer 139
20 Working with headteachers: Building healthy relationships and performance management 147
21 Complaints: Getting it wrong and getting it right 155
22 Safeguarding: Protecting everyone 161
Section E: School stuff 167
23 Complexity and variety within education 169
Bibliography 211
Index 213
Introduction
I have spent a lot of time searching for the true meaning of governance. It turns out it is very good at hiding. Just as I think I have found it, it slips through my fingers. For something that sounds so authoritarian, so sure of itself, its meaning is abstract and fluid. It changes depending on its surroundings, is used differently by different sectors, and means different things to different people. It is one of those words that we say a lot but, try as we might, it is pretty much impossible to pin down.
I could of course list the bullet points that often accompany quick guides to school governance. They would contain more of those kinds of words –accountability, value for money, scrutiny, strategic oversight. Words that are easy to say with conviction, far harder to describe what ‘doing it’ actually looks like.
For example, value for money in schools is not moving one support staff member from one classroom to another so that they are supporting three instead of two children. Simple ratios are not a clean measure of value for money. We are dealing with individual children, changing cohorts, varying curriculum delivery models, staff who are sometimes experienced, sometimes less experienced, confident, less confident, early career, energetic, tired, human… Similarly, choosing the cheapest catering provider is not necessarily good value for money either, if the quality is poor. If the children are less well fed, they are subsequently less able to concentrate and be actively curious –both essential if we want them to learn.
Governance is not a word that crops up much in children’s books. I don’t think Topsy and Tim or Biff and Chip cross paths with a school governor. A firefighter, a dentist, a clown, perhaps. But for something that all schools have, it is interesting how school governance remains hidden in the fictitious institutions that writers build for children. Hogwarts’ governors get barely a mention. And honestly, what was the governing board doing when the Trunchball was swinging children around the school yard by their pigtails?
It is not really something that you see young children assimilating into their play. Have you ever seen a role-play area of a Reception classroom set up as a board room in the same way that you might see a doctor’s surgery or shop? If you have, I’d love to see, and I’d love to know what happens there. For something
that revolves around paperwork (‘Can we have that minuted please?’) it strikes me as quite an opportunity for getting little ones writing.
Can you remember when school governance and school governors entered into your awareness or when you first met a governor? Unless you happened to be part of a pupil voice group as a child (I certainly wasn’t. Did governors speak to children in the 1980s?) and actually realised what was going on, or if your parent was a governor or teacher, then they are probably words that have crept up on you without you noticing. These words, ‘governance’ and ‘governor’, may have become bread and butter to you if you are a teacher, or a parent, or a governor yourself, but, like the most interesting words, the more you think about them, the more complicated they become.
I have trawled my own memories. My father was a school governor although the details are quite hazy. I do know that, as a governor, he helped at the school’s summer fete as he would often share the anecdote that he helped ‘Shula from the Archers’ knock a coconut from the coconut shy that he was running. I have no idea if that is actually true. Now I come to think about it, it might have been Kathy. Sadly, Alzheimers has robbed us of any opportunity to ask him about it now.
He was a governor at the local special school. I think he was asked because he was a doctor. He was quite proud about it – he did not come from a professional background and I think it made him feel that he had found his seat in middle-class society.
My mother is now a governor for the second time round. Whilst she does, in some sense, know what she needs to do – having conducted school visits, attended meetings and been a link governor for a curriculum area in the past –she still wonders what it’s all about. This is no bad thing.
Before you read on, I should make it very clear that I am comfortable with complexity. Sometimes there is no perfect answer. This book does not promise to whittle down governance into something simplistic. That would be no fun at all, and disingenuous. If you are looking for a book that allows you to suspend critical thought and rather provides you with a flowchart and a script to go through the motions, then you will need to look elsewhere.
What you will find is an unpicking, an exploration of the fascinating aspects of school governance. For example, what is a governor’s role in school improvement and when does strategic activity topple into the operational? Throughout the book, you will find questions, case studies, anecdotes and scenarios, to help you deconstruct governance against the backdrop of your own experiences and current circumstances. Allow it all to play on your mind.
Share your thoughts with a co-board member. You may find you don’t end up with concrete answers; you may not end up being completely certain, but you will have turned over the soil and let in some air. Certainty, anyway, is dangerous.
Is there an image that comes to mind for you when you hear the word ‘governance’? For headteachers and CEOs it is probably paper – reams of the stuff. We spend a lot of time writing papers.
The fact of the matter is, governance is not contained in folders, or certainly this only represents a fraction of what it really is. For something that is so paperbound, albeit digitally now, its power is as much in the human activity, in the talking, the shared language and behaviours, the decision-making and the collective vision that evolves over time.
Back to those words.
In some countries, a governor is the boss, or at least has delegated responsibilities to be the boss of a region. In America, the governor of a state is essentially the chief executive. They command and they direct.
The Romans had governors. In fact, we get the word governor from the Latin gubernator (which in turn comes from the Greek kybernetes). A gubernator is a helmsman or a steersman. I wonder – if you were to ask a headteacher who is at the helm of the school, what would they say? I’m not sure they would say it was the chair.
There is a whole science devoted to ‘kybernetics’/cybernetics which, in the way that meanings so beautifully twist and turn, is where we get the word cyber from. Cybernetics is essentially the science of communication and control. It explores how organisations and systems self-moderate, when there need to be checks and adjustments, and where there do not. If that is starting to sound a little bit like governance then you would be right.
Governance in schools does involve some helmsmanship. Governors definitely have a seat in the engine room of a school. If the school had a strategy map in a central office, the kind you see in war films when the officers plan the next move, then that’s where the governors would sit.
However, it is complex and multi-layered. With different tiers of governance now operating across groups of schools, such as those found in multi-academy trusts, it is even more vital than before to make sure that there is clarity over who is steering. School leaders’ opportunities for professional development are so varied and enriching that headteachers will be bringing to the table a profound understanding of the strategic priorities for a school or for a group of schools. That is what they are trained to do and want to do. They have not taken up the helm to be told what to do. So how do the governance partners (governors, trustees, members) sit alongside these deeply committed and well-informed
individuals, complementing what they do (i.e. actually being useful) and not draining them of time?
So many questions.
As we sit here at the start of our quest, this exploration of such a critical layer in our society (every school has a governing body, every trust has a board) I wonder whether this idea of a gubernator might actually be more helpful than it first appears.
Those seas can get choppy out there. The ships that headteachers are sailing may stay on course in calm seas but what about when the winds come? Are governors co-pilots when the winds start to rise, checking ropes in case a storm comes in, lending an extra pair of eyes to scan horizons?
Of course Roald Dahl had no governors in Matilda. What fun would that have been? The existence of a governing board, if it were actually governing, would have meant that ‘all that’ would never have happened. More interesting a question though is what would they then be doing when Miss Honey took up the helm? Managing tyrants is not easy but at least it’s clear what you need to sort out. Working with competent headteachers, without stifling them, is far harder.
Let’s dive in.