The role of School Governing Bodies

Governing bodies perform a critical role in school leadership but, despite approximately 300,000 individuals serving as school governors in England, vacancies continue to be an issue for many governing bodies. The quality of governance in many schools is also inadequate.

In September 2012, the Government introduced regulations which provide additional flexibility for the governing bodies of maintained schools to reconstitute themselves to be smaller, with an emphasis on skills as opposed to prescribed constitutions. Our inquiry concludes that these regulations provide the opportunity for governing bodies to recruit individuals with appropriate skills and address vacancies. However, many schools are not yet taking full advantage of the regulations. There is a role for the Government in spelling out more clearly what models of governance are now possible within the new regulations, along with explaining how these could be beneficial in different school contexts. Lessons should be learned from the newer forms of governance appearing in academies, and greater consideration given to how groups of schools can be governed.

Governing bodies need to get better at identifying the mixture of representation and skills they require in order to be effective, and tailoring their recruitment accordingly. To assist with the recruitment of skilled individuals from businesses, we recommend that the Government review the current incentives for and requirements on, businesses that release their staff for governor duties, including for academies.

A strengthening of current approaches to intervention in poor or failing governing bodies is required. We recommend that the Government investigate the reasons why so many local authorities and the Secretary of State have been reluctant to use their powers of intervention more often where governance is failing. We also recommend that the Government reviews processes for removing poorly performing chairs from office and give governing bodies the power to remove poorly performing governors.

Ofsted’s clearer expectations of governing bodies will encourage governors to identify weakness where it exists, and help to raise standards across the board. The Government’s focus on peer-to-peer support for governing bodies is also welcome. However, too many governors have not received suitable training and we recommend that the Government require all schools to offer training to new governors. As a rule, we do not advocate remuneration for governors, but recommend that the Government give further consideration to certain circumstances in which it may be appropriate to pay governors—for example, when governors use their skills to improve governance in other schools.

Clerks are vital to the success of governing bodies and our inquiry indicates clearly that the role of clerk should be a professional one. High quality support and information for clerks should be a priority and the Government should work with the NGA to rectify the loss of much valuable detail from the new Governors’ Handbook.