Governor problems - need to offload

[ZeldaFitzgerald]

Have namechanged to protect anonymity.

I'm a Chair at quite a large primary age school. I've been Chair for 3 years. The school is only 4 years old - prior to that I'd been a Gov at a different school so when the school was created I was one of only a couple of us with any experience. And at this stage I do know my stuff - am on other County and Cluster committees etc. There are still gaps in my knowledge but I do at least know who to ask.

My problem is the other governors. I work very PT from home and all but one of the others work FT. So of course they are never available for anything - some try to an extent, but 95% of new staff interviews are down to me, 95% of daytime meetings are down to me; they are just never in school. And there are things that need doing - all sorts of initiatives, monitoring activities etc which I would like to see done and I just can't do it all. The school is Outstanding and I think that's despite the GB rather than because of it.

I sorted some training recently for us - despite having 2 months' notice, and despite the fact they'd asked for the training, two of them showed up. It was mortifying. I've composed so many hissy fit emails to them and don't have the guts to press send - I just don't know how to proceed.

The bottom line is that I don't feel I can complain too much because they have to work FT and I don't. But then I do have DCs and a life and other interests and maybe my self-employed PT work would be a bit less crap and PT if I wasn't spending so much time in school or dealing with school. I can't make them want to do stuff - I know they care, and they contribute usefully to meetings, and we all get on well, but I feel like they're taking the piss at this stage. I feel like just walking away, but I care too much to do it.

Any advice?

I am a HT. All I can say is that I totally understand and feel the same about my Governors. The school is lucky they have a chair like you. Maybe you should discuss roles and responsibilities eg interviewing at your next agenda. I don't think there is any answer to this generally and the majority of heads would agree with / relate to the things you say. All I can add is that it doesnt mean they don't have the best intentions. I think that until youve been a Governor, you really dont understand the role / responsibilities. Sorry no advice really just sympathy.

Thank you. I think sympathy (and possibly a backbone) is what I wanted. I'm hacked off with the lot of them and I know that's unfair, I know to a large extent I've dug my own hole. I just can't find a way out of it.

I've been on two governing bodies and there have been a mix of people working part time, shifts, full time and SAHPs so there has always been people available for daytime things. I can't imagine how it would work if one person was carrying the whole burden.

I think you do need to complain a bit more because if people can't give time to training or do any governor visiting at all ever then they are not fulfilling their role properly. If you carry on doing all the work then they will let you. Can't the HT speak up on your behalf at a meeting and ask for some support? Some employers do give days off for voluntary commitments I know DH's does and I had a friend who used to have allowed "governor days" to interview new staff. You need to stop being so nice.

You must have governors with roles as part of your team? eg. vice chair, committee chairs etc. I think you need to forcefully delegate eg. not be available for a given meeting then VC will have to step up to the role. Try doing this with school time meetings too, it's amazing how some governors can find time off work when absolutely necessary - many employers actually look very kindly on this.

We took up a skills audit on our governing body recently ie a list of those skills and interests required in all aspects of school governance and people had to tick accordingly. It was then easier to encourage people into various roles.

I'm Vice chair at a smallish primary school, 190 on role, but it's a huge job, definitely too big for one. We have probably five really active governors, but most of the others have specific roles which they fulfill according to their abilities, interests and time availability.

Don't your LA run training? And there is real pressure to ensure governors are adequately trained so this ought to be fairly high on your initiatives list!

Was your training session classed as mandatory?
At the school where I am a governor any "in-house" training is deemed compulsory to attend.

I know how you feel though, it's frustrating when people volunteer to take on such a role and then don't show any real committment. It makes you wonder if they just feel that being a governor looks good on a CV.

We have a similar issue at the moment with our governing body where a number of bodies are not turning up on a regular basis. The problem is though that providing apologies are sent and subsequently accepted by the chair, no action can be taken.

Do you have any sub-committees that you can delegate some tasks to or that you can insist support you in some of this work ?

Don't you dare feel guilty about others working FT either. You have more than a full time job with your Chair responsibilities plus everything else you mention. A full time job does not excuse you from carrying out obligations.

I work full time six days a week (for myself) I have 4 children (1 disabled), two elderly and very sick parents and I have not missed an fgb, governor visit or a committee meeting for my school since I took on the role. Oh and I have also done 3 training courses since Christmas and have another 5 booked between now and June.

In my book if you take on the responsibility you live up to it.
You are clearly pulling your weight and this needs pointing out to the rest of your team.

As a parent who has not been a governor but has unfortunately had to complain to a GB I suggest you consider not only the workload burden but also the exposed position you find yourself in. You are there for all the right reasons and they should be demonstrably so too.

If the current Governors are not pulling their weight can you co-opt some new, additional ones?

Thanks for replying. Yes, we have a Vice Chair (possibly one of the worst offenders - well-meaning but largely useless) and Committee Chairs, who do their jobs well in as much as the right policies are reviewed at the right times (thanks to the Year Plan I drew up!) and they chair their meetings well. They're nice guys. The will is mostly there, just not any more action than is strictly necessary. A couple do make the very occasional daytime appearance for things like the recent Risk Assessment inspection, for example, and others just never, ever, visit the school outside of meetings.

One ridiculous example of my lack of spine - I attend all 4 sub committee meetings, and while we have a Clerk for FGBs, we used to take it in turns to clerk the committees. Now I do all four. It just sort of happened - to start with I didn't mind as it helps me register what's been said/done. Now I do mind but I know that mentioning it will be met with complete, excrutiating silence. I'll say "Will anyone else Clerk?" and there will just be tumbleweed.

Re the skills audit - we've done that, and we did well. The skills aren't lacking (many of these FT jobs are in education :o), but that doesn't translate into action. It does lead to a certain arrogance, though - hence the no-shows at training. I love the idea of making it compulsory but I suspect they'd lynch me.

I think what it will take is for me to leave, with a parting strop spelling out why. I just don't want to have to; I'm invested in this school, I care about it, I care about the HT. And I can't talk to them about it because I know I'll either sound hysterical or cry (I'm a crier), so it has to be an email. Argh!

Can you get some support / advice from Governor Services at your LEA ?
Ours will supply clerking services if required (for a fee) and that might take some pressure off you.

It sounds like you really care about the school and your role there. Could you step down as chair but stay as a governor ?

You are doing all the work and whilst you do, everybody will sit on the side and let you do it.
Start to take some control by not being there at the committees, as you actually don't need to be on all of them. If you are not there somebody else will have to be scribe!
Same with going into school during school time, do not do it, simply say you cannot do that you have a previous engagement. All these initiatives may not get done but the one thing you should not do is cave in and start doing them.
Accept the rest of the GB for what they are but do not make the school your whole life - I would suggest that you put a strict limit on the hours that you donate to the school for a three month period and see what happens.

You can have "associate governors" if your governing body is full. These do not have voting rights but in other respects act as normal governors.

Perhaps you could put the word out that there is availability for these roles but applicants must be prepared to make themselves available during the day. They could then step up to being full governors when old ones ship out.

Governing bodies obviously have a lot of churn. I know the GB I'm on changed virtually overnight for the better when some new blood came in.

Thank you everyone; I really appreciate this. It's not the sort of thing I can rant to RL friends about - it's quite a close community.

We have had a few new Govs over the past year but they're not really getting to grips with things; we've had meeting no-shows, training no-shows etc. I'll work on it - we do have some vacancies and I think fresh blood is what we need.

And yes, I'm going to have some sudden childcare issues when the next committee meetings come up. I do need to retreat a bit. It's frustrating though, when I can see what we should be doing.

Are you taking on work that the school's management team should be doing?

Our governing body has a terribly efficient clerk who organises all the meeting times.

Good luck! I observe how committed our chair of governors is.

Re committee meetings and clerking - buy in a clerk, it will look better for Ofsted because you'll get proper agendas and proper minutes.

Do you have a Link governor - it's their responsibility to organise/advise re training.

Full time workers - why are they governors? If they can't come into school to monitor can they take responsibility for reviewing policies, and some data analysis.

Just put stuff on the agenda of FGB meetings - eg, report from H&S governor, report from SEN governor - email the governors with areas of responsibility and just tell them, don't ask - that they are due to report to the FGB at the next meeting. If they don't - ask them when they think a reasonable deadline would be for them to produce a report.

Work on one or two governors who can come in - my vice chair works full time for the government but gets 6 extra days of "leave" a year for governor duties - ask those who work to see if their employers would do the same.

The ONLY way for them to be effective governors is if they know the school. A yearly plan of monitoring visits is useful too - "OK Mike, you're due to visit this term to look at......when could you come in?" and you sit with the diary open and your pen poised and wait - don't fill the silence - just wait. They speak up eventually!

Do you have committees? If you did then you could delegate some responsibilities to those. I am a governor at a junior school and we have several committees, the main two being Resources (Finance, premises and personnel) and one for the Curriculum and raising standards. Our Chair of Governors is not the chair of these committees, although she or the head have to be there.

When are you meetings held and when did you plan to do your training that nobody turned up to? Timing is crucial I think - some want to come straight from work, some have to wait for partners to get home so they can hand over childcare. They need to agree times of meetings together. If people can't make a time they all agree on then I think you need to ask them to consider whether they are going to be able to carry on as governors. I don't work outside of the home (like you I have a very part time job at home) but the other governors more than pull their weight here because the meeting times suit them. Do your govs realise they have an obligation to attend governor events or that it carries some legal responsibilities? Have they all done their governor basic training?

I think I would also say that if they don't pull their socks up the school runs the risk of losing its outstanding status. The role of the governors is important to Ofsted. (Whether it is true or not it is irrelevant - they need to know their role is important to the school and does get assessed).

Do the governors also know that they are allowed a certain amount of time off to fulfill their governor duties so they can't say they can never come into school during the day?

And I would also hold the head responsible to some extent. She should be making the school as open to the other governors as possible and inviting them in. I think you need to get the head on side, if you haven't already.

Our chair does a lot but she works part time in education (she is a music teacher in the area) so it fits in with her work. But she is also very vocal (and a teeny bit scary) in making sure that the burden of her work is shared as much as possible. I think you need to be the same and let them know you can't go on like this.

What about making it a bit fun as well? We hold end of term events for the governors and teachers, to cement links but also that we can gel a bit as a team.

Sorry rambled a bit but I do feel for you. I don't yet have sufficient experience to be chair (only 2 and a bit yrs service) but sounds like the others are taking the mickey a bit and letting you get on with it which isn't fair.

We do buy in a Clerk for FGBs, but not the Committees - budgetary reasons, and I'm not going to take from elsewhere in the budget because my colleagues can't be arsed to take some notes and write them up in minute form. The agendas are easy enough to do provided I review our Year Plan often, which I do.

Link roles - yes, they need reviewing and I'm going to force the issue. I'm the Inclusion Link, I'm the School Council link, I'm the Safeguarding Link, I organise training and I deal with recruitment and induction of new governors. These are all areas I can walk away from. And yes, you're right - I need the balls to just maintain that silence when I ask for something.

I second the point about needing a good GB to get/maintain the Outstanding status.

We just had a full Ofsted inspection. The school wasn't rated outstanding, but the GB was

The inspectors asked to interview three governors and I can tell you the grilling was quite brutal. There was no way someone could wing it - the inspector asked me very detailed questions about RAISE online data, both general and relating specifically to the school.

I do think that if someone puts themselves up for a governor role that they should have the capacity to fulfill it regardless of their work schedule.

I wouldn't vote in someone who wanted to be a governor in name only iyswim.

No exactly Brass but you wouldn't know, when it comes to the vote, that they are going to behave that way and as their term of office is 4 yrs, you probably won't get to vote on them again.

Plus about half of the governor are LEA or community governors and nobody gets to vote for them.

No of course, but if it becomes apparent the people who voted would want to know. Especially as it is such a long term of office. That's a good old chunk of your child's time at school. For the person you voted for to be twiddling their thumbs.

Unfortunately, as a parent I don't think you can oust them, even if you did know about it. Parent govs aren't representatives for parents they are representative of parents so they aren't individually accountable to the rest of the parents.

I suppose you could complain to the chair, and get her to issue warnings for non-attendence but she shouldn't need a parent to be prompting her to do that. I think the rule is if you miss 3 meetings on the trot then you can be asked to leave. (Don't quote me, I am not sure but it is something like that).

On the whole though, I think most parents are just glad that they don't have to do the job and are happy to let the govs just get on with it. It seems like the OP is coping and getting things done, just that she is doing them all herself so most parents wouldn't bother complaining less their next Ofsted suffers and by then it is too late!

I disagree, at our school they would say something. I'm not talking military coup here but there wouldn't be apathy either along the lines of 'oh well as long as the job gets done'.

Parents here would think governors were accountable because they campaigned and asked for votes based on promises of what they would bring to the role.

But I suppose that will certainly differ from school to school.

Never ask for volunteers for things like minutes - look someone in the eye and say 'we need to take turns doing the minutes, so-and-so can you do it this time please'.

Regarding those who work full time, what kind of jobs do they have. If they're working for anything like 'big corporates' then a lot of these have an allocation of 'community days' for staff to use for charity work, volunteering etc and governors' duties generally are included. Maybe you could have as an agenda item something around future training and ask if any of them have that kind of time available to them to ensure they can attend going forwards.

Good luck!

I'm a CoG, been there, got the T shirt etc, I sympathise!

First of all I think you should definitely get a paid clerk for the committees, the cost of which will be a drop in the ocean in the context of your overall school budget. If governors are taking minutes they can't participate fully. If you can get the same clerk to do FGBs and committees you'll probably get better efficiency too.

The other thing I'd say is that the GB's responsibilities are the whole GB's - not just yours and you need an upfront discussion at the next meeting about how responsibilities are going to be fulfilled if people won't do anything. If still no luck, you need it minuted that various things will be ignored until there is a volunteer and that the GB is in breach of its responsibilities. These people that work fulltime, fair enough but they get days off don't they? You might find that some stern words from the HT will help too.

The current situation is not fair on you and if some tough talking gets some to resign, you might get some new ones who can contribute more.

Final thought - 4 committees sounds a lot for a primary school - could you combine at all?