Paid Governors

[NoComet]

Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw wants paid governors.

I am just the sort of non professional, parent governor he hates.
I put in many hours of my time for free, attending meetings, reading documents, understanding data. (Yes, I do understand the data) and attending trainings.

I have two DCs at the school and I care passionately about their education. I care that they make more than three levels of progress and get 5 A-C GCSEs.

I care that the school employs good staff and balances the books so it can continue to provide them.

But I also care about the buses, the lunches, the extracurricular activities, the concerts and the plays.

I care about the state of the buildings, the toilets and the decrepit boiler.

Some of these things have a direct financial implications and all of these things impact on pupils, and often, staff moral.

If you are cold, missed lunch because the queue was too long or you are getting bullied on the bus you are not going to concentrate in lessons.

If you find making friends difficult then choir or painting scenery for the play can make lunch time way more bearable.

If home life is difficult it may be far easier to talk to a teacher you've got to know well on a school trip, than your head of house.

Yes, the bottom line is achieving qualifications, but to do that you need pupils who feel safe and valued.

The most Outstanding teacher in the world can't deliver an Outstanding lesson to a pupil who is being bullied and refuses to come to school.

[guineapiglet]

Hi - I have been an unpaid committee member at preschool ( 8 years) and a parent governor for 4 years at primary school, and my BiL is a governor at the local High School. My motivation has always been to try and put something back into something which is important to me and the community and to be involved in a small way in what my kids do. Like many others on here, the experience hasn't always been a labour of love, there have been many difficult encounters, having to deal with very tricky and arrogant personalities etc etc.
Governors are expected really to hit the ground running, there was no preparation,although our county did run many training sessions throughout which many of us attended when we were able to. Our formal meetings were usually at least 4 hours long initially, but many of us pushed for a half termly regular meeting to deal with all the issues outside the formal business. ( NO refreshments/no food, usually got home around 930 at night after having started at 530). There was never any review or appraisal, and if you did in any way challenge the status quo or decisions, you would be highly unpopular.

Many of the issues discussed are legal requirements - and governors bear significant responsibilities. Our head completely dominated the meetings and usually would listen to discussions but would not countenance dissention, usually the decision would have been made with the CoG at their pre meetings - looking back on it completely unacceptable and undemocratic, but novice parent governors very often do not have the clout to stand up and be counted. Our head was in effect quite a bully, and this is way our governing body would have benefitted from independent examination - not just when being under OFSTED examination, where it was found wanting.

My way of operating was to listen, absorb and then work to my strengths and skills, along with other colleagues we would hold informal meetings outside the formal govs meetings ( on our time) to try and get the work done and resolved.

Governing bodies operate best when there is a good and representative mix of people with a whole range of talents, experience and expertise, but usually it is up to the parent govs to actually do the donkey work and get things done I( bitter experience). Of course we would all have liked some acknowledgement of our time and efforts in terms of financial reward, and maybe this would have made us all more accountable in some way ( which we were anyway) - to me the role of each of us was just as important - not just the 'experts' who had a lot to say, but in effect did none of the ground work....

[Childpatch]

I'm not bothered about the pay part, as a previous comment says "that's not why I do it" - i think there is a case for some quality checks on governors, IQ, abilities, experiences, do they actually care? what can they bring? A selection process would be useful

[grovel]

A friend of mine is a governor of an independent (boarding) school. They try to have:

One lawyer
One accountant
One educationalist
One "business person"
One surveyor
One headteacher from a similar school
One university lecturer/professor
Two (recent) ex-parents
A vicar/bishop
A banker

Apparently their discussions are lively (in a good way) but also fairly well-structured because no-one bangs on with too much "home-made" expertise in the presence of real expertise.

[SunflowersSmile]

Don't think the IQ test would go down well childpatch!!
[II hope it wouldn't anyway].

[BoffinMum]

Nah, they are a stroppy lot on the Board and I am deployed as a tactical missile by the others from time to time to shut two other windbags up. Loads of the others are very well qualified anyway, so my qualifications look useful rather than resplendent IYSWIM.

[SunflowersSmile]

I am still laughing over thought of IQ tests for governors.
In a debate on an issue could a governor pull rank and say heh I should 'win' as have higher IQ than you!!
Hope you weren't being serious childpatch.......

[SunflowersSmile]

What on earth is 'home made' expertise grovel?

[grovel]

"Home made" expertise is what we get when my choral society's committee (me included) discuss, for example, marketing. In the absence of anyone with real marketing know-how, we all have the confidence to blather on about the subject at length.

[newfashionedmum]

grovel at the risk of going off topic - and right there is an example of one reason why there is such a divide in achievement between the independent and state sector!

On the actual topic of the OP, bloody well said that Governor. There are a couple of governors on our GB who have teaching expertise and can make informed challenge around english and maths attainment but the rest of us bring other skills and concerns that help to create the right conditions for children to learn in - y'know like having an appropriate building, a cooked lunch inside them if possible, no bullying in the playground and a chance to be shine at other things if they struggle with the three Rs to build their confidence and social skills and make them the kind of responsible citizens we really need.

[BigBoobiedBertha]

I'm a governor too and I think that the money would be better off spent on the children rather than the governors. I don't want paying. For what they could pay it us, it won't make that much difference to the quality of governors and they couldn't afford what it costs for our skills (in finance, marketing, health, safety and building management and IT on our governing body at the moment). It really is better to be spending the money on the school.

I have some sympathy with the problem of poor govering bodies. Our schools was, by the admission of the people who were on the governing body at the time about 6 years ago, badly run and the governors knew very little about what was happening in the school. It all came to a head when Ofsted came in and completely slated the school and the governors were shocked at how badly the school was really doing. They shouldn't have been shocked, they should have known and been working towards making things better but they were only dealing with the 'marginal concerns' and not getting to the nitty gritty of what the school was doing. The Head and the chair had kept them in the dark. Long story short, they got rid of the chair, the head left anyway and we have worked our way back up to a 'good' when we had an Ofsted last term. Having been one of the 2 governors Oftsted talked to they really grilled us - they expected us to know the school from all angles, academic and the more marginal concerns which is how it should be otherwise what is the point of having us? What exactly are we there for if not to hold the SLT accountable for the way they run the school? Thankfully our head is very open and we gave a good account of ourselves.

It seems the same thing has happened in another school locally in the last few months but in both cases, it wasn't so much the governors who were at fault, except in so far as they perhaps should have known they weren't getting the full picture. It was down to the chair and the head. You need them to be good or the governing body can't do their job properly. The other thing you need is good training so the governors know their responsibilities and rights and stand a chance of challenging the SLT if things start going wrong. The final thing, which may be in place already for all I know, is somewhere outside of the GB that the governors can go to for advise if things start to go wrong and the SLT start dodging their responsibility to the school and the governors. If there are serious concerns there should be back up somewhere outside of school.

I look forward to a good debate on this next week on our next committee meeting. As governor responsible for keeping up to date with Ofsted's latest pronoucements I can see this one making a bit of a splash!

[BigBoobiedBertha]

And can I just say, having read some more about this Dashboard thing, what is wrong with RAISE-online and FFT data? And how is it useful if it is only a snap shot updated once a year? You need the data to be constantly updated as it is in our school - if a year has passed before you notice that you arem't reaching the standard it is already too late.

[DuchessOfAvon]

As an ex-Governor, who stood down after two years due to a bullying CoG, I fully agree with those who have expressed frustration that the issue is not one of payment.

The issues are:

• Head & CoG in cahoots. If one or other or both are difficult characters, they can sew up a Board of Governors very effectively. Trying to unseat an entrenched partnership is almost impossible - the time and effort required to gather evidence, build a consensus among other Governors, address issues and find support outside of the school is just overwhelming.
  
• CV Governors - often, ime, local counsellors, who see it either as a CV plus point or a box-ticking exercise in community involvement. The Parent Governors do bear the brunt of the workload.
  
• Teaching teams who see the BoG as, at best, a burden and at worst, an enemy.
  

What BoG's need:

• Support to induce and train new Governors.
  
• Access to independent assessment of Heads
  
• Some way of assessing effectiveness of CoG -and making sure they can't be re-elected year after year after year.
  
• Effective and knowledgeable clerking
  

Due to budget restraints, the services provided by local government in terms of clerking, training and support is being charged back to the school at ever higher cost for less-decreasing service or knowledge.

It is all down to individuals. Get a good Head and a competent Chair who understands how to value, motivate and empower the BoG's - then its all good.
Get an embattled Head, an entrenched Chair, a majority of box-ticking Governors and no LEA support - then the few poor governors who are trying to challenge and support are just weeping in frustration.

[edam]

Quite, BB. The dashboard is simplistic - fine for some purposes but the governors should be using far more detailed data eg RAISE and other sources.

I'm prepared to believe there are boards of governors that are far too cosy with the head - when I joined ours there were a few significant people like that. We have changed the situation gradually to be far more effective and to encourage the head to see questioning as our job and not an attack. She runs a ruddy good school so I don't see the point in antagonism - but we do challenge where it is necessary and important. And the head and senior management have responded, we get a lot more data and are far more involved with the school these days.

But cosy relationships won't be stopped by bringing in paid 'expert' governors. God save us all - especially the children - from management consultants running schools. (Management consultants have their place but it is not capturing GBs.)

Experts are useful for governing bodies to consult, to use as appropriate but not to be the GB.

[Wigeon]

Oh goodness, Duchess of Avon - I am really worried I will be posting exactly your post in 2 years (I became a parent governor in Sept 2012):

Local councillor who appears to do nothing apart from physically come to meetings: tick

Head who clearly just wants to run the school without interference from GB - tick

CoG isn't a difficult character, but is very very keen to "maintain good relations" with the chair - ie never challenge or criticise.

Teaching team - no idea how they view GB because frankly it's an irrelevance to them as it's so impotent

I am currently trying to suggest that one area for the school to work on is how it involves parents, and how this might be done (not something you might think was that contentious, and something I am volunteering to coordinate / lead myself), and what you say below is spot on:

"the time and effort required to gather evidence, build a consensus among other Governors, address issues and find support outside of the school is just overwhelming."

[Wigeon]

Is there a Governor support thread anywhere here? If not, may I suggest one? (Or possibly one for secondary and one for primary). Would anyone be interested?

[Hassled]

I've been reading this and not posting because I just don't know what I think.

I was a governor for many years and CoG for 4 years in an outstanding school. It was very, very challenging - I loved it, but I put in hours and hours of my time. Things happened along the way where I felt completely out of my depth - there was a palpable lack of LA support, especially in some HR issues I had to become involved with. The quality of the training was patchy - I went into the first HT Performance Management (having had the training) with very little clue as to what we were hoping to achieve. CV Governors are a real problem (in my case it was actually the parents who were the worst offenders for this) - they became governors because it looked good, but were never prepared to actually become committed, to the extent that they never even had the most basic training and so didn't really understand the role.

I should throw in here that I have met some amazing governors along the way - I'm painting it black, I know. There are some exceptional people involved in governance.

But yes, there is a need for more professionalism and yes, there are some ill-informed governors out there. More effective LA support would help that. I don't think governors should be paid, but I think some perceptions need to shift, so it isn't thought of as a worthy hobby and more as what it is - a challenging, demanding, important role.

[Talkinpeace]

LA support is no longer relevant though : half of all Secondary schools are no longer connected to LEAs

[Hassled]

True, and that worries me enormously. Who guards the guards?

[Talkinpeace]

Michael Gove and his bullying cronies
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-21601673

[BigBoobiedBertha]

With regards to the Chair and the head being in cahoots, we were told that the chair is no longer allowed to do the HT's performance review because the working relationship between them has to be so close. I am not sure if this is an LEA thing or whether it national but it does go some of the way to ensuring that other governors aren't locked out. Hopefully, if the head knows that he or she will have to accountable for what they do, to somebody other than the Chair, they will be forced to be more open with the govering body as a whole. In theory anyway.

It is also interesting that there are CV governors - I don't think you would get away with that round here. If you don't go to meetings or do the training you are removed as a governor - it has happened and we are all warned that if we miss a certain number of meeting, without good reason, we can be out. You have to make some effort or you don't get to stay.

Hassled - hats off to you. You would have to pay me to be chair. I think, from my limited experience, only having been on one GB, that they do an immense amount of work and have a lot of responsibility.

Maybe that is the way to go - chairs should be paid because it is like a part time job and their expertise and experience as governors is very important. They are the glue that holds everything together and if they aren't any good then the GB as a whole won't work.

[willesden]

As a parent governor of 3 years standing, it scares me that there are governors out there who do not have a clue what they are supposed to be doing. This thread proves it. It is a legally accountable position; volunteer or not. A governing body has amazing powers. Get yourselves down for some training courses, pronto.

[BigBoobiedBertha]

Yes, it worries me that parent governors don't understand their role - that they are representative of the parents not for the parents. It strikes me as something you need to understand before you even put yourself forward to stand for governor, not something that you should be unsure of when you are already in the post.

[PolkadotCircus]

The thing is the elections are a bit pants.The spiel printed re each candidate had buggar all to with education policies or running a school at our last one so the default option was to vote for who you know/like best.

Not a good reason for anybody to be given such an important role.

[JugglingFromHereToThere]

Maybe they should make the training compulsory. I served as a parent governor for several years without having done training. I would have liked training but IIRC this was not made easy for me by the timing of it and lack of childcare available (It was a Nursery school and as you might expect I had a 4 year old DS and 6 year old DD at the time)
If anyone has not been able to do training maybe chair or experienced governor should spend half an hour or so with new governors to go over the basics - how to raise issues, what role of governor is, for starters !

[BreconBeBuggered]

It's difficult in some schools to get parent governors at all. I had my arm twisted to put myself forward as a governor and resisted it for some time because as it happened I did know what it entailed, and that it wasn't just showing up for a handful of meetings a year and never thinking about it in between. There have been a few drifters in and out of our GB who have tried it out and backed away pretty rapidly when they discover there's no room for passengers.