Anyone in a school governing body? Request for advice

[Aria11]

For reasons related to the recent developments re education provision, I became very interested in issues related to school governance and parent engagement and I would like to understand more what is going on in primary schools in general. For parents/teachers and especially those involved in school governance, can you please give let me know what is the situation in your school regarding any or all of the issues below:

1. Is there any specific management policy on parent engagement?
2. How does the governing body work in terms of addressing concerns raised by parents? E.g. is there a standing item in the agenda about this? Are parent governors required to canvass the opinion of parents regularly and provide feedback in meetings?
3. Can parents raise collectively issues/complaints to management or the school governing body?

Sorry in advance for all these questions. I have limited knowledge in this area and any information would be extremely helpful.

You don’t incorporate every ofsted heading in headship appraisal. The GB and the Head review performance of the school against the set targets and decide which ones need improvement. The Head is appraised on targets and performance. It’s all set out in the headship appraisal policy which is not a local policy in many cases.

If the GB wished to include parental engagement as a specific issue for appraisal they could but they would need evidence to suggest it was necessary if it wasn’t in the school improvement plan. You cannot pluck topics out of thin air because parents demand them.

You should do a bit more reading about the Head,GB, parent dynamic because you are giving far too much credence to parental involvement.

The GB is not answerable to parents. The Head is not answerable to parents. You are wrong if you think this. How can they possibly be?

Of course lots of parents move schools if they don’t like how a school is run. You won’t find a parent run school though! You cannot badger a school into doing what you want. You can expect consultation, engagement, courtesy and clarity but not with you, as a parent, in the driving seat saying the school
is answerable to you. That’s not a model I’ve experienced anywhere not is it workable.

If Trusts/GBs are too cuss to SLT, they are not doing their job properly. They should challenge and support. They are not friends.

close to (not cuss)

I feel we are going in circles here. The handbook is clear that that boards are answerable to the communities they serve, especially parents/carers (I am surprised that you seem to think this is not the case) and that parental engagement should be used by the board to inform their strategic decision-making. If we all agree to that, there are different ways of doing this. The simplest and perhaps more effective in general (aside from regular communication etc.) would be to consult directly with parents on significant issues and to introduce board-level mechanisms that would provide scope for any concerns/issues that parents would feel it is important to raise that are not individual in nature. The most obvious would be to provide for link governors as well as introduce standing agenda items and let parents know about these mechanisms and how they should be used. This would promote greater accountability in the board and the management team and would hopefully be an effective means for addressing certain issues that we discussed already, e.g. what happens if a seemingly neutral policy seems to affect disproportionately a group of children. This is what we do in universities and I would think that given the complexity in terms of levels of bureaucracy and regulation in a univesity setting, it would be much simpler to do something like that at schools.

They are not answerable in the way you seem to think. Any more than universities are answerable to students! As if!

You are going round in circles because you are looking for the missing link. It’s not there in the way you think it should be. There is no statutory obligation for schools to do what you suggest so that’s the answer. It’s not required in the way you think it should be.

This is controversial but its really hard to attract good governors that understand the role. Its a thankless task that involves attending training, attending meetings, reading and understanding a lot of documents and data and you do it all for free. Some are brilliant of course but others less so. The government put increased responsibility and pressure on boards to be progessional but they might have to start considering payment of some kind.

Not controversial at all! It’s very true. Anyone who has witnessed governance close up knows this. Most GBs have half the GB up to speed if they are lucky. I’m deprived areas it can be a lot more difficult. I’ve also seen GBs dominated by teachers - ex teachers, parents who are teachers and teachers from other schools. This isn’t healthy either and there is no breadth of experience. GBs are not supposed to do this, but they do. There are many barriers to effective governance.

This is not something that I personally suggest, it is in fact stated explicitly in the governance policy documents. I understand that parents are not there to hire and fire GB members or senior management nor to decide on their own re simple operational matters but to ignore the new handbook and downplay what this means for schools and boards is, I think, unhelpful. As for universities, you will find that all committees at departmental/shool/faculty level etc. have student representatives and standard agenda items re student issues. This is what struck me when I started looking at the issue of school governance. In the case of universities, it does not mean that committees decide on the basis solely of student feedback but we have a duty to inform, consult and demonstrate how their views have been taken into account. And in my experience they have been largely effective in terms of dealing with issues of concerns to students. It is not a panacea certainly but they can be great mechanisms to understand student concerns and help prevent issues from escalating to complaints etc.

As for the lack or not of a statutory obligation, it is the Governance Handbook that outlines the roles and responsibilities for those governing, including the legal duties of the governing board for all state schools in England.

and you still aren't listening. Parents are consulted and engaged where appropriate. But not using the specific mechanism you want used. If a parent has an issue they can follow the complaints process. If a big change is happening to a school then they reach out to parents to inform and discuss.

You still aren't specifying your actual issue. What do you believe that your school hasn't consulted on that you think they should? If it's a national issue you have many governors here who can explain why the change was made, what the drivers are for it etc etc

Higher education works differently because the funding works differently, because admission works differently etc etc you are more of a, excuse my crude analogy, a service industry with paying customers. Your students can vote with their feet. You can decide your courses based on local demand etc etc..... schools have far more things they HAVE to do. We can't consult on these. They are not negotiable.

As I explained in my earlier comments, the mechanisms I referred to (e.g. standing agenda items, link governors etc.) are actually included in the NGA guidance and are not my own invention. As to the issues, I gave plenty of examples and I cannot repeat myself. As to the analogy with HE, I know very well the differences. However, meaningful engagement is a a general principle of governance and it would be foolish to downplay its significance just because it happened so far that no one paid attention to this in the context of schools.

And to add a point re the HE analogy, universities are not actually there to teach only. Half of our time is spent on research and student interests do not feature greatly in this respect. In contrast, the main duty of schools is to provide teaching to children and as such the issues are much more simpler

Aria, going back a few posts you talk briefly about the governing board of a school being too close to the senior leadership team of the school and about parents looking for another school because of this closeness. Is this the basis of your issues?
No governing board should be so close to the SLT that it stops the governing board from asking appropriate questions of the school but one of the other basic tenants of the Governance handbook that keep quoting is that there should equal levels of challenge and support. Your version of events and your posts does not seem to recognise that.

The website and links provide statistically data and comparison data. This is accountability.
Questionnaires, depending on the questions, are a way to consult with parents and allow feedback on what could perhaps be better. The PP and PE premiums and impact on the website is evidence of accountability to parents.
There should have already been some parent consultation on the SRE provision in schools but as the date has been deferred some are still to consult. The marking policy and behaviour policy would usually have some parent feedback but it could be a small group rather than whole school. Many policies needing union agreement are not altered. Some policies are just a change of date as there are no changes. These are on the school website. Link governors should be feeding back their visits to the school website or newsletter.
The H T appraisal is confidential and the targets are not shared with others on the board. Only those on the appraisal committee who can not be staff members would be involved. Same as staff members are not allowed on the finance committee due to accountability.
You have pupil voice and staff voice as feedback.
The vision has input from parents, staff and children when it is reviewed.
This is about all the consultation that is usual in schools.
There may be additional parent groups like a pta, parent council, etc where you can gauge feeling.
We employ the Heads at our schools and we direct them to do A or B. Any newsletters or questionnaires sent are therefore from the board.
Consultation is asking parents but this does not need to be in a formal way and speaking to parents on pick up to gauge a view is consultation and accountibilty. You can not discuss complaints at any meeting and any feedback from questionnaires is nameless would have been collated to show 20% replied and the response to each question.
There is also the online Parent View which Ofsted review, but without individual complaints to evidence a complaint they carry no meaning.
If 30% of 300 parents show discipline is a concern Ofsted look at the actual complaints and outcomes. This is also seen as accountability along with an outside Clerk and completion of the business interests statement. The process of any Parent Governor election is being accountable. All the committee's including exclusions and how they operate is evidence of accountibility. All the finance data and H &S is accountability.
All the governor minutes can be requested if not in the website and are evidence of accountability. Setting a balanced budget is accountability. The processes of how the money is spent and why is being accountable

Accountability does not mean you can question the Governors or be involved in their decisions. They may be happy to be questioned but there is no right to do so. Accountability to parents is also following the correct procedures 're safeguarding and keeping the children safe and referring to outside services if appropriate, ensuring the central register is up to date and accurate. Ofsted will check all these because school is accountable for their actions and decisions. They will check all the mechanism for accountability are in place for that school and feedback there report to parents.

There are subtle differences in schools and some have different processes to the ones I have referred too.

If you ran a school, you would not find it a simpler process - in so many ways. It’s a different process and most school communities are very small.

Pupils are allocated schools. Many parents, in reality, don’t get much choice. They, by and large, accept the ethos and strategies of the school. I believe few schools have parents who disagree with the governance/SLT relationship. They accept its imperfections because their DC are well taught and most things in school are ok or better. It’s only when a number of issues that are unresolved start to pile up and the parents start to look at why this is happening. In your case, this appears to be what has happened and the school should have diffused this. There is though, no requirement for parental agenda items. Parents should be invited to meet the head or be part of focus groups to work through issues. If it’s a LA/national policy then that’s different. It’s not in the gift of the school to change it.

Don't forget that the head is a governor at the vast majority of schools. So typically the head engages with parents on behalf of the GB and reports back from surveys, parent forums and so on. The problem with parent slots in agendas is they would in all likelihood detract from the board's strategic role. When I was a chair we had a governor table at parents' evenings. Typical topics raised were....sweatshirt had shrunk in the wash, dog poo on the path outside the school and no Mexican recipes in food tech. Plus a dad who'd gone to boarding school who couldn't grasp the safeguarding implications of boys showering together as it hadn't done him any harm. Oh and endless moaning about parking.

You need to appreciate also how packed meetings already are with key strategic matters like achievement, curriculum, safeguarding, finance, staffing, pay and performance management, with a finite number of hours that governors can devote to the school.

Agree with up243 in essence about the workload of the GB and the calibre of issues frequently raised by parents when invited to bring up problems. I just wanted to emphasise that a good GB will question and challenge the HT where necessary, rather than assume every word and action is right for the school. They're meant to make sure as far as possible that strategic plans can be met, but there's no point whatsoever in having a set of nodding dogs sitting around the table, which I think is the OP's experience or perception of the set-up at their school.

It’s true to say that lots of parents won’t differentiate between annoyances and strategic governance. They are given an opportunity to raise something that annoys them, so they do! That’s why focus groups or parent/head forums work so much better. The governors are not the people to deal with every day minor issues. Parent governors should also avoid getting drawn into this. That’s why parent agenda items are not a good idea. Who says what can be discussed? It’s a recipe for disaster.

Basically governors create the framework and the Head works within this. There are schemes of delegation which act as checks and balances on the head as well as annual appraisal. The heads report to governors at each meeting is how governors get to know what’s happening in school (data, progress, curriculum, CPD, improvement plan targets and progress etc etc etc). No GB can have complete oversight of the heads work but there are lots of ways they can be challenged. Governors do not get involved with day to day management and their role is not to step in and challenge the head at this operational level. Unless of course it’s illegal!