Is it time to scrap school governors?

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Is it time for Powys County Council to directly control schools, a councillor has wondered as expectations on school governors are expected to increase.

At a meeting of the council’s Learning and Skills scrutiny committee, the suggestion was made as councillors and independent lay members received an update on the Education Department’s Integrated Business Plan (IBP).

The overarching document points the way to improving education in Powys over the next five years.

And the documents go further than the Post Inspection Action Plan (PIAP) that the council submitted to Estyn over the summer, following another scathing inspection by the Welsh education watchdog earlier this year.

The document has six objectives and Objective One is to: “Strengthen the quality and impact of leadership, including political leadership, at all levels.”

Parts of this objective are relevant to school governors, who will be expected to evaluate their schools and review headteacher performance regularly.

The governors will also need to receive training and meet the council regularly to provide “evidence” to reassure council chiefs that standards and results are improving in schools.

Cllr Lucy Roberts (Conservative – Llandrinio) said: “It’s such a difficult balance and I appreciate that governors need training and they need to be updated and the need to attend meetings – but they are also volunteers.

“It’s not always easy to find people that are happy to be governors or those with the experience and understanding to be one.

“I sometimes feel it almost would be better for the local authority just to have that responsibility for schools.”

She added that it seemed “particularly difficult” to find local authority governors.

Cllr Roberts said: “I’m sure there are county councillors who aren’t school governors and perhaps every county councillor should have to be a governor.”

But the overly bureaucratic time-consuming system that asks councillors to re-apply for the role made her feel like saying: “I don’t really want to do it that much.”

Committee chairman, Cllr Gwynfor Thomas (Conservative – Llansantffraid) said that Cllr Roberts is “not alone” in her comments which have been raised at meetings in the past.

Newly installed Education portfolio holder Cllr James Gibson-Watt (Liberal Democrat – Glasbury) agreed with the comment and said that in his own experience of trying to find people to be school governors they “run for the hills” when they find how time-consuming the role is.

On the council directly running schools, he didn’t know what the legal standpoint for this would be – but wanted to make it easier to recruit while not insisting that councillors should be school governors.

Director of Education, Dr Richard Jones, said: “The system has this tension in it.

“We have volunteers who are leading our schools and the local authority has to have the right sort of relationship with those governing bodies.

“It’s about reducing that bureaucracy and about how we support governing bodies with the right professional learning.”

Education Support Service Manager, Sarah Quibell, said that a new system had been launched over the summer so that governors can “more easily access” the online training offered by the council.

“Hopefully that will be welcome,” said Ms Quibell.

The report was noted by the committee.