Q & A
ERAGB council members have collectively over 100 years experience in School Governance. Our members have roots in a variety of professions and have experience within education, as chairs of governors and as OFSTED inspectors. We would like to offer our knowledge and experience, to assist new and existing governors. Just Ask ERAGB? Click here
Subject: Reproduction of ERAGB Resources
Q. These are a super set of documents. Thank you for all the hard work that has gone into them. Are you happy for me to place them on the Devon website – with the authorship properly acknowledged of course? (Mr D. Tall, Devon Association of Governors 3rd Nov 09)
Q. Can I download the Resource Pack for use with my Governors? I’m Chair of Governors in Helston Cornwall. (Mr. P Warren, 12th Jan 2010)
Q. I am writing to seek your permission to use your ECM Resouce Pack in a small primary school in Hampshire (where I am Chair of Governors). Regretably, I am unaware of any similar resource locally and, having read your pack, believe that we would find it incredibly useful in helping us, as Governors, help the school to better achieve the five outcomes of the ECM programme for our pupils. (Mr G Briggs, Hampshire, 2nd Feb 2010)
Q. These documents look very useful. As well as being on the NGA exec I run a publishing business that produces documents for governors and an on-line information service for clerks called Clerkwise. I’m shortly doing the half-termly bulletin that goes to Clerkwise subscribers. Is it OK if I mention these guides and give the website details for reference? (Mr S. Adamson, Adamson Publishing Ltd)
We give permission to governors in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England to download and reproduce ERAGB Publications free of charge. We are aware that our site is open, which makes our publications available outside of the East Riding. We ask that anyone using our material outside our region do the following.. 1st Email request our formal permission for use, 2nd Recognise our intellectual rights by referencing ERAGB as authors and 3rd If reproduced send us an agreed fee per copy. Contact our secretary – Click here
Other comments…
Thank you for sharing such useful documents. I am sharing the papers with my GB and other governor friends. With due credit to your association of course. (Mrs J. Phillips, Chair of Governors, Stroud)
In my humble opinion, these are an outstanding piece of work. I have immediately forwarded them to the Chair of our Lincolnshire Governors and Chair of Lincs. Schools Forum. I also intend to take them in to the Governors at my own school. (John B. Lincolnshire)
DAG was delighted to draw to our governor’s attention to the 5 documents received recently from the East Riding Association. They are an excellent reference to assist you to implement the ECM initiative and assess there progress. DAG is most grateful to the East Riding Association for allowing us to put these documents on our website for there use. (Devon Association of Governors)
The Every Child Matters documents you sent me are very interesting. The East Riding approach certainly helps governors to take the ECM Agenda through into their schools. I like the Toolkit method. In Norfolk the ECM Agenda is broken down into 19 priorities which are to be built into every School’s Improvement and Development Plan. The approach you have developed puts the process more directly in the hands of the governors. (Mr. M Grinble, Norfolk Governors Network)
Subject: Governors Role – in particular Parent Governors
Q. I have recently become a parent governor and have been tasked with getting greater interactivity between the parents, school and the governors. I would really appreciate your help. (Parent Governor of St Mark’s Primary School, Stockport, March 2010)
Having visited your school’s website (click here) I can see that there appears to be lots going on already to involve parents and the community but I will do my best to offer one or two suggestions that might help you in your new role. I haven’t run your question past members of the ERAGB council so this response is simply my personal view as Chair of ERAGB and Chair of a large rural junior school for the last eleven years.
First of all, the health warning. The work of any Governing Body is of course about three principal roles; the strategic role, the critical friend role and the accountability role. It is this last role that most involves parents as we are accountable to them as providers of the education their children are receiving. As a parent governor, you have a foot in both camps and so part of your responsibility is to seek out the views of parents but NOT to try to take on the responsibility for changing systems to meet the perceived needs of their individual children. Sometimes parent governors feel pressured into trying to change, for instance maths setting or lunchtime queuing systems. Where there are many parents highlighting the same issue, you should of course draw it to the attention of the headteacher first and then the Governing Body if appropriate. I say this because I have seen occasions where the poor old parent governor has tried to meet parents’ expectations which realistically cannot always be met and, of course, Governing Bodies sometimes have to make difficult decisions such as redundancies due to falling rolls which will not be popular.
On now to the more pleasant side of things. How to involve parents in the life of their school always poses questions for governors. Governors naturally want parents to see all the very positive things their school is doing and so a lot will depend on whether you have an ally in an active parent/teacher association (PTA). If you do, a good starting point might be to ascertain what they are doing in terms of things like arranging discos, sorting out seasonal events such as, topically, an Easter egg decorating competition or sponsored fun run. Very often members of governing bodies are also members of the PTA and so a good exchange of information can come to the governing body via them. If you don’t have a PTA, perhaps you could consider starting one because they have an invaluable part to play in bringing the school and parents together in planning fun activities and are not involved in the wider aspects of governance described above.
Do you welcome parents into school as helpers? This is often a good way of showing what you do while at the same time involving them in classroom life. For some, the way that primary education has changed is a real eye-opener – particularly with the use of internet, touch screens and whiteboards as integral elements of teaching nowadays. Are there any community groups in your locality who are involved in providing educational activities? Round Table and Rotary often do things that can be useful in schools such as looking at the sorts of jobs that people do in their area or providing Santa and a grotto at the appropriate time! At my school, the local churches are very involved in the life of the school and we are fortunate in having two Methodist ministers as regular visitors who could give Ant and Dec a run for their money in entertainment value! Finally, what experiences do your fellow governors have? It’s often surprising what sporting or literary skills people have that can be put to good use in a school.
I’m sure that your school will be doing some of these things already and it will just be a matter of maintaining or developing aspects to encourage further community involvement. Good luck!
Vince Barrett. Chair, East Riding Association of Governing Bodies (ERAGB)
Subject: Meeting agendas and Chairing
Q. In our governors’ meetings we tend to spend a tremendous amount of time going over simple stuff so that we have little time left for the important stuff. What should we do to address this? (Mr. A Cowley’ – Beverley Longcroft School. March 2010)
It all comes down to how your meetings are chaired. Chairing governors’ meetings requires ‘people skills’ and an understanding of the world of education because simply explaining the acronyms can save an awful lot of time! Chairs must understand that the constituent members of the Governing Body are all coming from different backgrounds, have different reasons for being governors and sometimes come with their own personal agendas. This is rather different to chairing work meetings where there is usually a common understanding of the issues raised by the agenda and the Chair can foresee the questions that may be asked. In governors’ meetings, an agenda item entitled for instance ‘Health and Safety’ might go off in all sorts of directions such as, for instance, the hole in the school fence which is big enough for Mrs Jones’s terrier to get through and which she thinks is dangerous. A skilled Chair needs to note the concern, agree what action if any needs to be taken, ask the clerk to minute this and quickly bring the discussion back to the agenda item otherwise precious time will be wasted. It’s a good idea to have a ‘guillotine’ on agenda items, set before the meeting, so that everyone knows how much time is allocated for discussion of each item.
Another common timewaster in meetings is the wad of Local Authority papers that accompany each agenda. As all members have received these some time before each meeting, the Chair must assume that everyone has read and understood them and simply ask if anyone has any issues arising from them that they would like minuting. It’s a good idea if the Chair has read them to provide a short summary for everyone else. The best way of dealing with these LA policies and protocols is to delegate consideration of them to a sub-committee which can report back at the next meeting, thus doing away with the need for any discussion in the full GB meeting. In my experience, there is nothing worse than trying to wade through all these papers in the meeting.
Similarly with the Headteacher’s report. He or she will have submitted this prior to the meeting and should only ask for any questions rather than reading through it.
It’s these things which can potentially use up all the time you have for your GB meeting which is particularly annoying if there are burning issues such as an Ofsted visit or a redundancy situation that needs a full discussion. If there is time for such discussion, here again, the Chair must make sure that everyone has a chance to have their say without letting anyone dominate. It’s a fine balancing act but in summary, I would say that a good Chair needs to be firm, fair, flexible at times and inflexible at others and most important of all, have a sense of humour!
Vince Barrett. Chair, East Riding Association of Governing Bodies (ERAGB)
