On Friday, 15 November 2024, NGA's chief executive, Emma Balchin, delivered NGA's annual address. Emma reflected on the past year's achievements, shared insights into the challenges you identified and outlined how NGA will support you in tackling the sector's most pressing issues in the year ahead. Below is the written transcription of her address.
This year is particularly pivotal for us at NGA as we embark on our own journey of change as an organisation. Now, several months into the role as NGA’s new chief executive officer, I want to take a moment to reflect on what a privilege it is to lead such an incredible organisation alongside such incredible staff for our incredible members.
Many of you will know me already, and for those of you who don’t, in the Autumn edition of Governing Matters, I talked about my hopes for the future as I lead the organisation into both a figurative and actual new season.
This really - both personally and professionally, and for the organisation and the sector - has been a time of looking at navigating new horizons: a new chapter for the NGA has coincided with the arrival of a new government and change within the department for education, and our sector.
The future of governance has been at the forefront of my thinking. Not because I think governance - or the way our schools and trusts are governed - needs to change, but because the way governance is thought of on a governmental and sector-wide level needs to change.
We all share a passion and energy for governance, and I want to start this year's annual address by honouring each and every one of you who provide an act of public service that deserves a much greater level of recognition and appreciation. Part of my personal mission, among other things, is to in turn honour and serve you, by being a voice that never falters in championing governors and trustees, and those who support us.
We also share an energy and passion for children and young people, for teachers and support staff, and for our incredible school and trust leaders.
I am optimistic that the government, as well as our new Education Secretary and her team, are in listening mode, and want to know how each part of the system contributes and how it can be utilised further. Our message is a simple one, but one that commands attention: the governance community is a force to be reckoned with. Collectively it demonstrates what public service and a belief and commitment to societal progress really is.
As a mum of two school-aged children and someone who has been both in the teaching profession and governed for many years, I look at this through a number of lenses. I believe in the power of governance as the frontline, primary form of accountability, and I know wholeheartedly, that the NGA team do too – it is our passion, our motivation, and it joins us to a mission greater than any one of us as individuals.
I am privileged to represent your views and voices as I engage with the Department for Education and many others to continue building on the foundations that were laid with so much care and attention by my predecessor, Emma Knights, in building up NGA as an independent, expert organisation that exists to help empower you in your roles.
The voice and influence that you all bring to NGA gives us the best possible platform to influence change. It has already led to several conversations with Bridget Phillipson, Education Secretary, and her team. This is becoming a momentous year for the sector, with lots of issues to solve and lots of change on the horizon, and the department, Ofsted and others are inviting NGA through doors we have previously not accessed - and I won’t be complacent in stepping through those doors. Governance simply must be at the heart of education policy reform, and I want to ask you to continue to trust us and to empower us to do just that.
The current landscape
Let’s reflect for a moment on the sector landscape. The vantage point is complex and ever-changing. Currently:
- Over half of state schools are now in trusts
- We have seen the first change in the party leading government for 14 years
- Following the outcome of the tragic Ruth Perry inquiry and Ofsted’s subsequent big listen, change has already begun with the removal of single-word judgments
- And we have seen an above-inflation pay award and education investment
But, from speaking to our members, we know there is lots of uncertainty. The new government has advocated reform, but uncertainty remains about what that will look like, and how long it will take:
- Will the budget be followed by the promise of long-term investment in education through the spending review?
- How will Ofsted report cards alter how schools and boards experience inspection?
- How will the curriculum review change teaching and learning?
- How will the government’s approach to school structures change the speed of academisation and the ability of trusts to do things differently?
- How will the government tackle some of the big structural challenges they have identified – such as those around SEND and falling pupil rolls?
As your national body, we are committed to ensuring the voice of governance is not just part of these important conversations, but influencing the decisions made where we can.
The last year at NGA
Looking back on the year I spent sharing the chief executive role with Emma, it was a big year for NGA.
- We concluded our work on ensuring school and trust governance is sustainable with our final workload report. The key challenges our research highlighted included rising exclusions, increasing (and more complex complaints), and escalating board vacancies against the backdrop of a steep decline in the number of people volunteering in the UK overall. So here at NGA, as well as highlighting the issues, we’ve offered some solutions and shared examples of fantastic practice you’ve told us about or we saw it in action while working with you and your boards
- Our Growing good governance report is the second set of findings from our NLG, and wider consultancy ERGs, and it reflected on the quality of educational governance in England. The analysis showed us that many boards are doing so much right. There is undeniable evidence of commitment to improvement, and a large number of boards have shown us what a difference good governance makes. Yet challenges persist: there is still a need to shift from reactive to proactive and strategic approaches. This includes developing long-term visions and strategies, clarifying roles, and being ever more intentional about effective communication between tiers of governance.
A quarter of a million trustees and governors give their time, care, and expertise to make crucial decisions that impact the lives of children and young people.
Sharing our manifesto with the incoming government was an important opportunity for NGA to communicate the key priorities and challenges facing our members, as well as proposals to address them - spanning future-proofing the system (workforce and estates), responding to the needs of families, increasing woeful funding, and addressing the culture of fear that pervades school inspection. You will see, I hope, as we begin to look forward, how these themes are reflected in NGAs priorities for this year too.
Then, with the new government in place, we brought together all of our experiences and research from recent years, including our annual governance survey, to reflect on the trust sector in The Mature MAT Model, with key recommendations for trusts and policymakers moving forwards.
This was NGA’s third report in this series, drawing on our experience of supporting trustees, as well as trust governance professionals and local governors.
NGA collated unique evidence and insight that shaped this study, including:
- Analysis of ERGs carried out by our expert consultants, including almost 200 conducted in the last two years as part of the NLG programme.
- Numerous surveys of trustees, local governors and governance professionals, including over 1,500 trust respondents to this summer’s annual governance survey.
- NGA governance networks, forums and daily conversations on our Gold advice service.
- Hundreds of interviews with MATs, conducted as part of research into central teams, faith trusts, Ofsted inspection, governance workload, and our Outstanding Governance Awards.
Trusts are more than the sum of their parts. At their best, they transform the opportunities available to their schools, staff and pupils. As a sector, we need to share best-practice in the running and construction of MATs, ensure those trusts are properly resourced, and build an effective system architecture. We look forward to being part of the conversations about how this can be achieved.
NGA is proud to serve the entire state school sector in all of its shapes and sizes, but it is trust governance where we are seeing diverse, innovative, and dynamic practice. We want to make sure that we are at the forefront of these conversations about the future of governance, and we think there will be lessons for maintained schools to take away as well.
We have also published practical content for boards: our resources, in the form of guidance, training, e-learning, networks, our advice line and much more, ensures that governors, trustees and governance professionals have trusted information to support stronger governance.
Annual Governance Survey
Thank you to the 3000+ of you who completed our annual governance survey – it’s this that drives the work we do, the priorities we focus on for the coming year - of which you’ll hear more about shortly - but also gives us the evidence to share with confidence what your experiences are on the ground when asking for change or trying to influence policy and thinking.
Your top challenges this year are, unsurprisingly, still clearly related to our manifesto asks of the previous year: balancing the budget, supporting pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, and attendance – with attainment and closing the ‘disadvantage gap’, and curriculum as the most common of your key priority areas.
Funding as your top challenge is an area NGA can’t afford not to address in the coming months. Only 19% of schools and trusts perceived themselves as financially sustainable in the medium- to long-term, with deep-seated concerns about future financial viability growing more severe.
An alarming 60% of governing boards now cite balancing the budget as their top challenge, up from 52% in the previous year and 40% in 2020 – the highest ever recorded, highlighting the growing financial strain on schools and trusts.
That’s why we came together with the national bodies for teachers, HTs and parents in the School Cuts campaign, and we will continue to add our voice to this work, alongside our partners. While we recognise the positive steps the government has indicated thus far, the Secretary of State for Education’s promise to fix the foundations means that we have to aim higher, look to true ambition for long-term investment that brings real change.
Last year, over a third of governing boards told us that their school building was not in good condition. In this year’s AGS, we wanted to find out more about the impact this is having – nearly half of respondents felt the condition of school buildings is having a negative impact on the learning environment for pupils: the school estate needs capital investment.
When asked to select their three biggest challenges in relation to staffing, boards were most likely to consider addressing workload and wellbeing (45%) followed by recruitment (41%) and maintaining the current staff structure (38%). There are clearly huge tensions regarding recruitment and retention, and also the additional budgetary challenges caused by falling pupil roles at play simultaneously.
As for the the pressures not limited to funding, we have also heard loudly that we should focus on SEND; this alongside mental health, and child poverty, are putting huge burdens on schools and staff.
We have welcomed the new government’s approach with cautious optimism:
- Funded above inflation pay rise
- SEND funding boost
- Capital investment in school estate
- Awareness of challenges of protecting national finances
But also acknowledge that these boosts won’t tackle the underlying challenges.
Current funding models simply do not match the increasingly complex needs that exist in every school across the country, and so we are pushing for a long-term, sustainable uplift in the spending review.
Children families and communities
Children families and communities is our next priority area, and this encompasses so much of what you told us is taking your attention in meetings, and indeed for the schools you serve. In recent years, schools and trusts have increasingly been dubbed the ‘4th emergency service’ as they step in to plug the gaps of diminishing and underfunded wider services, addressing the needs of a rapidly growing number of families falling into poverty. The vital support provided to pupils and their families often includes additional services that go beyond schools’ traditional educational responsibilities, such as social care and mental health.
Year on year our survey has shown increases across the board in additional services being offered, reflecting the current societal problems around poverty. The use of foodbanks, meals outside of school terms, offering financial support with uniforms, washing uniforms –are all examples of additional much needed services that simply ensure children’s basic needs are met, and they are ready or able to learn. Alongside increasing demand for emotional health and wellbeing, behavioural support services and interventions that schools are having to source out often from private providers as third sector organisations are fewer in number and waiting lists are can often be too long for children and schools to wait for if public serves are still available.
Policy makers ‘know’ that schools are doing more and more – but perhaps don’t fully understand the impact this has on learning – and the budget – whether this is the direct cost of providing some of these services, or the indirect costs associated with them – staff time, additional pull on their mental health and wellbeing. All these issues are relevant to today’s discussion as leaders turn to boards, as they are more and more in need of support and innovative ideas from outside the field of education around both service provision and financial management.
This aligns directly with the government’s commitment to breaking down barriers to opportunity, which we see reflected in initiatives like the expansion of breakfast clubs. We’re proud to contribute to this mission through our recent DfE-funded school food e-learning module, as well as the re-publishing of our resources on disadvantage in early Spring.
These resources are designed to empower governing boards to minimise barriers to learning and meet statutory requirements as well as navigate complex issues of need, poverty, and access, helping them ensure that every pupil has the chance to succeed.
SEND
Our children families and communities priority will also include some key work around special educational needs and disabilities.
Despite the best efforts of many schools and trust boards, leaders and staff, the system is hampered by huge funding challenges, staff shortages, and inconsistent support services. Even schools with well-developed SEND systems find themselves constrained by a lack of resources.
Beyond funding which was an issue for 74% of boards, 58% of respondents cited dwindling resources and increased strain on local authorities a major obstacles that sit alongside challenges obtaining Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans (55%) and recruiting and retaining qualified support staff, particularly for special schools.
We know that, although increased funding will go some way to addressing this, a more comprehensive reform of funding and the wider system, beyond education to health and social care too, is needed. The social partnerships work of which we are a part has raised this too.
Remembering that the SEN system should be delivering for some of society’s most vulnerable children and young people is important. NAO estimates there are around 1.7 million children at school who were identified as having SEN in January 2024. The 2014 SEND reforms aimed to “to put children and parents at the heart of the system”– something NGA supported but for children, young people and their families to benefit from this intention, the system needs reform with an emphasis on everyone working together to meet the needs of the child or young person.
These areas and more, not only highlight the complexities that schools face, but the complexities that pupils and parents, families and communities also face. School and trust governance have the innate, intrinsic value of being account rendering to all of these stakeholders- and so we are exploring in more depth what it looks like for each of these areas.
Admissions
For instance, how does the system address the Growing challenge with falling pupil rolls,
How do we do admissions in a system where LAs and trusts both have responsibilities in these areas which don’t always align.
Managing admissions in this new landscape requires nuanced policy approaches, a need recently highlighted in work from The Sutton Trust. Our goal is to ensure that admissions policies maintain fairness and transparency and support local communities and of course children and young people.
All of this ties to our understanding of governance as connecting schools and trusts to their communities.
Exclusions and complaints are some of the most notable examples of this engagement today – we know this is putting a growing burden on governing boards.
Attendance
Attendance remains a pressing issue as we continue to work through the changes in aftermath of the pandemic, teacher strikes and increasing anxiety and again SEND in our pupil populations. Our priority work over the last year has focused on developing strategies and tools that support governing boards in addressing attendance barriers, from engaging families to creating supportive school environments. Yet, we know there’s more to be done, and we are building on these efforts with a renewed focus on sustainable, community-oriented solutions in the coming year, that goes beyond addressing the symptom and really gets to the root or roots (because each child’s circumstances are often as unique as they are) of absenteeism.
Ofsted and Accountability
Accountability is already an area of focus for us in the context of the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Ruth Perry, Ofsted’s largest ever consultation and the increasing awareness that the accountability system seems incoherent in a dual system of single schools and multi academy trusts.
In our annual governance survey, over half of you told us that Ofsted was the biggest driver of practice and culture in their organisation. This should never have been the case. Ofsted should not be driving the sector in the way it has for so long.
By moving away from reductive labels like 'Inadequate' or 'Outstanding', we hope to foster an environment where schools are encouraged to improve rather than living in fear of career-ending judgements. We want to shift the narrative from high stakes accountability to the genuine growth and development of the profession, where our schools are cherished not taken advantage of; where sustained commitment, systemic change, and courageous leadership are all driven by the unmistakable, celebrated consequence of good governance.
We are advocating for a new inspection framework with governance at its heart, which actively builds on and complements the scrutiny and challenge provided by boards throughout the year. Governance offers front-line, incremental, responsive accountability that can act quickly, according to context, when needed. It is also accountability, however, that can preserve and promote organisational integrity and ambition against a panoramic view - not zoomed in on one or two days, not zoomed in on some areas while neglecting others. The sector needs to embrace the continuous, contextually aware oversight that simply cannot be replicated by anything other than good governance.
Collaboration
We are proud to serve all school types. Many of the successes of the trust model have stemmed from their ability to act effectively as a group and realise the benefits of things like collaboration between schools that lead to easy sharing of people, successes and solutions, bulk buying, economies of scale, improved staff development or career opportunities, specialized, centralised staffing to name but a few.
We want to make sure the benefits of collaboration reach the whole sector. Already members and local authority partners have been stepping forward to tell us how differing structures can facilitate collaboration with examples of Trusts and maintained schools, school clusters, working together for locality-based planning and service provision. We want to explore with you all, which models or benefits of collaboration require shared accountability and a single legal structure, and which can happen regardless?
Governing boards are at the heart of facilitating this – not only do you take decisions about structures, you also set your organisation’s underlying culture and ethos. How do we create a sector wide culture that looks outwards and recognises a broader civic responsibility to all children in your community, recognising that perhaps a national funding formula hasn’t quite hit the mark; how do you feel about sharing resources beyond your own school/trust?
The DfE have established the new RISE teams (Regional Improvement for Standards and Excellence teams) as a critical part of the government's mission to raise standard in education. Comprising civil servants and expert advisers with a track record of school improvement and executive leadership, they will help create a sector-led improvement system in their region, working directly with schools to help them improve through two ways:
Universal support - promoting and creating a culture of sector-leading improvement, where schools and trusts use the new school report card to self-identify the support they needs;
Targeted support - for a set of schools, RISE teams will work collaboratively with schools to agree bespoke packages of support, working with schools to diagnose the problems and create improvement plans – increasingly an emphasis from government on support from those with capacity rather than resorting immediately to structural changes.
We want to help boards to use their capacity to support the wider sector and encourage a shift in values to make this possible. It represents significant transformation in our education system, a fundamental shift in how we approach school improvement and governance will have to be a part of this. NGA has been in discussions with the DfE on how this will work in practice, and while the details are still being worked through, this new framework of support before intervention provides us something to be optimistically about, and we hope it will genuinely deliver a more nuanced, targeted support provision, one which will be reinforcing the crucial role of governance in our educational ecosystem at every level.
Collaboration matters and it requires a culture which only those governing can set and champion.
Elevating governance
This final overarching priority will extend throughout the year, culminating as the theme for our 2025 summer conference.
Governance is fundamental to the success of the education system and we believe requires greater recognition. Governance needs to be taken more seriously and shown levels of central focus and investment received in other sectors. NGA aims to build a convincing case for the role and impact of good governance, and the potentially ruinous impact of poor governance.
But it is too often neglected by the wider sector which has real consequences for the quality of governance – We’ve seen the removal of funding for governance development, followed by the end of the reformed NLG programme and funding for any governance recruitment services. Just because you aren’t paid doesn’t make the difference you make any less significant.
Elevating governance aims to garner greater sector acknowledgement for the role you do voluntarily. It will highlight the boards' employer responsibilities, and further work on their pivotal role in stakeholder engagement.
It’s our number one priority because it comes to the heart of what we are here to do; championing governance and the difference that our members are making every day.
Elevating governance
- Governance as a core financial safeguard to keep schools/trust sustainable
- Governance as a key feature of the accountability system
- Governance as connecting schools / trusts to each other and their communities
- Governance as a driver of collaboration by prioritising a wider civic mission for their organisation, and championing the benefits of working as a group
We have to lead the way in changing perceptions. Part of this has to be is championing the work you do, not just the time you commit and the expertise you bring, but the real material difference you make to the lives of children.
We want to share case studies but also to build a robust, academically rigorous case for your importance.
Conclusion
I hope that as we renew our priorities and commitments for this year, that you, our members, see that what we are working on echoes the input you’ve shared with NGA and is therefore reflective of your context and what you care about today.
We all know, good governance is the cornerstone of a successful education system. And we are determined that the government and the sector as a whole understand that too. It’s crucial to have leaders with a clear vision and a strong ethical compass at the helm. I want to see real and lasting change to the culture of accountability in our schools.
It needs to be okay to make mistakes and be vulnerable. So that schools and trusts can seek help earlier and avoid bigger problems down the line.
Just as we strive for schools to be happy and safe places for our children and young people, they should also be happy and safe workplaces for staff.
Governors, trustees, teachers, and leaders are all dedicated to ensuring that children and young people receive the best possible education. However, schools cannot succeed if children’s basic needs aren’t being met. Too many families are living in poverty or struggling with housing and other desperate circumstances. Schools are in a unique and privileged position in their communities and provide much-needed support, but we know they cannot continue to do it all alone.
Change is challenging, and we know governors and trustees aren’t afraid of innovation and hard work to ensure the best outcomes for pupils and communities. Let us continue to champion good governance, support each other, and strive for a brighter future for our schools and communities at this time of change. Thank you for all you do.