Welcome to the summer term: a season to reflect and review

I want to start as we usually do by thanking you for all you do for your schools and pupils. This is not said enough across the sector.

Blog

12/04/2024

I want to start as we usually do by thanking you for all you do for your schools and pupils. This is not said enough across the sector. The phrase ‘unsung heroes’ was heard a lot to describe governance volunteers when I joined NGA fourteen years ago. Despite NGA’s best efforts to overturn that narrative, even though many of you don’t need or want to be called heroes, sadly the ‘unsung’ epithet still applies far too often.

NGA is still on the case with the powers that be and will continue to be the one and only organisation wholeheartedly championing the cause and voices of governance volunteers as no-one in the sector does. Please do let us know anything that is particularly important to you right now: chiefexecutive@nga.org.uk And this half-term is the time we ask you to complete the Annual Governance Survey – watch this space, but this is such important information for our work, your work and the sector’s understanding of the work of governing boards, I do hope you will find the time to fill it in.

If you want to hear from our political leaders on their plans for education, alongside much else besides which will help you hone your governance practice, then do please join us at the Annual School and Trust Governance Conference on Friday 12 July in Birmingham: we have invited both Government and Opposition spokespeople. And if you have ideas on how you would like to see education changed and governed, please join us at our lunchtime virtual forum with our partners FED.

What does this term hold for you? It should be a really pivotal time in the governing calendar: making the space to hold a strategy session with your school or trust leadership is crucial to good governance. Leaving these important deliberations until September is likely to mean they don’t get enough reflection in the hurly-burly of the new school year. And there is simply not the time needed for the strategic and generative mindset in regular business meetings; these conversations can’t be restrained by the usual packed agenda and standard questioning. They need to be real back to basics open discussions with everyone participating and stakeholder input heard and welcomed.

NGA has two very well-loved guides developed with the National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) and the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL): Being Strategic guides, one for single schools and the other for MATs.

NGA has never been in the business of telling governing boards their priorities: you know best what is most important in your context. But I can’t resist reminding you that is at the forefront of many pupils’ minds and action does need to be taken wherever we can to reduce and adapt to the effects of climate change. There are many resources to help your boards and your schools/trusts get started.

We also know of course that balancing the budget continues to be an enormous challenge for many governing boards, even more so in the context of falling rolls as fewer children arrive in primary schools. We are making the case that the national schools budget in future years should not be reduced as pupil numbers reduce, but instead this funding should be put into increasing both the per pupil amount and allocations for deprivation. This will no doubt seem huge good sense to most of you who are governing, but it is unlikely to be an easy argument to win with politicians and HM Treasury. NGA will work with like-minded partners – and of course we hope your good selves will reinforce that message with election candidates.

We also expect that the workload, development and well-being of staff, in particular your headteacher or CEO, is high on your list of considerations. This is a topic NGA is also concentrating on over the coming term, reiterating messages about the duty of care employers have and especially the role chairs and vice-chairs have in working with their senior leaders, and ensuring the people we employ to deliver the strategic priorities are able to function at their absolute best, and that means with full consideration to their health and welfare. You will know as well as we do the very many demands facing our school leaders on a day-to-day basis: it can be a lonely job and it is the governing board that must be looking out for them. I appreciate that is a large ask, but I finish where I started: it is a very important role you have volunteered to do. Thank you so very much from the bottom of my heart.