How to demystify and diversify governance

Demystifying and diversifying governance is crucial for creating inclusive, effective and representative school trusts. School governors (or councillors, or any other term trusts may use for school-level governance) and trustees play a vital role in shaping the strategic direction and ensuring the success of individual schools and the trust as a whole. Yet the role is often misunderstood, with governing boards too homogenous to accurately represent the diversity of schools they serve.

Dr Allan Howells, Director of Quality, The Learning Partnership

Data published by GovernorHub this year revealed that only 0.14% of governors are aged between 18-24, despite that cohort making up 10.5% of the population. Moreover, 90.2% of governors are white, despite making up 81.7% of the population, highlighting the underrepresentation of black, asian and minority ethic groups. Meanwhile, the NGA reports that 7% of governors and trustees considered themselves to have a disability while 92% did not (2% prefer not to say); compared to 24% of people nationwide.

 

Challenges

 

One of the primary difficulties is attracting individuals to the role in the first place. The current profile of school governors tends to be predominantly white, male and older. Although we are well-served by our experienced and hardworking governors and trustees, this demographic trend can make it difficult to bring in fresh perspectives and diversity of thought and experience.

 

However, as a trust we are improving gender balance, with a roughly even male/female split across both school and trust level governance.

 

Building a better governance system

 

As a trust with schools in areas with varying demographic breakdowns, we must not be overly prescriptive, but rather ensure we are helping school governing bodies become more reflective of their communities, whatever they may entail.

 

The first step is to understand the demographic breakdown of your governors by conducting an equality and diversity survey. Collecting this data enables you to create strategies fit for purpose in developing more inclusive governance practices and recruitment strategies which will reach the communities that may be missing from specific boards. When considering ethnicity, we seek to view this from both a trust-wide and local level to reflect the different and diverse communities that we support. Securing a school governor ethnicity profile that reflects the pupil ethnicity in the school is one way in which to develop a target to aspire towards.

 

We’ve experienced significant growth as a trust since our last survey, so we are repeating it this year to improve decision-making and inform how we think about diversity in the context of our different schools.

 

Now, clarifying the responsibilities and impact of governors is crucial to demystifying the role, and vital in the pursuit of more diverse recruitment. Many trusts streamline the school-level governor's duties, refocusing to concentrate on specific areas such as educational performance, student welfare or stakeholder engagement.

 

By highlighting the importance of the remits of these of these roles, we can make the role more appealing by highlighting the reduced scope and complexity of the position and reduced time commitment whilst not limiting, and instead amplifying, the importance. If people are confusing the role with traditional maintained school governance, which involved a lot of finance, human resources and other specialist skilled areas, they may not want to put in the time for something they think will be too intensive.

 

Additionally, communicating that a governor doesn’t need to be experienced in governance when they start is critical; the role is itself an opportunity to develop skills. Highlighting this opportunity is particularly valuable for younger recruits, who are often trying to develop their skills as they begin their careers, or for parents who may be on a career break to care for their children but anticipate returning to the workplace at some stage.

 

Another key strategy in diversifying governance recruitment involves broadening outreach beyond traditional channels to tap into underrepresented elements of our communities. One effective method is to reach out to individuals with strong community links to join your governing board.

 

At one of our primary schools, we reached out to the local mayor and two local councillors. Their presence on the board has strengthened the school’s links to community groups and broadened its outreach. Over time, we aim to have these strengthened community links converted into the recruitment of more diverse governors.

 

We have also had a successful recruitment strategy at Crewe Engineering and Design UTC as a result of the work the UTC leadership has done engaging local SMEs to help deliver T-levels and vocational apprenticeship provision. Local businesses can join the governing body, creating links with the community and developing a deeper understanding of the emerging talent pool of local skills that pupils will have. In some cases, they have been able to support the vocational curriculum offer through work-based learning opportunities. This has been an effective way to diversify the governing body and even better serve our pupils.

 

Finally, the practicalities of the board itself can act as barriers to entry, so adapting these can help. Being more flexible about when the meetings are held to accommodate people’s time commitments will help a more diverse pool join the board.

 

CST's discussion paper Building diversity into our workforce strategies sets out concrete steps that school trusts can take to increase diversity, including innovative new approaches to recruitment, retention and progression and, importantly, governance.

 

Conclusion

 

As trusts, we have the opportunity to support positive changes across our schools by improving diversity at board level, both locally and trust-wide. This is critical for broadening perspectives, avoiding group think and ensuring the communities we serve are properly represented at the strategic level.

The CST Blog welcomes perspectives from a diverse range of guest contributors. The opinions expressed in blogs are the views of the author(s), and should not be read as CST guidance or CST’s position.

 

 

 

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